 My name is Johan Ling and I'm co-hosting this session with Petina then. The topic of my talk will be rock art long-distance maritime trade and social complexity in the Bronze Age of Scandinavia. I work with rock art director for the Swedish rock art research archive, so therefore rock art stands very close to me, but also metal and metal trade. Let's see, here it is. Looking at the South Scandinavia rock art scene, what we have here are the main areas we have rock art dated to the Bronze Age, 700 to 500 BC. Altogether, in this space, you shop in about 30,000 boats, I think, from this place in southern Scandinavia. And you can say the rock art is calming, staying and vanishing with the Bronze Age here. The most dense area is in West Sweden, where we have 10,000 ships at 2,000 different localities, and we constantly find more. The red dots here showing the distribution of the rock art. Okay, that's a good thing. Anyway, the red dots show the distribution of the rock art, and also I illustrate here with a pre-storage seashore line. So it's pretty dense. In general, we can say that what we have on the panels then, we have a predominance of panels found at coastal or maritime locations, or former coasts, we have a predominance of ships or boats depicted on the rocks, predominance of performances of rituals on or in connection to the boats, and predominance of anthropomorphic beings brandishing weapons on the boats or in connection to the boats. We can also say that what you depict is, in a sense, highly selective. You don't, you never make a house, you never make a mundane life. So it spans from, you can say, some highly ritualistic features, oftenly stage features, but also realistic in that sense that you depict the weapons that we have, you depict the boats that probably they had, and wagons and chariots and weapons. Never monsters, as in the Viking Age, or freaky things. So they kind of keen on depicting warriors in different stages connected to the boats. In fact, if we speak about warrior, and what signifies the Bronze Age warrior, several scholars had an argument for concept, and I have tried to conclude that. It's a guy into martial art. He's a traveler trader. He's into metals. He's a hunter. He's a sportsman and a showman. And all this is highly pronounced on the rock art. You have here the metal depicted swords one-to-one by the boats. You have a stage scene with warriors. Here we have hunting scene, maybe sportsmen, showmen here as well. So warrior and warfare is highly pronounced. But it's important to see them in this context. Traditionally, you used to detach them from the boat and speak with warrior. They are calling now. But it's important to see that they are standing on the boats, by the boats, and have a strong connection and reference to the boats, then, from different periods. We haven't found any real boat from the Bronze Age in Scandinavia yet. But we have a boat from the pre-Roman Iron Age. It's a plank-filled boat. The same design as the ones from Regiles, you can say roughly. Plank-filled soon. And most scholars today argue that the similarity between this Iron Age boat for 400 BC and the rock art is a strong, indicating a long boat-building tradition, probably going back to the Neolithic. See you again. Or late Neolithic. So in accordance with the ferry boats and that. Taking this Jutsping boat as an example, then, how you could travel in Scandinavia during the Bronze Age, with good train paddlers, you had Olympic paddlers taking this boat in a reconstruction. And they could take it like 60 kilometers a day. But they say, give us a month and we take it 80 to 100 kilometers in good weather. Easily, you said. And also, you could load it with 22 person, but also one tonnage with goods. You had to load it without to come down the water lines, so to speak. So it has a high capacity in that sense. And that is important because in the Bronze Age, we are importing metal. And actually, southern Scandinavia consume, you think, about one tonnage yearly of metal, of bronze during this phase. In this region, we have found 2000 swords from 1500 to 1100 BC. During this phase, we have outermost most swords in Northern Europe. 20,000 objects from the Bronze Age in total. And the interesting thing is that the circulation of metal in Scandinavia correlates with the peak of circulation of metal, correlates with the rock art, then, where it's wrong. You make rock art in two phases, in all phases in Bronze Age, but there are two phases you make more. That's period two and period five. So it's strongly connected to the metal phase then. And where metal is in large circulation. And we can see that in most of the regions, actually, from Northern Sweden to Uppland to Scandinavia all through. And that we're updating panels in period five that we started already in period two. Here are some of the representation. Here, for instance, a warrior probably holding a full hip and sword. And the sword and the boats here from Uppland. Here you have the half-stabs with the boats. Sword reloads and also holding shields. Probably a rip set taking plain shielded swords and different types of sword types. And probably armor here as well. In period five, also you see the warriors, you see also fighting scenes. Opposing one and each other. And a real one-to-one killing scene so we could call it what you want. And one important thing is, I've stressed that before, we don't have copper. We don't extract copper in Scandinavia. We have had projects showing perfectly that no evidence of prehistoric mining in Scandinavia. The closest mines are in Central