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tiompan wrote: tjj wrote: tiompan wrote:
"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 .
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.
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).
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