Water and Cosmology in the Stone Age of Northeastern Europe

Water and Cosmology in the Stone Age of Northeastern Europe

DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.1.023-032

K. Nordqvist¹, V.-P. Herva², and S. Sandell^3
1University of Helsinki, Helsingin yliopisto Fabianinkatu, 24, Helsinki, 00014, Finland
²University of Oulu, Oulun yliopisto Pentti Kaiteran Katu, 1, Oulu, 90014, Finland
³Helsinginkatu, 14, Helsinki, 00500, Finland

This paper explores water and watery places as sacred elements among the cultures of the northern boreal zone during the Stone Age, and especially the Neolithic period, through materials deriving from Northwestern Russia and Fennoscandia. The peculiarity and importance of water and certain watery environments, like rivers, lakes, bogs, waterfalls, and rapids, are discussed through depositional practices of material culture, mainly lithic artifacts. Rock-art provides further tools for approaching the topic, not only through its locations in the landscape but also through its motifs, which allow parallels to be drawn to later ethnographical sources and folklore, too. Finally, the paper briefly touches upon the rationality behind making a strict separation between “sacred” and “mundane” when interpreting prehistoric cultural phenomena. Water was integral to human life in many different ways, but bodies ofwater and watery places could also be threatening and unpredictable. Therefore water would have been an ambivalent element, probably invested with significant cultural meanings in the Stone Age world.

Keywords: Animism, cosmology, material culture, relational ontology, rock-art, Stone Age