The World of Petroglyphs CD Special 4 - Copyright by StoneWatch 2001 StoneWatch The World of Petroglyphs Special 4 The Geography of Cup and Ring Art in Europe by Maarten van Hoek, Oisterwijk / Nederland Computerworks by StoneWatch Maarten van Hoek THE GEOGRAPHY OF CUP-AND-RING ART IN EUROPE StoneWatch The World of Petroglyphs 2001 Impressum: Stonewatch Society for coverage of prehistoric and ancient rockpaintings Gartenstrasse 2a D- 55442 Warmsroth Fax 00 49 6724 - 95621 e-mail [email protected] www.stonewatch.de Computerwork: StoneWatch J. Otto Copyright by the Author and StoneWatch 2001 Maarten van Hoek The Geography of Cup-and-Ring Art in Europe C M. van HOEK: GEOGRAPHY INDEX PART 1 CHAPTER 1.1 THE LIMITS OF THE SUBJECT CHAPTER 1.2 THE BRITISH ISLES CHAPTER 1.2.1 THE KILMARTIN VALLEY CHAPTER 1.2.2 THE LOCH TAY ROUTE, PATTERNS OF DIVERGENCE CHAPTER 1.2.3 NORTHUMBERLAND CHAPTER 1.3 GALICIA (ONE PAGE ONLY) CHAPTER 1.3.1 THE MUROS PENINSULA, A COASTAL GROUP CHAPTER 1.3.2 GARGAMALA, AN INLAND GROUP CHAPTER 1.4 THE ALPS, THE BIG BARRIER (ONE PAGE ONLY) CHAPTER 1.4.1 THE ALPS CHAPTER 1.4.2 ELVAS AND SPRONS, TWO ALPINE CEREMONIAL CENTRES CHAPTER 1.5 SCANDINAVIA CHAPTER 1.5.1 DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS IN SCANDINAVIA CHAPTER 1.5.2 DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS IN SWEDEN CHAPTER 1.5.3 DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS IN NORWAY CHAPTER 1.5.4 DISCUSSION PART 2 CHAPTER 2.1 DISTRIBUTION OF COMPLEX ART CHAPTER 2.2 INSTANCES OF “RE-SANCTIFICATION” CHAPTER 2.2.1 PREHISTORIC QUARRYING AND “RE-SANCTIFICATION” CHAPTER 2.2.2 BOATS AND CUP-AND-RINGS CHAPTER 2.2.3 HUMANS AND CUP-AND-RINGS CHAPTER 2.2.4 GALICIA, THE STAG AND THE CIRCLE CHAPTER 2.2.5 AXES AND CUP-AND-RINGS CHAPTER 3 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY A short note about copyrights. In this electronic world of computers, scanners and Internet it is very easy to copy anything you like. It therefore really does not matter whether you copy something from a book or a CD-ROM. From this CD-ROM you may copy anything you like, illustrations and text alike, provided you acknowledge the author or copyright-holder when you wish to use specific material. MAILING ADDRESS: MAARTEN A. M. VAN HOEK LAURIER 20 NL - 5061 WS OISTERWIJK HOLLAND E-MAIL: <[email protected]> 1 CHAPTER 1.1 THE LIMITS OF THE SUBJECT AND THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY ~ INTRODUCTION ~ At present more than 6 billion people live on the face of the earth and each of them is leaving marks; mainly temporarily marks. Many of these marks are expressions of the specific culture those people live in and many are “permanent”. Such cultural marks may be buildings or poems, scientific inventions or litter, recent or prehistoric. A large but interesting group is formed by all sorts of archaeological remains, which also may comprise buildings or poems, scientific inventions or litter. These often fragmentary remains contribute to a better understanding of our past. Altogether archaeology comprises an enormously vast terrain of subjects and disciplines and if one wants to discuss matters more deeply, it will be necessary to limit the subject. This work focuses on a specific class of prehistoric marks; the often enigmatic signs that have been engraved into living rock; the skin of Mother Earth. All the signs that are engraved onto, incised or hammered out of outcrop stone or natural boulders, are a class of rock art motifs that are called petroglyphs or rock “engravings”. Millions of all sorts of rock art motifs are found scattered all over the world; often heavily concentrated at specific hallowed places. It is therefore no surprise that an enormous amount of books and papers about this subject has been published during the last century. Most of the earlier works are merely regional inventories, but fortunately the last few decades the accent has shifted towards explanation and interpretation of rock art motifs, their chronology and distribution. This book on CD-ROM attempts at offering a “complete” overview of one specific class of petroglyphs, the cup-and-ring art of Europe, with emphasis on geographical distribution, “re-sanctification”, the problems of recording and, to begin with, the necessity of accuracy in publications. * 1.1.1 THE NECESSITY OF ACCURACY * At present it is impossible to explain and interpret rock art without well documented and correct inventories and here lies one of the major problems of rock art interpretation. More than often modern researchers base their findings (partly) on inventories and surveys that are hopelessly out of date. This is, however, very understandable: it is impossible to inventory a large area like Europe oneself; one actually should be a cat with nine lives, as this will be more than