For me, it all started with a dilemma. How was I to situate myself in a specific field – rock art studies – being personally attracted to prehistoric pictures as a visual, historical phenomenon, but sceptical of instant, un-reflected interpretations couched in terms of a stereotypical history of religion?

Among archaeologists, theories are often received as general, and not as historical products with specific time-bound qualities. Yet theories, of course, are not omnipotent, nor invariably helpful; they are social and have an agenda with claims on how the world is to be studied. My attempt to ind some expedient enabling me to avoid simple explanations – hopefully reaching a new understanding in other ways and by other means – is a complicated story.

For me, fortunately, the problem of finding a reasonable platform for discussion was not limited to an internal, archaeological discussion where the full breadth of the academic discipline of religion has never been considered. Criticism of the way archaeologists dealt with religious themes was almost non-existent. Among archaeologists, religion was much easier to handle than for scholars of religion; the reason being, however, that archaeol ogy was simply not keeping up with the discipline of the study of religion. On the other hand, being based primarily on textual sources, this latter discipline was not comfortable working with material remains and structures. This left a gap between the two disciplines, a gap which had to be bridged.