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

� CHAPTER 1.1 �
THE LIMITS OF THE SUBJECT
AND THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY
� INTRODUCTION �
At present more than 6 billion people live on the face of the earth and
each of them is leaving marks; mainly temporarily marks. Many of these
marks are expressions of the specific culture those people live in and
many are “permanent”. Such cultural marks may be buildings or poems,
scientific inventions or litter, recent or prehistoric. A large but
interesting group is formed by all sorts of archaeological remains,
which also may comprise buildings or poems, scientific inventions or
litter. These often fragmentary remains contribute to a better
understanding of our past. Altogether archaeology comprises an
enormously vast terrain of subjects and disciplines and if one wants to
discuss matters more deeply, it will be necessary to limit the subject.
This work focuses on a specific class of prehistoric marks; the often
enigmatic signs that have been engraved into living rock; the skin of
Mother Earth.
All the signs that are engraved onto, incised or hammered out of
outcrop stone or natural boulders, are a class of rock art motifs that
are called petroglyphs or rock “engravings”. Millions of all sorts of
rock art motifs are found scattered all over the world; often heavily
concentrated at specific hallowed places. It is therefore no surprise
that an enormous amount of books and papers about this subject has
been published during the last century. Most of the earlier works are
merely regional inventories, but fortunately the last few decades the
accent has shifted towards explanation and interpretation of rock art
motifs, their chronology and distribution. This book on CD-ROM
attempts at offering a “complete” overview of one specific class of
petroglyphs, the cup-and-ring art of Europe, with emphasis on
geographical distribution, “re-sanctification”, the problems of
recording and, to begin with, the necessity of accuracy in publications.
* 1.1.1 THE NECESSITY OF ACCURACY *
At present it is impossible to explain and interpret rock art without
well documented and correct inventories and here lies one of the major
problems of rock art interpretation. More than often modern
researchers base their findings (partly) on inventories and surveys
that are hopelessly out of date. This is, however, very understandable:
it is impossible to inventory a large area like Europe oneself; one
actually should be a cat with nine lives, as this will be more than a
M. van HOEK: 2
GEOGRAPHY