Europe and on the British Isles. We are depending on external sources. And actually we've been working pretty long in trying to provenance Scandinavian metals from the Bronze Age. Pointing to different areas during different phases. In our early Bronze Age, 2000 to 1500 BC, we mostly get metal from the East Alpine region. Then about 1500 to 1100 BC, we get it mostly from Italian Alps. And then from about 1200 BC, Iberia comes in the picture. Which is not strange. Here I show an isotopic plot. Here is the Italian Alps signatures. Here is Iberian signatures and our artifacts are matching here. And it's not surprising because Iberia has the largest and richest copper in or fields in Europe. And one of the world's largest. And specifically down here in the Vuelva region. So we argue that there is an Atlantic connection then. In the late Bronze Age where actually Scandinavia also connects. Where you can also see the archaeological material, the hairsprings shields that we have in Scandinavia. You have the ones on the British Isles. You have the ones depicted on the rock art. And in Spain, you have Baltic Amber. You have pale stabs of typical Spanish types going all the way up to Sweden actually. At least one. And other features that connects Scandinavia to Atlantic network in the late Bronze Age. More concrete evidence of groups interacting in the Atlantic. You can say it's from the evidence here in Cliff's Inn. On this aisle of Tannert. Where you have performed, have made excavations. And on basis of storms, Oxy and Isotope can show that some of the individuals there are Scandinavian. From the late Bronze Age. No doubt in the signatures. Most are local from Kent. But you also have groups from the West Mediterranean world. There you find banning goods. Baltic Amber. And other interesting aspects showing that there is a big trade going on. Interesting enough. Probably between Iberia and the British Isles. And Scandinavia in some sense. I should also stress that during some phase also British material show consistency with Iberian or worse. This was already stressed by Roland Needen back in the night around the 98. Well, anyhow we don't think you went to Iberia all the way. Mostly the Scandinavians. Probably what you do with this boat is that you go from, for instance, from Damerck to the mouth of the river system in northern Germany. That you do in a couple of days. You could of course also go to the British Isles would take you like 10 to 12 days in good weather situation. It's nothing to meet up the metal that's coming up here through different networks then. The question is then how was this organized? And now I'm coming into the one of the topic here that we probably going to discuss in the end. Aspects on social complexity along this is trade. It's a classical thing that control of long distance trade is a fundamental feature for for development of social complexity. You can follow that from Malinovsky's work in the Pacific, for instance. You can further that with Matthew Spreeks and Earl's work in Pacific for Jean Arnold that there is a correlation between the groups that invest in long distance trade in boats and crew. That that butters social complexity and social stratification. And that Bronze Age elite benefits from that. Classical thing in QMAS is that they went out with boats and said pay up. The boats was was a social space, demanding space, but also control mechanism. And the people on the boat, if you can organize them, if you can control them, you control the trade. And so the ability to fund boat construction and distance travel would have provided a new control mechanism based on ship ownership. And we think that in the Bronze Age then in Scandinavia that what households do is they invest in boats and crew. And thereby that is the qualitative step that triggered the rise of what we call maritime institutions and politics in Scandinavia. And leads to expansion of the households. Then they can take in metal, they can in a different sense. Though those families that do this investments, so to speak. Also, and finally, being a warrior in a maritime environment most likely would have involved various initiation rituals and preparation and connections to sea voyages. And we see very much the rock art in that context. We can go back to Malinovsky's work, you know, mountain rides before a journey and connection with a journey after a journey. But you articulate probably journeys while doing the rock art. They onboard these boats, they were forced to know navigation and ship propulsion, fighting skills, trade etiquettes, knowledge about precious metals and craftsmanship and customs expressions and practices. How did you trade that or how did you go on with that knowledge to other groups, so to speak. What is the time? Okay. So I will conclude here that Bronze Age witnessed an emergence of social certification based on the engagement and investment in control of perceived goods and long-distance trade. The use of water transport would have created a need for significant capital investment in boats and specialized sailors and warriors and men to protect them. The importance of warriors locally would have required increased engagement with the metal trade then. And we have, as I showed, expansion in rock art during the phases where we take in most metal in two and five. And also in those phases you can see the warriors are pairing on the rock art in a different sense. They take different shapes. And we argue, at least some of us, that the rock art could be a medium for the Bronze Age, marriage and warrior, traveler, trader. Thank you.