Embodying cosmologies : the art of Nordic Bronze Age body-objects /

The visual art of the Late Nordic Bronze Age is tantalizingly compelling in its difference. Bodily adornment objects, grooming tools, small figurines and rock surfaces present us with otherworldly creatures, ships that can carry the sun, metamorphoses, instability and ambiguity. Throughout the resea...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ahlqvist, Laura (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Oxford, UK : BAR Publishing, 2026.
Series:Archaeology of prehistoric art ; v. 7.
BAR international series ; 3260.
Subjects:
Description
Summary:The visual art of the Late Nordic Bronze Age is tantalizingly compelling in its difference. Bodily adornment objects, grooming tools, small figurines and rock surfaces present us with otherworldly creatures, ships that can carry the sun, metamorphoses, instability and ambiguity. Throughout the research history of Scandinavian archaeology, this pictorial record has been argued to reflect a cosmology involving sun worship, but this publication asks what more the art does. What does its use reveal about the social reality that the people wearing the art navigated in? In what way was the art made meaningful and how could it be understood? And how did the art and its properties entangle with human lives in the Late Nordic Bronze Age? In pursuit of answering these questions, this book studies portable art on bronze artefacts focusing on personal objects, mainly jewelry and razors used and carried directly on the body. These "body-objects" establish a link between the visual art and its social context that enables the study of people and their worlds.
Physical Description:xiii, 95 pages : illustrations (some color), maps ; 30 cm.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 81-95).
ISBN:9781407362670
1407362674