Workshop 2019

We started the project ‘Ancient Images 2.0’ in 2019 with an initial workshop, in order to bring together scholars currently working with the digital recording of other stone monuments that are similar to our material – such as carved stones, sculptured stones, stone inscriptions, and rock art. An international group of archaeologists and digital experts presented their projects and discussed methods, new approaches and problems. The workshop was focusing on Late-Iron-Age monuments from Northern Europe and prehistoric rock art, but Ancient Egypt and other periods and places were considered as well. Our own digitalisation work benefited greatly from this exchange and insight and helped to improve and clarify our own methods and goals.

Second Picture Stone Symposion  2022

Never before have so many persons and projects been involved with the picture stones of Gotland as during the runtime of ‘Ancient Images 2.0’. We felt that a more intensive exchange was needed, and we wanted to see how the situation had changed since the First Picture Stone Symposium in 2011 - the first conference solely dedicated to the picture stones of Gotland, took place in Visby in September 2011, organised by Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt and Magnus Källström (Runic Research Group at the Swedish National Heritage Board) and Per Widerström (Gotlands Museum).

So the time had come for a second conference in Visby. Eventually, the Second Picture Stone Symposium took place in August 2022. 
It was organised to revive and continue the international and interdisciplinary collaboration that had begun in 2011 with the First Picture Stone Symposium and to discuss the future of picture stone research. As there were more topics, initiatives, and projects than ever before at that time, not least because of the impact of Ancient Images, the timing for such a follow-up conference could not have been better.
The Second Picture Stone Symposion in 2022 brought together an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers currently working on Gotland’s picture stones – the members of the Ancient Images team, the international reference group, well-established experts in the fields of early medieval art, archaeology and runology, early career researchers as well as PhD and master students. The group of conference participants and authors of the proceedings covers seven different countries (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, England, Scotland, USA, Australia) and represented a wide variety of disciplines (archaeology, history of religions, art history, linguistics/runology, philology, heritage and conservation, geology). Over 30 participants presented 22 papers. Two particular foci emerged: on the one hand, the necessary interdisciplinarity of picture stone research, on the other, the question of the origin, models, and parallels of Gotlandic picture stones in a Late-Antique and Early-Medieval European context. The conference's proceedings will be published by Brepols.

The conference was generously funded by Vetenskapsrådet, Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien and Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien. 

SO / MH