Valmonica, Italy (ca. 2000 BC?)
Were artists still doing rock art?
Yes! Bronze Age artists kept on carving rock art all across Europe, using it to show the new horses and wagons, weapons and plows brought by the Indo-Europeans.
Stone Age art in Northern Europe
Bronze Age buildings in Europe
The Bronze Age in Europe
All our Northern Europe articles
Boat with many oars (Tanum, Sweden, ca. 1700 BC)
Further north, Scandinavian artists carved their boats as well as their horses and plows and weapons. Abstract patterns of rectangles, circles and dots continued to be popular alongside these scenes of power and daily life.
Bronze Age around the world
Art about war
Although artists carved a lot of fertility figurines and pretty women in the Stone Age, they didn’t make any in the European Bronze Age. Instead there are many scenes of weapons and fighting, which were not present in the Stone Age.
Eberswalde bowl (Central Europe, ca. 900 BC, now in Russia)
Mold gold cape (Britain, ca. 1800 BC), now in the British Museum
Gold bowls and jewelry
Perhaps in order to attract and pay off followers to fight in their wars, chiefs collected and distributed complicated and beautiful gold bowls and jewelry, like this big gold bowl from Germany or this gold cape from Britain.
