Rethinking rock art in Iron Age Britain

Abstract

Rock art in Britain is typically carved on boulders and outcrops in the open landscape in northern parts of the country. The precise chronology of the carvings is uncertain, but they are generally thought to have been created and used during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (c.4000-1800 BC). Carved stones and fragments of carved rock outcrops were occasionally incorporated into Neolithic and Bronze Age ritual structures, including funerary and standing stone monuments, and this practice appears to have been deliberate. Although carved stones are subsequently reused in a range of later structures, these relationships are considered coincidental and lacking in meaning. This article discusses the nature of reuse in the British Iron Age (c.800 BC-AD 100 in England and Wales, and 800 BC-AD 400 in Scotland), and suggests that rock art may have been intentionally built into certain Iron Age monuments in ways that were significant and meaningful.
Britain has a wealth of prehistoric rock art, amounting to over 6,500 carved rocks (or ‘panels’) and thousands of individual motifs, concentrated mainly across Northern England and Scotland. The carvings form part of a wider Atlantic tradition, often termed Atlantic Rock Art, documented in the island of Ireland, Wales, Portugal, and north-west Spain. Similar prehistoric motifs also occur elsewhere in Europe, notably southern Scandinavia, Denmark and Alpine regions.