Rock art was often deliberately made were communication with the spirits was believed to be good. It was therefore made in caves and shelters, on steep cliffs, high in the mountains and on the shore — a range of localities all concidered transitional spaces between cosmic worlds. This emphasises that rock art is often jast one part of a broader ritual landscape.
An examination of meanings associated with bears among early
Rock art is defined as systematic and
The paper summarises the history of discovery, study and results of recent field documentation and protection work on Karelian rock art — unique cultural and historical treasure of Northern Europe, coming to us from Neolithic epoch. The international
The study proves the need for making and later using of ancient rock image mosaic flat panoramic photos in order to monitor rock surfaces condition and to promote the monument. The study contains the description of the technics the photographer dealing with that flat panoramic photos uses and some results of his work carried out on horizontal rock surfaces of the Onega and Belomorsk petroglyph sites (Republic of Karelia).
The study of Onega and Belomorsk petroglyphs can be divided into four stages. Each of them has its own milestones, significant events, facts and names. The first stage covers the period from 1848 to 1926.
In September 2005, the joint expedition of archaeologists from Russian Karelia and Great Britain (Institute of Language, Literature and History, Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Science and the Cambridge University) which studied Belomorsk petroglyphs and their correlations with the microlandscape made a totally unexpected discovery.
Contemporary petroglyph study has hardly researched the subject up to now. Ancient rock art is suggested to be unable to depict the space due to special surfaces the images were made on and hieratic nature of the latter.
