Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

I recently visited a historic town of Arundel in West Sussex; to get out of the lashing rain I ducked into a second hand book shop. What a treasure trove - its ancient history and archaeology sections were vastly superior to anywhere like Waterstones.

I found Jean McMann's Riddles of the Stone Age - Rock Carvings of Ancient Europe published way back in 1980 by Thames & Hudson. It has 153 black and white illustrations - which seem to work well with rock art (did a bit of haggling on the price, just for fun).

It inspired me to take Stan Beckensall's book Prehistoric Rock Art in Britain down from the bookshelf and I now have the two placed together. Stan Beckensall's book looks fabulous with wonderful photographs by Brian Kerr and others - I shall read them in conjunction with each other.

Just to end with the famous quote from Shakespeare from As You Like It used in Acknowledgements of SB's book ..

And this our life, exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

How wise!

I'm very much a student on most of the topics discussed here Sanctuary though can safely recommend Stan Beckensall's book Prehistoric Rock Art in Britain - Sermons in Stones (ISBN 978-1-84868-626-7) by Amberley Publishing.

Tiompan is your man (and people like Ian Hobson and Brian Kerr - who I think occasionally post here).

PS: I've just cracked the time-warp thing; I made my main post via Head to Head today to see what happened and sure enough I'm an hour ahead of myself.

Okay thanks June, hopefully George will pick up on this and reply. Re the time warp...all you've got to do now is make it work in your favour!!

I've never really followed rock art so apologies in advance for my ignorance, but I noticed that much of it is on external stones and rock formations. Obviously much of it took an age to complete so one assumes it was of significant importance. Does the fact that much of it is outside suggest a form of communication between people passing by and those that lived locally?

True S , most of it apart from those in a limited number of passage graves and on cist slabs are in the open air . You can do a cup mark in 10-15 minutes ,rings tend to take longer and there is always the possibility that it it was cumulative , there are also examples of defacement and superimpostion . Some prominent marked boulders are on what would look like to be obvious routes whilst there are others that are far less prominnet i.e. flush with the ground and now buried .The type of markings on both can also differ ,with the prominent type being much simpler .

Thanks George that's much clearer to me now. Is there any evidence to show that some smaller marked stones were possibly moved around rather like a temporary road sign if that doesn't sound too stupid?

You do get portables but they tend to be component of cairns or associated with burials .Most of the smaller boulders would be difficult to move but not impossible but very often it is bedrock . I would suggest most of the open air examples stayed put although you do get standing stones with markings that could well have been marked prior to being quarried .