On the Chronology and Use of Hunter-Gatherer Rock Painting Sites in Northern Europe Joakim Goldhahn Centre for Rock Art Research + Management School of Social Sciences The University of Western Australia M257 Perth 6009 Western Australia Australia joakim.goldhahn@uwa.edu.au Professor Joakim Goldhahn holds the Kimberley Foundation Ian Potter Chair in Rock Art at Te University of Western Australia. His research interests include rock art traditions in Australia and northern Europe, the European Bronze Age, and research themes such as human-animal relations, landscape perceptions, death and burial rituals, ritual specialists, war and warriorhood, cultural memory praxis, archaeological theory in praxis, the history of archaeology, and more. His latest publications include ‘Sagaholm – North European Bronze Age Rock Art and Burial Ritual’ (Oxbow 2016), ‘Birds in the Bronze Age – A North European Perspective’ (Cambridge University Press 2019), and the guest editorial issues ‘Contact Rock Art’ for Australian Archaeology (2019, edited with Dr Sally K. May), ‘Rock Art Worldlings’ for Time and Mind (2019), and ‘Human-Animal Relationships from a Long-Term Perspective’ for Current Swedish Archaeology (2020, edited with Professor Kristin Armstrong Oma). Abstract Tis article discusses the chronology and use of hunter-gatherer rock painting sites in northern Europe from an archaeological perspective, using formal methods. Until recently, the dating of diferent rock painting traditions has been based on comparative analyses of style and shore displacement data from various areas in northern Europe. During the last few decades, however, several rock painting sites have been excavated. Each of these excavations has produced a variety of answers and questions, but no attempt has yet been made to analyse and interpret the entire assemblages. Tis article aims to initiate such a discussion. As such, it focuses on available radiocarbon analyses, the deposition of organic material, and material culture. It is argued that there are several distinct patterns in the analysed material, defned here as four time horizons, stretching from ca. 4400 BC to the early modern period. It is suggested that there is more than one way to interpret these horizons. 1