ROCK ARTicles

New discoveries, project updates, publications, and stories

from the world of British and Irish rock art
Issue No. 22: October 2020

Dear All,
Welcome to a new, slimmed down version of Rock Articles. 2020 has prompted lots of rethinks and it felt like
time to refresh things and focus down onto British and Irish rock art. But although the links to worldwide news
and publications have gone, I will try to include updates on theory or methodology that might have direct
relevance to the ‘Atlantic’ rock art tradition.
Hopefully, amid the home-schooling and Zooming, the downtime has presented an opportunity for lots of
writing, and we will see an avalanche of publications in 2021! One rock art regular, Richard Stroud has certainly
used the time productively, processing hundreds of 3D models that are now available via the Sketchfab website
(see page 8 for his update). Great job, Richard.
Sadly, there have been few opportunities to network in person with talks cancelled and the conference diary a
little empty just now, but some fieldwork continues, and projects have ticked over. The Scotland’s Rock Art
project has certainly been busy, planning events and competitions, the details of which you can find on pages 6
and 7. There have been some fascinating new discoveries, some of them featured in this issue. Many thanks to
all who provided information and images.
I look forward to being able to meet up and talk ‘rock art’ again in 2021!

Kate
October 2020

kesharpe@outlook.com

In this issue:
Discoveries.................................................................................................................... 2

Clennell, Northumberland ................................................................................................... 2

Shaftoe Crags, Northumberland .......................................................................................... 3

Windy Harbour – Skippool, Lancashire................................................................................ 4

Les Varines, Jersey ............................................................................................................... 5

Whitelaw Hill, East Lothian .................................................................................................. 6

England’s Rock Art Archive on Sketchfab – An update from Richard Stroud..................... 8

Publications .................................................................................................................. 9

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Discoveries
Clennell, Northumberland

Two new cup and ring marked stones have recently

been identified close to Clennell Street, an important
trading route that has linked Morpeth in
Northumberland with Kelso in the Scottish borders for
many centuries. Its origins are ancient, with Iron Age
and Bronze Age activity along the route. In the 12th
century, monks from Newminster Abbey referred to
the route as ‘magnam viam de Ernespeth’, thought to
be from the Old English phrase ‘earnes pæð’, meaning
eagle’s path. The name ‘Clennell’ is more recent, being
from a local family and shared with a hill, a hall, a
wood, and a lost settlement.

One section of the route, now popular with walkers,

cyclists, and horse riders, leads into the Cheviots
Figure 1: Deep cups and rings on the first panel
hills from the Coquet Valley at Alwinton, Initially
highlighted by low sun. Image: Andy Curtis.
heading north along a ridge west of the River Alwin, it
then turns north-west, crosses the border and drops
down to the head of the Bowmont Valley at
Cocklawfoot. To the east of the Alwin, below the Iron
Age hillfort of Camp Knowe, a new rock art panel on
the side of Clennell Hill was reported by local farmer
John Snaith to Jeanette Dagg and Barbara McCabe of
the Alwyn Research Group, based in Alwinton. The
panel was reported to the Northumberland County
Council HER Officer and recorded using
photogrammetry by professional archaeologist,
Richard Carlton. The panel was presented at the
Newcastle BRAG conference later that year;
discussions were then ongoing with the landowner
regarding conservation of the boulder.
Figure 2: Discussions led by Stan Beckensall (fourth from
the left). Image: Andy Curtis.
In November the same year, brothers Kevin and Ged
Kivlehan were on the hill taking part in a navigation
exercise when they spotted a second panel a little
further up the fell in a tumble of stone that formed a
sheep shelter. They reported it to local rock art guru,
Stan Beckensall, and to Phil Bowyer from Tynedale
North of the Wall Archaeology Group, who also has
experience recording rock art. Word spread and, on a
windy day in February this year, many of those
involved plus an eager group of additional rock art
enthusiasts ventured out to see both panels, in an
outing organised by Kevin and Jed. It was great to see
Stan Beckensall back in the field, creating one of his
legendary wax rubbings.

