ABSTRACT
Space and discourse belong to the fundamental experiences of the human existence: We can exist only in space, and discourse, the most complex form of communication, is that which distinguishes us from all other animals. Rock art forges these two experiences into a unifi ed whole: Art is communication, and as rock art it retains the original spatial confi gurations over millennia. Accordingly, understanding the interaction of place and communication in rock art gives way to hypotheses concerning the meaning that the art – or more precisely the processes of its production and consumption – may have had for the people of long ago and the identities that they generated through the art. The signifi cance of space can be analysed reliably owing to the property of rock pictures (usually) being highly visible artefacts that have not changed their relation to the surroundings since they were made. By contrast, discourses are ephemeral, and hypotheses as to their character can be put forth only by modelling past social bodies with their activities and behaviour. Under this perspective, rock pictures, in their capability of linking space and discourse, map onto the landscape the signs of meaningful social interaction, identities, and behaviour – thus enabling the partial reconstructing of the mental map of the prehistoric painters and with it their feeling of being-in-the-world.
