Sacred pictures, sacred rocks: Ideological and social space in the North Norwegian stone age

Abstract

Space is not a passive arena for adaptation but a social and ideological product actively manipulated in social strategies. Late Stone Age rock carvings at Alta, Finnmark, are viewed as a discourse legitimating social relations. Geographical fixing of this discourse produces spatial inequalities in access to information. These inequalities are part of the matrix of social relations for which the rock art serves as a legitimation discourse. Lithic materials are linked to this discourse in a common ‘spatial ideology’. Since lithics are portable, they operate as mobile signifiers for the ideological system encoded in the rock carvings, offsetting spatial inequalities. © 1988 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.