Gannholm, S. 2017. English title: The grinding grooves on the island of Gotland A spatial analysis The grinding grooves on the island of Gotland are mysterious. They are distributed all over the island. Archaeologists a century ago claimed them to be the results of manufacturing of Stone Age tools. Later the perception of shore displacements made it impossible that they could be Stone Age remnants. Also grooves on some picture stones from the Iron Age seemed to prevent an earlier dating than the Iron Age. But new results on shore displacements can change the view of dating. Closer investigations of those picture stones will prove that the grooves were already grinded on them when they were cut. Comparison between the locality of grooves and Iron Age houses does not show an equal good pattern as the comparison between grooves and Stone Age artifacts. Most grooves are between a half-meter to one meter in length and between 1 cm and 10 cm deep and the width is between 5 cm and 10 cm. Grooves situated close to each other on the same stone may have very different depth and can also intersect as if they have been forced to go in a certain direction. The alignments of the grooves are not randomly but may rather be oriented in some important astronomical direction. Many places where groves are found are situated close to former lakes or what once probably was the seashore and some also on heights. It is suggested the typical grooves may have been involved in some sort of a cult rather than a practical aspect in the making of tools. Keywords: Gotland, grinding grooves, Stone Age artifacts, cult, alignments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-325112 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Gannhol, Sören |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för arkeologi och antik historia |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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