(Thanks to Barbara McCabe, Andy Curtis, David Jones Figure 3: Second panel to be identified. Image: Andy
and Richard Carlton for information and images) Curtis.

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 The first boulder, being of local coarse-grained sandstone, now lies on a south-facing slope just north of
Clennell Farm but is likely to have originated higher up the valley. It measures 1 x 0.7 x 0.25 m and is decorated
on the (now) upper slightly concave face, with 11 cups ranging from 5 to 10 cm in diameter and between 1.5
and 5.8 cm in depth. Several have rings around them, with radial grooves extending.

The second panel lies on the SW spur of Clennell Hill, below and SE of Camp Knowe. Like the first boulder, this
too may have been moved from its original location. This somewhat smaller, squarish block could be easily
overlooked - the motifs are partially obscured by moss and algae. Closer inspection aided by low sunlight
clearly reveals the large double-ring penannular motif with radial groove, and adjacent cup.

Both panels are similar to other cup and ring marked panels documented to the south-west at Clennell
Cottages by Beckensall (2001: 169, fig 217) and on the England’s Rock Art Database.

Alwinton/Newton/Clennell Cottages 1 (ERA 1151) Alwinton/Newton/Clennell Cottages 2 (ERA 1152)

Shaftoe Crags, Northumberland

Is this a second rare example of figurative carving in the North of England? Spotted on a cave wall at Shaftoe
Crags near Belsay by Lucy Anderson and reported to the Conservation Team at Northumberland County Council,
these animal figures (on the left) are similar to those recorded at Goatscrag near Ford (on the right – see ERA
11).

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A585 Windy Harbour to Skippool Improvement Scheme, Lancashire

Despite the restrictions on many fieldwork activities this year, some projects have managed to keep going and
to produce some fascinating finds, including several incised tablets and stones with pecking. A team from Oxford
Archaeology North (OAN) have been investigating prehistoric wetland sites along the route of Highways
England’s A585 Windy Harbour to Skippool Improvement Scheme, in West Lancashire.
An elliptical enclosure, possibly a funerary monument, has produced a small number of finds including the
incised stone plaque in Figure 1 (A) shown below. The enclosure is set on a low promontory overlooking the
confluence of two valleys. The ditch was backfilled with charcoal-rich material, including numerous hulled-barley
and bread-wheat grains and several pits at its western end contained Carinated Bowl. Although radiocarbon
dates are awaited, Antony Dickson, from OAN, believes it is probably Early Neolithic.
Immediately to the east of the enclosure, a larger promontory produced artefact distributions, indicative of
activity along the wetland edge. These were of apparent Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic technology,
superimposed one over the other. Finds, many of which were seemingly deliberately deposited, include worked
flint, chert and quartz, substantial quantities of Carinated Bowl pottery, a shafthole adze, polishing stones, pieces
of worked wood and several broken ground and polished axeheads.
The project has also uncovered circular post settings (probably ceremonial rather than domestic) and a funerary
pyre that has produced Beaker pottery and part of an archery bracer made from tuff.
The incised stones were recovered from the base of the elliptical enclosure ditch and from along the
dryland/wetland margin of the promontory. Some were marked by natural glacial striations, but there were also
incised motifs, such as parallel lines and cross shapes. Many of the stones, including that from the enclosure
ditch, were recovered with the decorated side face-down. Some of the stones were pecked to remove stone
from between natural flaws in the rock, possibly in order to emphasise these.
(Thanks to Antony Dickson for information and images)

A B

Figure 1: Incised stones from Lancashire. Photos courtesy

C of Antony Dickson, Oxford Archaeology North.

