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

Yet, most of these shaped
stones, whether decorated or
not, will have been quarried
once. Therefore it should be
possible to trace instances of
the prehistoric quarrying of
decorated outcrops,
especially in areas where
petroglyphs and megalithic
monuments occur together.
However, for several reasons
FIG. 138: FULFORTH CIST. this is not as simple as it
seems. The quarries may have
been several kilometres distant from the site were the quarried stones
were put in use. In most cases stones were, if need be, shaped (and
sometimes decorated) on the spot were the monument was to be
erected. Indeed, at the Irish Neolithic burial sites of Knowth in
County Meath and Millin Bay in County Down there is evidence that the
decoration took place on the very spot.
In a few instances, however, it is obvious that a stone was broken from
a petroglyphic outcrop, disregarding the earlier petroglyphs, as
probably is the case with the only cup-and-ring stone (No. 38) from the
Millin Bay cairn. Also a number of standing stones, for instance in the
Kilmartin valley in Argyll, Scotland, may have been quarried from
decorated outcrops locally.
However, in his discussion about the dating of cup-and-ring marks in
Britain, the late Ronald Morris (1990: 85) argues that no-one had so
far been able to show the decorated outcrop from whence prehistoric
people broke a decorated piece to be used as cist stone in a Bronze
Age burial.
As I said before, this is rather difficult for several reasons. When a
slab is broken from an outcrop, there will result a depression possibly
much larger than the decorated slab itself, as more than one slab could
have been taken from the same outcrop. Also because a quarried slab
was often shaped afterwards, an exactly matching depression is hard
to find. Moreover, the resulting depression will often have been rather
superficial and would easily get overgrown and therefore hard to find.
It is also possible that possible prehistoric quarries were destroyed by
quarrying in more recent times. Yet, there are claims for the existence
of such prehistoric quarries in the British Isles.
* 2.2.1.1 THE BRITISH ISLES *
Reading the book on prehistoric rock art of County Durham by
Beckensall & Laurie, I was struck by a statement about a decorated
rock at Johnson’s Allotment (east) on Gayles Moor in northern England:
M. van HOEK: 172
GEOGRAPHY