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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Natural or Induced?
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Re: poles in the holes
Aug 30, 2012, 19:18
Well, the pole studies were done taking into account the azimuths of around 2,000 BC, ‘accepted’ by Galician academia as a main turning point in prehistory after the last megalithic stages (copper to bronze). I understand the common gripe that, in complex panels where this was done (an extreme case containing even up to 50 motifs with loads of concentric circles), a line joining 3 cupholes signalling the equinox around that time in prehistory (257º at this latitude, I think) makes little sense (even though the ones chosen were rather remarkable circles), when all the others were ignored. But the same thing happening with a notch between two islands in the distant horizon, for example, is something worth noticing because that would involve 4 elements, not 3.

But as I said earlier, I believe in the more primitive, messy side of humans and some of the rings I like best are the least complex, not-so-well-known ones (though I love the famous ones too!) – it’s like when you just find an isolated rock with a simple 5-ring + its radial pointing towards a significant mountain on the horizon. Now that's something!

Also, apart from it being polysemic, we should not presume that all rock art conventions were understood in the same way everywhere - of the stuff I’ve got used to doing field work with in the last few years there are, roughly, two common types of panels:

1-Cup+rings generally on flat surfaces, dead hard to find or hidden from view, sides sometimes even blocked by large outcrops with huge natural-shaped cupmarks or basins.

2-Weapons on show-panels, for everyone to see, next to paths, generally on sloping surfaces (nearly vertical) like the one you wrote field notes for. I’ll have to look at these panels again and take the fissures into consideration.*

*BTW, one half of a cup+ring coming out of a fissure is what I told you earlier that’s remarkable with some cracks, as if the figure was coming out of an 'underworld'; fissures also often form the framework of the composition.

3-A mixed group of cup+rings accompanied by naturalistic rock art (basically the stag with exaggerated antlers and magnified private anatomical features, and also a few well-gifted men); mainly for show.

Now, they may not all date from the same time / some of the motifs may have been added later… maybe a few centuries, maybe only a generation or two?

There was big upheaval a few years ago (Bradley was involved) when one of the biggest stag panels were uncovered from soil layers dating from relatively late (1500BC and later). Conflict ensued and a splinter group of dissident rock art researchers now believe in an Iron Age rock art (sometimes even clearly accepting metal engravings traditionally dismissed as modern). They are also finding solstice alignments between stone gaps and hills but this time their field of action is in the many thousands of Galician hillforts.

As for Scotland, it has its own amazing and very powerful rock art tradition, perhaps dating, we must not forget, from an entirely different epoch. I know people are keen there on pushing Neolithic dates. For instance, Achnabreck is picked by many, quite often, all over Europe, as a comparative example, but personally I find it may have little to do with the more classic cup+ring rock art further south (including England, eg Roughtling Linn). Achnabreck reminds me precisely of a panel in the second tradition (see above). The famous Ballochmyle, on a vertical wall, reminds me of a vertical stellae tentatively dated to the bronze age. It's almost like it's cup and rings for show, not for private esoterical use.

A couple of afternoons to talk about this and other stuff would just not be enough in this medium, but that's broadly what I think in reply to your post (with which I partly agree).
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