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Les Varines, Jersey
Incised stones may be a valuable piece of the rock art puzzle in Britain and Ireland – a piece that has been
overshadowed by the more obvious pecked cup and ring motifs, and that is more difficult to detect and therefore
perhaps overlooked (with obvious exception of the Ness of Brodgar!). Fortunately, this was not the case when
ten engraved stones were found by excavators at the Magdalenian site of Les Varines, Jersey. Details of their
discovery and analysis were published recently in PloS ONE. The stones were found alongside flint tools and
among hearths dated to about 15,000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower, and this upland site would
have commanded views far to the south over a landscape dissected by river valleys. Although now technically
‘British’, the engraved stones are the most northerly examples of a form of mobiliary art known as ‘plaquettes’,
thousands of which have been found previously in France, Spain and Germany, where the Magdalenian culture
to which they are attributed is also noted for other art forms, including engravings of bone and antler, as well
as cave art. In the UK, examples are known from Creswell Crags in Derbyshire and the Gower Peninsula in Wales,
and possibly at Chedder Gorge in Cheshire, all dated a few thousand years later than the Jersey art.
The stones range in size from 87 x 48
x 16 cm to 29.6 x 10 x 9.5 cm. Three
were re-fit to form Plaquette 1; three
others formed Plaquette 2; the
remaining five fragments could not be
connected. The stones are fine-
grained aplite rock, similar to granite,
which has a cream-coloured
weathered surface that reveals a
blue-grey interior. Analysis by
scanning electron microscope and by
a Focus Variation Microscope,
Reflectance Transformation Imaging,
and Structure from Motion Photo-
grammetry of the incisions revealed
that the cuts were made in deliberate
ways, with straight lines made first
and deeper, curved lines made last.
The incisions were also differentiated
into either ‘single-stroke’ or ‘multiple-
stroke’ marks.

Plaquette 1. A: Photo; B: Drawings of all

lines present; C-F: The sequence of
engraving.

Dr Silvia Bello of the Natural History Museum, London, said: “It is not just a table that they used to cut meat, for
example. In some cases, [the curved lines] seem to represent incipient examples of the back of a horse or the
mouth of a horse, or in some cases the profile of an elephant.”
Professor Paul Pettitt from Durham University said the team had made a convincing argument for the engravings
being deliberate markings: “Based on examples found in large numbers elsewhere we would expect these
[marks] to be most likely depictions of the large herbivores such as wild cattle, deer and mammoths, which
formed the prey of the Magdalenians”
Read more in: Bello SM, Blinkhorn E, Needham A, Bates M, Duffy S, Little A, et al. 2020. Artists on the edge of the world:
An integrated approach to the study of Magdalenian engraved stone plaquettes from Jersey (Channel Islands). PLoS ONE
15(8): e0236875. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236875

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Whitelaw Hill, East Lothian
The Scotland’s Rock Art Project (ScRAP) continued with its fourth year, recording yet more new discoveries. This
fine example was found by a member of ScRAP's Edinburgh, Lothians and Fife (ELF) Team beside a track at
Whitelaw Hill just east of Edinburgh. Tertia Barnett, Principal Investigator for the project, reports that the work
is on schedule despite this year’s disruptions, commenting ‘Thankfully we managed to accumulate a big volume
of data over the last year’. A data analyst (Linda Marie Bjerketvedt) is joining the ScRAP Team in November to
help with the enormous task of making sense of all that data. New events (see below) are planned for 2021. An
online (free) conference will celebrate the work of the project, and Scotland's rock art more generally, with a
keynote by Richard Bradley, talks by the ScRAP team rock art specialists and community teams, and workshops
on relevant themes. A webinar series will run throughout 2021 and will feature a free talk every month by a rock
art specialist on a theme relevant to Scotland's rock art.

