Signalling and Performance: Ancient Rock Art in Britain and Ireland

Aron Mazel, George Nash, Aron Mazel, George Nash

• Publisher: Archaeopress Archaeology
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781803272528
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Archaeology

Signalling and Performance: Ancient Rock Art in Britain and Ireland presents a state of the art survey of the ancient rock art of Britain and Ireland, bringing together new discoveries and new interpretations. Ancient rock art offers unique insights into the mindsets of its makers and the landscapes in which they lived. The making of rock art was not just an aesthetic practice, but an activity informed by deep social and cultural meanings held by its makers - meanings that they were compelled to express on rocks in Britain and Ireland, through mostly abstract images, for thousands of years. For a long time, ancient rock art remained a topic on the fringes of Archaeology. Since the 1960s, however, there has been sustained recording and research into ancient rock art. Increased publicity has evoked growing interest in British and Irish rock art, with professional and amateur archaeologists and the public, with the latter being responsible for many discoveries.In 2007, Aron Mazel, George Nash and Clive Waddington published the first edited volume focusing on ancient British rock art, entitled Art as Metaphor. Since then, there have been a number of publications covering this topic. Building on the increased interest in rock art, this lavishly illustrated volume constructed of thirteen thought-provoking chapters and an Introduction will do much to further enhance of understanding of this fascinating and meaningful resource. It will further establish ancient British and Irish rock art as a significant archaeological assemblage worthy of attention and additional study.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Introduction: recording and interpreting the ancient rock art of Britain and Ireland
• The Past, Present and Future of Rock Art Research in Scotland
• Marking the earth: history of research and the distribution of open-air Neolithic and Early Bronze Age panels and motifs at Lordenshaw in central Northumberland, Britain
• East of Eden: monumental rock art in Cumbria, North-West England
• The Early Bronze Age Landscape of Burley Moor, West Yorkshire
• The Carver and the Rock: The Physicality of Carving
• A Wirral Enigma: Understanding the origins of the Willaston Stones
• A reappraisal of the Cronk yn How Stone, Isle of Man
• Rewriting Landscapes: Exploring the Context, Regionality and Extended Chronologies of Irish Rock Art
• Conserving Rock Art in South-West Ireland
• A single panel case study in Kerry – deconstructing a rock art palimpsest
• Linear art in the European Neolithic
• The discovery of Late Upper Palaeolithic rock art at Cathole Cave on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales
• Prehistoric Rock Art in Glamorgan and Gwent
• Back cover