Non-figurative prehistoric art is comparatively common yet challenging to decode and hence to understand. At the heart of the difficulty of assessing the presence of semiotic structure in prehistoric art is a lack of appropriate, replicable, and case-transferable methodologies. We here propose a novel approach derived from computational linguistics, in which k-skip-n-gram (skipgram) models and associated pointwise mutual information (PMI) measures are customised to the analysis of prehistoric art. In applying this methodology to a large corpus of portable art from the South Scandinavian Mesolithic, we demonstrate how the mutual relationship between individual motifs can be established. In the case of Mesolithic portable art, our analysis strongly suggests that there is no evident semiotic structure – this was likely not a form of proto-writing – but salient changes of motif occurrence over time are detectable. These changes are sensitive to changes in population density, structure, and connectedness, and may relate to increased territoriality in the Late Mesolithic. The method presented here is readily case-transferable and renders possible further linguistic and semiotic analyses of prehistoric art.

中文翻译：

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用于评估史前艺术符号结构和斯堪的纳维亚南部中石器时代装饰意义的计算语言方法

非具象的史前艺术相对常见，但解码和理解却具有挑战性。评估史前艺术中符号结构的存在的核心困难是缺乏适当的、可复制的和可转移的方法。我们在这里提出了一种源自计算语言学的新颖方法，其中 k-skip-n-gram (skipgram) 模型和相关的逐点互信息 (PMI) 度量被定制用于史前艺术的分析。通过将这种方法应用于南斯堪的纳维亚中石器时代的大量便携式艺术，我们展示了如何建立各个主题之间的相互关系。就中石器时代便携式艺术而言，我们的分析强烈表明，不存在明显的符号结构——这可能不是一种原始书写形式——但随着时间的推移，主题发生的显着变化是可以检测到的。这些变化对人口密度、结构和连通性的变化很敏感，并且可能与中石器时代晚期领土性的增加有关。这里提出的方法很容易进行案例转移，并为史前艺术的进一步语言和符号学分析提供了可能。