Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

You do surprise me George. I really expected you to say "I don't know".

Referring back to Stan Beckensall's superb book Prehistoric Rock Art in Britain (which has one or two of your photos in it) the descriptive back cover states "The original meaning the symbols is now lost ..." I love this book and would describe as definitive to anyone who (like myself a few years back) wants to find out more.

Thanks Jon & Carol .

"Why were cup marks engraved " ?

Probably lots of different reasons rather than one over arching explanation .
e.g. Apotropaism , decoration , humanising the landscape , part of a communication with the stone , self , or spirits/gods etc ,if the latter possibly related to appeals for increase /decrease in fertility , rain , drought , luck etc , territorial marker, route marker etc .
Worth pointing out that one cup mark is sometimes the sole component and there are marked rocks with no cup marks .

June , there is a difference between the reasons why something was done and believing you know what it "means " .
If the question was the latter ,my response would have to be "dunno" .
Any other response is meaningless and only tells us about the interpreter .

Thanks for answering George. I've pondered on this a bit - the difference between 'why' something was done and what that something means. It's a conundrum surely because if you knew why something was done you would probably also know what it means. You covered a lot of possibilities and mentioned astronomical alignments (in your answer to Rockrich) which might be applied to a different type of rock carvings such as those at Knockmany Passage Tomb, N.I. (possibly).

Anyway, I've learnt a lot about what I can never know from reading your posts on the subject both here and elsewhere. Not least that they rarely if ever appear on sarsen stones in the south of England - which are too hard to carve. This was helpful after I had become excited about finding holes and indentations on many local sarsens (made by the natural erosion over millions of years).

Rich ,
The Morris list has always been useful as well as a source of humour .

Of Morris’s 104 listed theories he also included those that he believed impossible .
Nearly all of those that he favoured i.e. the ones he gave the biggest marks , e.g. Astronomy , Alignment markers , Metal prospection , Megalithic inch , Right Angle Triangles all get 8-10 out of 10 , I exclided .

“ The stone circle builders carved them “ (8), can’t disagree with that but not because of the reasons given , “since the unit of measurement used in carving a spiral is exactly one fortieth of the Megalithc Yard …..it is inescapable that the latter were also responsible for the cup and ring “ .

Mojo refound ?

Certainly has been useful. It's always useful to bring up whenever you're having a conversation with someone relatively new to the field. True enough about those discounted and the subjectiveness attached to them.

Yep, the mojo started creeping back last year. Not quite as it once was, but slowly getting there.