(Thanks to Tertia Barnett for information and images)

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7
England’s Rock Art Archive on Sketchfab – An update from Richard Stroud
The launch of England’s Rock Art Archive (ERAA - https://sketchfab.com/EnglandsRockArt ) on the web-based
platform, Sketchfab, was announced in the 2019 issue of Rock Articles. Sketchfab allows users to upload and
display navigable 3D models via a web browser on a computer, tablet or smartphone. ERAA was initially set up
to showcase 3D models created during the volunteer-led Northumberland and Durham Rock Art Pilot Project
(NADRAP) and the later CSI: Rombalds Moor Project (CSIRM). Around 550 models were produced by the
volunteers and subsequently made available on the England’s Rock Art (ERA) database
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/era/ . This left around 1000 panels with archived photogrammetric image sets
still to be processed and uploaded to the new archive.
It is now over 14 months since the first 3D model was added to ERAA and, at the time of writing (October 2020),
an additional 1250 models have been uploaded and 78 parish collections created. However, rather than upload
legacy models, some dating back to 2005, a decision was made to reprocess imagery using up-to-date Structure
from Motion software. Over 1200 newly processed models were created from approximately 23,000 images
captured during NADRAP and CSIRM. The bulk of the uploads (1009 models) cover two-thirds of the known
panels in Northumberland and County Durham. Processing of CSIRM imagery started in July this year and the
archive currently contains a quarter of the panels recorded on Rombalds Moor. Additional models have also
been added to collections by other Sketchfab users, including Tynedale North of the Wall Archaeology Group
(NOWTAG), Dr Joana Valdez-Tullet, Dr Kenneth Lymer and Dr Aaron Watson. The archive has amassed 6200
individual views over the year, with the Hunterheugh 1 record (see Figure 1) alone accounting for 5% of the
total. Over 250 individual downloads have been made from the archive, with Hunterheugh 1 again topping the
list with 81 downloads.
Given the number of models created, it is perhaps not surprising that additional motifs have been identified
during the processing. Intriguingly, this includes what might possibly be interpreted—with an eye of faith—as
an anthropomorphic figure holding outstretched arms out on West Lordenshaw 2c (West Lordenshaw Main)
(Figure 2) and a complex design of pairs of cups arcing around a multi-ringed motif on Barningham Moor. Both
models were created from imagery captured in 2006 and may benefit from further investigation with higher
resolution imagery. ERAA processing has also enabled the identification of phases, superimposition and, in some
areas, the ways in which motif placement was heavily influenced by rock morphology.
It is anticipated that processing of both NADRAP and CSI imagery will conclude in 2021.

Figure 1: Screengrab of the popular Hunterheugh 1 panel. Image: Richard Stroud.

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 Figure 2: Detail from West Lordenshaw 2c, Northumberland. Image : Richard Stroud.

Publications
Richard Bradley: A Comparative Study of Rock Art in Later Prehistoric Europe -
Elements in the Archaeology of Europe (Paperback; 75pp; Cambridge University
Press; ISBN: 9781108794497)
For a short read to update your knowledge of European rock art from the Mesolithic
to the Iron Age check out this new summary covering Levantine, Macroschematic
and Schematic traditions in the Iberian Peninsula; the Atlantic style that extended
between Portugal, Spain, Britain and Ireland; Alpine rock art; and the pecked and
painted images found in Fennoscandia. The art is interpreted in relation to the
landscapes in which they were made, and is related to monument building,
portable objects, trade and long-distance travel, burial rites, and warfare. Possible
connections between these separate traditions are also considered.

Vivien Deacon: The Rock-Art Landscapes of Rombalds Moor, West Yorkshire:

Standing on Holy Ground (Paperback; 228 pp; Archaeopress; ISBN 978-
1789694581)
Regular attendees of the British Rock Art Group conference will be familiar with
Vivien’s doctoral research on Rombalds Moor, now published by Archaeopress.
The study focusses on views of and from the sites, drawing on ethnography to
build a persuasive argument that interprets several large prominent and
impressive carved rocks as natural monuments. These were found to feature in
the views from many of the much smaller rock art panels. The physicality of
carving is a further theme, with monumental rocks difficult or dangerous to carve
whereas the more common, less conspicuous sites required the carver only to
crouch down. This raises questions about the nature of the people who carved
each type of panel.