108 art: Europe found in northern Europe, and northern European art has been found in Mycenae One of the most interesting paintings of the era is a mural from the Mediterranean island of Thera in the 1500s b.c.e that depicts what appears to be a boat from Scandinavia Numerous rock paintings and carvings from 2000 to 500 b.c.e were created in Scandinavia, by Germanic peoples sometimes called Nordic by anthropologists These paintings and carvings have been found in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and they number in the hundreds of thousands The artworks appear on broad rock faces First they were carved by using an unknown tool to punch chips out of the surface In the earliest examples a color lighter than the rock was added into the carved lines, giving the figures greater definition In later examples ocher—a mineral with iron oxide, colored red, brown, or yellow—was added into the lines The subject matter is varied, showing people dancing, hunting, and even making love, but pictures of ships predominate The interest in ships is indicative of oceangoing trade, perhaps into the Mediterranean, which would help explain the Mycenaean influence in Britain and northern Europe as well as central Europe Among the rock carvings from the first century b.c.e are studies of chariots, depicting various kinds of harnesses, and of spoked wheels, sometimes apart from the pictures of the chariots In European art of the period wheels with spokes often represented the sun Chariots often indicated the presence of an elite warrior class By 1500 b.c.e Mycenaean metalwork, especially in copper and gold, had spread across western Europe A scepter buried with a British chieftain duplicates one found in Mycenae, dated at about 1600 b.c.e Mycenaean armor was in central Europe by the 1500s b.c.e and may have influenced the development of helmets and body armor among the Celts Golden cups from about 1500 b.c.e that imitate Mycenaean styles and techniques for working gold have been discovered in Britain and in far northwestern Germany The spread of Mycenaean influence in Europe cannot be explained fully by oceangoing traders and must have included overland trade routes The Mycenaeans set up trading posts in the Balkans and perhaps farther north to Germany, and they had trading posts in Britain When the Mycenaean culture abruptly ended in about 1200 b.c.e., their traders may have been stranded in those trading posts, and their artists may have ventured into central Europe to find employment They brought with them their techniques for metalwork, which may help to account for the flowering of Celtic metal sculpture that followed The Celts loved jewelry, and Celtic sites that have not been plundered yield a rich assortment of jewelry Beads were well loved, and even Egyptian glass beads have been found not only in central Europe but also as far as northern Germany, probably imported into Europe through trade routes established by the Mycenaeans A necklace from Britain from 1500 to 1000 b.c.e shows the use of shale beads and faience beads Faience is brightly colored glazed pottery Bones and antlers also were worked, mostly for decoration Amber was mined in Jutland in modern Denmark and exported throughout Europe, where it was used to make beads and strung on necklaces Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and the Czech Republic, has yielded bracelets and pendants from 1500 to 1000 b.c.e., many with designs that echo Mycenaean ones, yet some show the intricate interlacing of curves and lines as well as the three-pointed swirls, which would set apart Celtic art It is in metal that Celtic art from this era fully captivates the imagination Much of the metalwork seems to have served ritual purposes, sometimes given in sacrifice to a local god For the Celts the world was full of gods; lakes, rivers, mountains, stones, and more had their own gods This means that rivers such as the Thames in England have yielded finely sculpted gold and bronze Early examples that hint at what was to follow come from the Únĕtice culture, from what is now eastern Germany They produced armlets (bands worn around the arm), earrings, beads, and pins of gold from 1500 to 1000 b.c.e Their designs were simple, sometimes just a winding of strands of gold into circles of wire to form tightly wound beads Even so, there are hints of what would come For example a grave in Germany has yielded an armlet from about 1500 b.c.e that has lines along its length and a twisting design between the lines, somewhat like a simple version of the twisting and looping of lines in later Celtic armbands and torques (neck rings) Of particular interest are the many model cart sculptures of the era The earliest ones tend to be ceramic For instance, in the National Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, is a three-wheeled wagon pulled by what look like ducks, dating to the 1300s b.c.e Archaeologists fi nd this cart interesting because of the three wheels, which indicate experimentation in the design of carts; from the point of view of art, the interest is in the ducks, which are portrayed only from the breast up, and the very plain human-shaped figure, which may represent a god The sculptor emphasized the basic shapes of his or her subjects without providing details The theme of waterbirds pulling a cart seems to have been an important one in the Balkans From Romania circa 800 b.c.e., but housed in Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, is a bronze four-wheeled cart with a cauldron in the middle It is surrounded by abstractions of ducklike birds, facing forward and backward in continuous lines Housed in the same museum is a bronze four-wheeled cart from the 700s b.c.e found in Bosnia and Herzegovina Th is wagon is carrying the birds instead of being pulled by them There are two ducks, with one as a receptacle and the other riding on its back and capping the receptacle The birds were cast in multiple pieces and then fused together by hammering, and they are more realistic than the earlier pieces From Denmark, from about 1300 b.c.e., comes a bronze sculpture well known to both archaeologists and art historians: the Sun Wagon It has six wheels with spokes At that time these could have represented the movement of the sun On a wire chassis (the framework attached to the wheel axles) are a horse and disk The disk is elaborately decorated with swirls and circles Some of the gold leaf that covered its