I have been making regular trips now for some months over the Pennines from Tynedale on family duties and had the pleasure to drive on the A686 road through Alston that the AA described as ‘One of the Greatest Drives in Britain’. Some music that regular accompanies me when winding through this beautiful upland landscape was composed by James Hill in the mid nineteenth century but still fits my mood and pleasure well.

FARNE, the Folk Archive Resource North East, provides a short biography:

The Border Counties Railway was incorporated in 1854 and was absorbed by the North British Railway (NBR) on 13th August 1860. It linked the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, near Hexham, with the Border Union Railway at Riccarton Junction.

Feeling in need of a prehistoric rock art fix, I travelled up to Edinburgh on Saturday 3rd May to attend the annual conference of the British Rock Art Group. There was a good balance between academic researchers and interested amateurs, with both represented in the talks program; conference fees were kept low and organiser, Tertia Barnett, and the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Edinbugh University made us all very welcome.

Andrew Jones of the University of Southampton gave the key note talk that opened the conference, Art before the rocks: rock art and the decorated artefacts of Neolithic Britain. He described elements of portable art in the Neolithic, including decorated mace heads, chalk plaques, carved stone balls and stone and antler mace heads. What seemed to be important was the act of making and decorating rather than the completed artefact itself. The decoration of chalk artefacts in particular seem to have been often reworked, the most spectacular example being the Folkton Drums from North Yorkshire, recently examined. What can such objects tell us about the carved rocks of the Neolithic? Is there evidence for these too being reworked? Was the act of carving the rocks more or just as important as the finished design?

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'.

The talks were split in four sections: Scottish Rock Art: Discovery and Rediscovery, Rock Art Recording, Conservation and Management, and two sections on World Rock Art: Research and Interpretation. The abstracts can be read here.

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.

There were many highlights for me, and I don't have room to list them all.

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.

In contrast, new rock art at Eldwick of a large boulder carved with around 60 cups and connecting grooves, found at the end of the Rombalds Moor project, had been surprisingly unrecognised. Louise Brown gave us a final update of the watershed project that culminated in this find by project volunteers.

In the round the world sessions, there were interesting talks by Tertia Barnett on rock art in the northern Sahara, and Richard Jennings on Saudia Arabia, evidence in both places of their very different prehistoric climate.

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.

Another site scheduled for protection by English Heritage is Goats Crag rock shelter, whose unique animal carvings seem to me not disimilar to some of those shown on boulders of Ughtasar. The prehistoric nature of these motifs has always been controversial, and some doubt that they were even made artificially. However, the stunning location and the mystery of the animal motifs intrigues me.

George Nash was unable to attend but his talk would have discussed the recent trend for defacing of contemporary graffiti by rival street artists. In contrast, reworking and adding to earlier art seemed to be the accepted norm in the prehistoric world.

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.

A poster by Alan Calder of the Edinburgh Archaeology Field Society on the rock art of Tormain Hill provided an introduction to Sunday's field trip to rock art sites in the Edinburgh area. Another group headed south to Roughting Linn in Northumberland.