Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Most rock carvings have very little archaeological context: people who search for them tend to remove hastily any layers on top of them, and they quit digging when they reach the edge of the carved panel. But in recent decades, there has been a trend among Bronze Age scholars to dig beside the panels and try to find ones that are still covered by culture layers. Such digs tend to turn up carving tools of stone, pottery, enigmatic clay marbles and above all lots of evidence of burning. Cultic fires illuminating the carvings as drunk fertility cultists cavorted and copulated in Mycenaean finery...
Recent pentagenarian Christopher Precott (congrats!) in Oslo tipped me off about a Norwegian fieldwork blog by students covering this type of work going on in SW Norway. Loads of artefact finds and buried carvings coming to light after millennia!
