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

* 3.2.2 INTERVISIBILITY *
Almost every time my wife and I visited a cup-and-ring site in
unfamiliar terrain, a lot of effort was involved to find the stone, even
with a good map. Ninety times out of a hundred a carved rock proved to
be a inconspicuous stone on ground level and in many cases the rock
proved to be buried under a thin layer of turf that had to be removed
carefully before the full extent of the engravings was exposed.
Moreover, when the weather is particularly dull, it can be very hard to
find such decorated stones too, also because nowadays there is hardly
any difference between the weathered engravings and the rest of the
stone’s patinated surface.
When it concerns a prominent decorated rock, it may be equally
difficult to trace, when it is hidden among other similar boulders.
Often it is situated higher up a slope, so that the carvings are invisible
from below. It even proved, for instance in Argyll (1.2.1) and Galicia
(1.3.1), that the most prominent
rocks, true landmarks in some
cases, were clearly avoided by
the cup-and-ring tradition ! In
conclusion, the most puzzling
characteristic of cup-and-ring
art is often its invisibility !
Yet, some authors (Bradley 1997)
believe that intervisibility is a
premeditated characteristic of
cup-and-ring art in some British
regions like Northumberland
(1.2.3) and Argyll (1.2.1.2).
In the previous chapters (1.2.1
and 1.2.3) I have clearly
demonstrated, however, that his
conclusions were based on false
and therefore premature
interpretations. Moreover, it has
been proven throughout this book
(Chapters 1.2.2; 1.3.1.1;
1.3.1.1 and 1.5.3) that in most
FIG. 186: GLENNAN VALLEY.
instances there was no question
of intervisibility and that intervisibility even seems to have been
avoided (on purpose ?). Only on the eastern route through the Kilmartin
area, a premeditated selection of rock art sites may have created a
chain of intervisible sites (Fig. 4). On the western route only a few
sites seem to have been possibly selected for their intervisibility; the
best example is found in the Glennan valley (Fig. 13) between the sites
of Eurach and Glennan (Fig. 186). Intervisibility clearly is an exception,
M. van HOEK: 228
GEOGRAPHY