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Petroglyphen

Carrier Bag of Films: Petroglyphs in Hytti nro 6

14 Oct 2021

Carrier Bag of Films: Petroglyphs in Hytti nro 6

The protagonist of Hytti nro 6 sets off on a long train journey to Murmansk in order to see a set of ancient petroglyphs. To be more precise, these are the Kanozero petroglyphs, discovered as recently as 1997, and named after the lake in the Russian Murmansk region. But what are petroglyphs really?

Here is the simple version: petroglyphs (from the Ancient Greek πέτρα petra meaning “stone,” and γλύφω glýphō meaning “carve,” literally “stone carvings”) are prehistoric rock carvings. They differ from rock paintings such as those found in the Lascaux caves in that the drawings are actually carved (engraved, pecked, scraped) into the rock. They belong to parietal or wall art and can last thousands of years.  

Petroglyphs are found all over the world. Many rock carvings make use of the natural shapes of rocks for their representations of circles, waves or spirals. Bronze Age rock carvings are mostly found on rocks smoothed by glacial abrasion. They depict hunting narratives, animals, people engaging in worship and cult, agricultural scenes, or ships. The images are often difficult to recognize, which is why researchers use side lighting. In Murmansk, a larger group of discovered petroglyphs is even protected with a glass dome.  

The Côa Valley in northern Portugal is one of the most important sites when it comes to petroglyphs in Europe. In Austria, 950 single engravings were found in the Kienbachklamm gorge in Upper Austria. These testimonies and traces of past cultures allow ethnologists and archaeologists to draw conclusions about the history of life on our planet. In some respects, these representations can even be understood as an early form of cinema.

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