Maarten van Hoek The Geography of Cup-and-Ring ... - StoneWatch

Important sites like
Vitlycke, Litsleby,
illus.
Finntorp and Aspeberget
therefore most probably
once were coastal sites.
Many sites, like the fine
group at Aspeberget (Fig.
98), may even have
illus.
overlooked an ancient
landing place. As many
engravings in the
Vitlycke area are found
between the 15 and 35 m
contours - the coastal
zone between 3000 and
1800 BC (Fig. 92) - it is
conceivable that also late
Neolithic migrants once
could have had access to
these places and left
their marks in stone.
The Bohuslän area today
is characterised by small
flat pieces of arable
FIGURE 98: ASPEBERGET.
land, the old sea floor,
surrounded by often very steep ridges of granite (Fig. 99) which
offered the canvasses for the rituals of the prehistoric peoples that
arrived intermittently in this much indented coastal area.
Also in the rest of Sweden rock art is strongly water related.
Burenhult (1980: 29)
argues that “An
overwhelming majority
of the rock carvings
(67,3 %) consists of
open surfaces of rock
or small impediments
in close vicinity to
the prehistoric water
level” (emphasis
mine). “In many cases
it is possible that
these rocks have been
completely surrounded
with water and thus
have been islets or
FIG. 99: ANCIENT COASTLINE, TANUM.
M. van HOEK: 127
GEOGRAPHY