Precisely dating megalithic art is difficult: even if the megalithic monument can be dated, the art may be a later addition. The
Hunterheugh Crags cup and ring marks near
Alnwick in
Northumberland have recently been demonstrated to date back into the
Early Neolithic era through their
stratigraphic relationship with other, datable features. Some cup marks have been found in
Iron Age contexts but these may represent re-used stones. Where they are etched onto natural, flat stone it has been observed that they seem to incorporate the natural surface of the rock. Those at Hunterheugh are mostly connected to one another by gutters that can channel rainwater from one to the next, down the sloping top of the stone. It has been suggested by
archaeologist Clive Waddington that the initial Early Neolithic impetus to create the marks was forgotten and that the practice fell into abeyance until a second phase of creation continued the basic tradition but with less precision and more variability in design. The markers of this second phase moved the art from natural stones to megaliths as its symbolism was reinterpreted by Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age people. Their purpose is unknown although some may be connected with natural stone outcrops exploited by Neolithic peoples to make polished stone axes. A religious purpose has been suggested.
Alexander Thom suggested in a
BBC television documentary,
Cracking the Stone Age Code, in 1970, "I have an idea, entirely nebulous at the moment, that the cup and ring markings were a method of recording, of writing, and that they may indicate, once we can read them, what a particular stone was for. We have seen the cup and ring markings on the stone at
Temple Wood, and that's on the main stone but we can't interpret them ...yet." He created diagrams and carried out analysis of over 50 of the cup and ring markings from which he determined a length he termed the
Megalithic Inch (MI). This whole idea has been ignored almost completely apart from a critical analysis carried out by Alan Davis in the 1980s, who tested Thom's hypothesis on cup and ring sites in England by examining the separations of neighbouring cupmark centres. He found some weak evidence for the "Megalithic Inch" but it was not statistically significant, and he suggested "strongest indications...towards the use of a quantum close in value to 5 MI at certain sites" and that "the apparent quantum seems strongly associated with ringed cups." Davis made an initial effort to build on Thom's start, and to answer the question he posed: "Why should a man spend hours – or rather days – cutting cups in a random fashion on a rock? It would indeed be a breakthrough if someone could crack the code of the cups."
Sites Sites with cup and ring marks include: •
Ecclesall Woods, Sheffield, South Yorkshire •
Baildon Moor, Bradford, West Yorkshire •
Chatton Sandyford rock overhang and Fowberry petroglyphs in
Northumberland •
Rombalds Moor including
Ilkley Moor •
Gardom's Edge in
Derbyshire • Bachwen
portal dolmen in
Gwynedd •
Anderton,
Lancashire • Dalladies
long barrow,
Kincardineshire •
Street House cairn in
Cleveland •
Dalgarven Mill, North Ayrshire •
Ballochmyle cup and ring marks,
Mauchline,
East Ayrshire •
Brodick,
Isle of Arran • Blackshaw Hill,
North Ayrshire •
Kilmartin Glen,
Argyll •
Tomnaverie stone circle,
Aberdeenshire • Balblair,
Beauly, nr.
Inverness • Tongue Croft, near
Borgue,
Dumfries and Galloway •
Kilpatrick Hills,
Strathclyde •
Cochno Stone,
Kilpatrick Hills,
West Dunbartonshire •
Clava cairn,
Culloden • Craigmaddie Muir by the Auld Wives Lifts near
Milngavie • Reyfad Stones (
Reyfad),
Boho, County Fermanagh •
Eston Hills,
Cleveland •
Weetwood Moor, Northumberland • Lordenshaws, Northumberland •
Long Meg and Her Daughters, Cumbria •
Great Langdale, Cumbria •
Grasmere, Cumbria • Dun Borve, Isle of Harris, Western Isles • Juniper Green, Edinburgh, Scotland •
Simonside, Rothbury, Northumberland ==Ireland==