Karen Niskanen: Rocks move. Rocks remember. Rocks Cry

My recently defended doctoral dissertation, Rocks move. Rocks remember. Rocks cry. Movement, memory, and animism in the pictographs in Finland, was successfully presented at the University of Oulu on 2 December 2025.

This archaeological research provides a deep dive into the red-ochre pictographs of the Finnish Lakeland, analysing their roles within a dramatically changing Neolithic landscape over the longue durée.

The study employs GIS and digital landscape visualisation tools to track the profound environmental transformation caused by post-glacial land uplift, revealing concurrent shifts in ancient water routes. This landscape analysis was a joint research project with a colleague, Dr. Aki Hakonen. I argue that the location and nature of the pictographs are best understood through the lens of animism and the power dynamics of the human-environment relationship.

The work examines these ancient images as crucial narrative devices, navigational markers, and mnemonic aids that helped hunter-gatherer communities navigate and memorialise their inherently unstable world. Comparative ethnography in my work examines the human-environment relationship in Indigenous North American contexts and in 19th-century Finnish-Karelian folklore.

The Finnish Antiquarian Society is gratefully acknowledged for its generous financial contribution towards the publication costs of this significant archaeological research.
The introductory lecture delivered at the defense, the lectio praecursoria, is forthcoming and will be published in Muinaistutkija. The research will continue.

The permanent address of the publication: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202510306513

Image: Finnish Heritage Agency / Ismo Luukkonen 2001. CC BY 4.0.