Deer Antler Stories: Combining archaeological and artistic research to bring Stone Age storytelling practices back to life

Throughout history, humans have been telling and listening to stories. While historical societies have used the written word or moving pictures to share their stories, prehistoric communities relied largely to oral tradition. Although these stories have largely gone missing during the course of time, they have also left material remains e.g., in the form of rock art. Remarkably, recent research has shown that these pictures, painted or carved to stone, were not immobile. On the contrary, they were accompanied by various storytelling practices that resemble early cinematography. In this presentation, we introduce a novel, multidisciplinary project that aims not only to explore further materializations of prehistoric storytelling but also to bring them back to life. To do so, we combine the methodology of artistic research with digital humanities and archaeology, and investigate how light and shadow – shadow play – might have been used as part of Mesolithic (ca. 8900–5200 BC) storytelling in Finland.