Lacustrine Landscapes of the Red-ochre Cliff Paintings in Finland

The majority of prehistoric pictographs in Finland are located in the Lakeland region. Throughout millennia, shoreline changes have affected lacustrine landscapes and water routes. The main cause is the uneven rate of post-glacial land uplift, which causes land to tilt over time. This tilt has resulted in both gradual and rapid geographic changes. Tracking these changes may unveil how the people themselves regarded this temperamental landscape. We examine the pictographs as landmarks along ancient waterways. The analysis applies a new land uplift model to track shifting shorelines and their impact on rock art tradition. Digital terrain models are processed to examine the shifting of water routes, and to re-examine submerged and exposed phases of pictograph sites. The paper posits that with pictographs people may have established the locales as powerful places that agglomerated varied human and non-human agencies from within the hunter-gatherer cosmos, reflecting the perceived instability of the landscape itself.