Andrew Jones's recent work on the rock art of Kilmartin was published as ‘An Animate Landscape: rock art and the prehistory of Kilmartin Argyll, Scotland'. His wider review of the role of art in Neolithic Europe (edited with Andrew Cochrane of the British Museum) was published as ‘Visualising the Neolithic'.
In addition there were a number of poster presentations, a hands-on workshop on rock carving by Andy McFetters, a demonstration of the Ughtasar Rock Art Project Picture Viewer, and recent changes made to England's Rock Art Database with addition of data from the CSI: Rombalds Moor project.
Antonia Thomas told us about the 600 examples of incised, pecked, cup-marked and pick-dressed stone recovered from the excavations of the Orkney Ness of Brodgar excavation, many of which were found in situ within the buildings. Many of the markings found in the buildings were not located on visible surfaces. Again, was the act of making the markings more important than the markings themselves?
Trevor Cowie gave us an historical account of rock art finds in the south-east of Scotland, where they remain uncommon. Like Cumbria, are they scarse here because of the predominant geology?
George Currie told us of his recent discoveries in new regions of the Highlands. Some of these were some distance from existing known sites and may have been associated with ancient routes through the glens.
The description of a Neolithic incised stone found in the wall of a ruined blackhouse in Arisaig by Ken Bowker made me realise how often such stones may be overlooked. The Arisaig stone is only shallowly incised and the lines become invisible in anything but raking light.
The two most captivating sites for me though were Aron Mazel's account of the amazing rock shelter paintings of the Didima Gorge in the Drakensberg mountains, and Tina Walkling's talk on of the carved boulders in the wonderful mountain landscape of Ughtasar in Armenia. Aminals, human and representation of hunting predominate in these contexts making me wonder why they don't feature in ours.
In the Didima Gorge, 3909 paintings occur at 17 rock shelters. Aron Mazel has proposed that the richness of the gorge’s rock art is associated with its acoustic properties making it a significant spiritual place for the San hunter-gatherers. The record made by Harald Pager in 1972 Ndedema : A Documentation of the Rock Paintings of the Ndedema Gorge illustrated by hand-coloured, black and white photographs looks like a book worth having.
Cezary Mamirski brought us back to the British symbolic form with his description of the prehistoric cultures and rock art tradition of Sardinia.
The problems of conservation and management of British rock art was raised in several talks. Myra Giesen described a new staging system for rock art erosion and the correlation with exposure and soil salt content. A new open-source smartphone application called EpiCollect, introduced by Louise Felding, could make a good tool for ongoing recording and monitoring.
Recent damage to panels at Lordenshaw and graffiti on rocks as far apart as Ilkley Moor and Ughtasar show that human damage is not isolated.
Although sceduling did nothing to protect the Lordenshaw rock, it was good to hear that 17 new sites in Northumberland, including Ketley Crag rock shelter, Weetwood Moor, Lemington Wood, Amerside Law and Buttony, have been recently awarded Scheduled Ancient Monument status, a direct result of recording by volunteers on the Northumberland and Durham Rock Art Project (NADRAP). One element of sceduled status is both legal protection, and regular monitoring through the heritage at risk program.
Robert Wallis finished us off with a talk on the history of entanglement of shamanism and art that have led us to assumptions about the origins of prehistoric symbolism. Perhaps the hallucinogenic effects of magic mushrooms have nothing to do with cup and ring motifs at all. Artistic people I know seem able to use their imagination without recourse to an altered state. Prehistoric artists would have been no different.
BRAG 2014 Abstracts