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tjj wrote: 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).
June ,
an analogy might be the instructions for a gizmo you have just bought , if they are in a language you don't understand you would know their function i.e. instructions , but you wouldn't know what they mean .
You could make a guess at what the function of the engravings might be but considering that they are abstract and limited in variety of motifs used
,(often just cup marks ), any interpretation of the meaning would be hugely subjective ,to the extent that I can't think of any researchers who attempt , to do so . Even when the markings are representational the problems are huge .Interpretations of contemporary art from our own culture have been shown to be wrong ,what hope is there for doing the same to something that is thousands of years old from an entirely different culture ?
You do find rock art associated with monuments that may have astronomical alignments ,Knockroe is one , but that doesn't apply to the majority of rock art which is not associated with monuments and there are plenty of monuments with rock art and no associated alignments .
Yes ,geology does seem to have an impact on choice but there are cases where hard rock is engraved e.g. granite , quartzite etc you just need more patience or a harder rock .The srasens were carved at Stonehenge but that was using metal.
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