Rock Images of the Dead

Abstract This chapter connects the iconographical content of the Northern Tradition rock art of Scandinavia to both Late Mesolithic mortuary practices and to a dramatic demographic decline at the term of the Late Mesolithic. It addresses a specific focus towards Northern Tradition rock art sites in western Norway where a number of archaeological excavations and scientific investigations have been carried out and where representations of both human skeletons and defleshed animals are most apparent in the iconography. Through dialectic research towards both rock art and contemporary archaeological remains, it connects the Northern Tradition rock art of western Norway to the cultural historical development during the Late Mesolithic. The approach and the results suggest that the use of rock art was an institutionalized collective response to social pressure, most likely released by disease and dramatic demographic decline. The archaeological development indicates that populations were brought to extinction or close to extinction, something that also led to the end of the Northern Tradition rock art. The rock art can be understood as a pictorial language where the aims and perspectives in this dialectic approach adds to the deciphering of the iconographical narratives. Since the Late Mesolithic archaeological record of western Norway has rather limited information on mortuary procedures, future decoding of the human skeletons, and their interaction with excarnated animals in the rock art might provide valuable information on how death was handled in the Late Mesolithic.