Picture post: England’s ancient rock art - August 04, 2008
England’s Neolithic artists had something of an abstract bent. While our continental artists were making human and animal representations 5,000-odd years ago British artists were carving convoluted lines and patterns into rocks, using other rocks as tools.
English Heritage, a government-funded body, has been cataloguing the carvings in the Northumberland region and has just released an online catalogue of them. It is also expanding this regional survey across the UK and hopes to add to the new carvings already discovered.
“There are many theories as to what rock art carvings mean,” says Kate Wilson, English Heritage’s inspector of ancient monuments (press release, Times news story). “They may have played a role in fire, feastings and offering activities, or been used as ‘signposts’, or to mark territory. They may have a spiritual significance.”
And according to Wilson, England’s rock-carvers may not be so different to their fellow artists after all. “The fact that these carved symbols developed in diverse and dispersed cultures across the world lend weight to arguments that these simple designs – and the urge to create them – are somehow hard-wired into the human psyche,” she says.
More pictures below the fold and on the England’s Rock Art website.
Chatton Northumberland
Old Bewick Northumberland
Gayles Moor Yorkshire
Ketley Crag Northumberland
Images: English Heritage
Comments
There is definitely the spiral/maze/dots theme found also in Scandinavia - which is not surprizing and other parts of the world too. There is a mammoth shoulder bone plaque in the museum at Irkutsk which dates to about 25,000 years ago and has dotted spirals on one side and wavy serpents on the other. The iconography of spirals representing the heavens has survived into European and Chinese art of the 16th/17th centuries - as has dragons/serpents associated with them.
Posted by: Heather Hobden | August 5, 2008 06:01 PM
Research on Australian rock art of a similar abstract, geometric nature has noted the parallel with the first "art" produced by preschoolers. This may reveal a universal esthetic developmental stage somewhat similar to the universal stages in language acquisition of one word at a time first, followed by a two-word stage of semantic relations preceding the acquisition of true syntax or grammar.
Posted by: Diana Gainer | August 7, 2008 12:09 AM
Reminds me of the descriptions of the "tunnel" that I've read in several near death experiences. Heironymous Bosch, an artist, in the 15th Century made a painting of a tunnel ascending up into heaven. These circles might be similar representations?
Posted by: Art | August 9, 2008 12:46 AM
These carvings remind me of the Nazca lines but to a lesser degree. Were all these ancients trying to reflect the night sky or talk to it?
Posted by: Chris | August 10, 2008 03:11 AM
spiritual-----hogwash!
I have been drawing similar patterns for 35 years. I dont know why I do it but its not 'spiritual'!
Posted by: bruce wayne | August 10, 2008 01:49 PM