The Concept of Art as Archaeologically Applicable

Abstract

In this article I review arguments in favour of the need and possibility of importing a revitalized concept of art in archaeological reasoning. By comprehending the concept of art as a function, rather than as a property inherent within particular kinds of objects or events, I offer a way of understanding art as the mode in which a phenomenon operates when its ontological multiplicity, its variety of equally real modes of being, becomes exposed. Seen in this vein, art emerges as an entity both created and experienced when several potential versions of a thing or event are laid bare. I emphasize that an element's capacity to communicate such factual intersectionality requires effort in order to endure; and argue that it is the formats for such ‘practices of maintenance’ that constitute art-worlds situated in culture. I also assert that these strategies, like all formalized engagements with material culture, generate traces, and accordingly can be grasped by analyses of an archaeological record. To illustrate this idea, I discuss the red ochre rock paintings from Neolithic northern Sweden made between approximately 6000 and 4000 bp by hunter-gatherer communities that were also producing petroglyphs.