Maarten van Hoek The Geography of Cup-and-Ring ... - StoneWatch

occur in a vast area. Many cupules are of the standard size; the great
majority of the Scandinavian cupules, however, are small and uniform.
Most of these small cupules are said to be of a Bronze Age date (Coles
1990: 17) or may even be later. This is most evident at sites where
such cupules neatly fill in the spaces between (or strongly correspond
with) typical Nordic Bronze Age figures. A classical example is found
at the now covered site at Stenbacken, Bohuslän, Sweden, where
hundreds of small, uniform cupules, often forming distinct rows, have
been executed between Bronze Age boat engravings (Coles 1990: 79).
Also the row of small, uniform cupules hovering above a typical Nordic
boat at Jörlov, Bohuslän, Sweden, most likely are of the Bronze Age
(Fig. 146.A). Again, it seems, linear arrangements of small uniform
cupules post-date the random standard cupules.
It would therefore be most interesting to obtain absolute dates for
the two types of Scandinavian cupules (and indeed for many other
European rock art sites) in order to confirm the theory that the two
types of (Scandinavian) cupules indeed are chronologically separated.
Unfortunately, there is hardly any absolute dating of petroglyphs
available for European rock art sites. To my knowledge, only one cupule
in Europe has been tentatively dated by microerosion analysis, and this
example, from the Rupe Magna, Valtellina, Italy, turned out to be
executed or at least re-worked in the Historical period (Bednarik 1997:
18).
Despite this lack of scientific data for European petroglyphs, it seems,
based on the stylistic evidence presented in this book, not to be too
far fetched, to suggest that there indeed exists a chronological and
functional distinction between the random standard cupules and
organised small cupules, the latter supposedly being younger. This also
seems to be the case at Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The
majority of the cupules on this small and isolated island are of the
small cupule-type and seem to belong to the last phases of a relatively
short rock art tradition on the island (Van Hoek 2000a).
This theory does not mean, however, that every standard cupule will be
older than the small uniform cupule. It does not mean either that I
wish to present this typological difference as a rigid rule dictating
that specific arrangements of smaller cupules are always young(er). For
instance, small cupules, distinctly arranged in pairs, occur on the
Middle Palaeolithic limestone slab placed over burial 6 in La Ferrassie,
France (Schwegler 1992: 10), refuting the idea of such a “rule”. It even
proves that “paired-ness of marks is a feature repeatedly found in the
earliest art production of Europe” (Bednarik 1993: 138, my emphasis).
It must be admitted, however, that big cultural and chronological
differences exist between the Neolithic and Bronze Age rock art
traditions of Europe. Despite these differences it is still possible
that, regardless of time and place, the execution of small uniform
M. van HOEK: 116
GEOGRAPHY