a M. van HOEK: 2 GEOGRAPHY lifetime job. For instance, it took me several years to survey the rock art of the relatively small area of Galloway in south-west corner of Scotland (Van Hoek 1995a) and only a few months after having published my work, it no longer was up to date due to new finds. Therefore, when using earlier published sources one has the obligation to either mention that the sources are out of date or, preferably, to check the situation in the field oneself in order to minimise the chance of producing errors and false conclusions. Even recently published work should be checked and re-checked and also computer-analyses should not be taken for granted. A work on rock art contains so many different data that quite easily errors and omissions are published unnoticed. This largely is the responsibility of the author, but also the printer may produce errors beyond the writers control. For instance, confusion may arise when captions to illustrations have been accidentally swapped or when illustrations are printed upside down or mirror-wise. Yet there often occur unnecessary errors and omissions that could be avoided by checking the material to be published thoroughly. It is therefore also most important that researchers, professionals and amateurs alike, have an open mind towards discussion, exchange of ideas and are open to positive and constructive criticism. * 1.1.1.1 The following example, however, may also illustrate a conflict of interest. The location map of rock art sites near Bayona in Galicia, Spain, by Costas (1984: 23) uses a large black dot (indicated by the open circle in Fig. 1) to indicate the mayor rock art concentration at Os Campos, but it is erroneously positioned more than 500 m to the west of the true location (indicated by the framed area in Fig. 1). The original map shows no other features as contours, some place names and two rivers and even together with a short description in the text of how to reach the sites, this provided too little information to be able to locate FIGURE 1. OS CAMPOS. the petroglyphs. From my own experience at Os Campos (I was kindly guided by Mr. Costas Goberna) it is almost impossible to trace these rock art sites and many other Galician sites without local help, because of the often impenetrable vegetation and the jumble of local tracks and paths. The wrong positioning of the Os Campos location in the published survey of the area, however, may have been done on purpose to minimise the chance of the sites being visited by vandals, as the publication of distribution maps makes it more easy for the general M. van HOEK: 3 GEOGRAPHY public to trace and visit rock art sites and consequently vandalism is often inevitable, especially near tourist centres like Bayona. A correct location map is, however, an absolute condition to discuss geographical patterns and it often is the only base for establishing intervisibility and for the interpretation of rock art. Therefore, the only way to produce sound conclusions about the patterns of rock art in an area, is to survey the area and the sites in the field oneself. For that reason all cup-and-ring regions discussed in this work have been checked by me in the field. However, I decided to produce my distribution maps without any modern features. Roads, tracks and vegetation are lacking on these maps as these features do not explain prehistoric distribution patterns. In this way my maps will hardly be suitable for location purposes by the general public, but accessible to the scientific and interested reader and still useful for interpretation purposes. * 1.1.1.2 Another detail often lacking on distribution maps are the names of the rock art sites. It is, however, very understandable that the placement of sites names on a map may cause a problem; there is often too little space to put all the often different names on the map, especially when many sites cluster together in a small area, which is often the case (for instance, it was not possible to name or number the sites on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, on Fig. 188). It is therefore recommended that especially distribution maps with a special message must at least show a selection of site names, whereas general maps only need to include some of the major site names or some geographical names for easy orientation. But maps without names are often rather useless. It notably often proves that only when someone is familiar with the area covered by a distribution map without names, it is possible for the reader to check the results of the survey. In Chapter 1.2.3.2 I will discuss an example of an insufficient distribution map dealing with the rock art sites of Northumberland in the north of England (Bradley 1997: 87) and the consequences for the conclusions based upon this map.