- Introduction
- Rock art in the northern dales
- SWAAG database records
- Other ideas on the purpose and meaning of rock art
- Rock Art Discovery Code
Introduction
Sites of prehistoric rock art have been found in a geographical broad band running from south Durham into the Yorkshire Dales and passing through the mid-to-lower part of Swaledale. It provides one of the most intriguing aspects of research into ancient human activity in this part of Britain.
According to Historic England, rock art is thought to date from the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age periods (c.2800 BC – c.500 BC). It is found mainly in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, and Cumbria, from where it stretches over the Scottish border into Dumfries and Galloway. Farther north, examples are also found in Argyle, Perthshire, and Angus.
The most common decorations are ‘cup’ marks, simple round hollows that have been ‘pecked’ into the surface of the rock. Some cups are surrounded by circular carved grooves and are known as ‘cup and ring’ marks. Some of these have a straight-line groove from the cup, cutting across the rings. Others have grooves cut in wandering lines across the rock, seemingly connecting other marks. Rock art is frequently found near prehistoric burial monuments of the same period, but the meaning of it is unknown. Some speculate that the marks might be sacred or religious symbols.
Rock art in the northern dales
As a result of relatively recent discoveries, it is now known that there is a significantly dense band of rock art stretching from north-west of Barnard Castle at Egglestone Common, southward to Cotherstone Moor, Deep Dale, Barningham Moor, Gayles Moor, Feldom Army Ranges, onward to Holgate How in the parish of New Forest, and then to six sites that might be considered in the Swaledale and Arkengarthdale area – first at Mud Beck at the head of Arkengarthdale, then to three sites on and around Skelton Moor, west of Marske Beck, then over the River Swale to three rocks on Downholme Moor, and one isolated example at Riddings Rigg, above Reeth. In Wensleydale there are nine known sites, five at Addlebrough, one at Greenber Edge, and three at Thornton Steward.
Many of the sites on and around Skelton Moor were first recognised by SWAAG president Tim Laurie during his initial survey of the coaxial field systems in that area during the early 1980s. These were among 12 examples in the wider Swaledale and Arkengarthdale area featured in an illustrated book: Prehistoric Rock Art of County Durham, Swaledale, and Wensleydale (County Durham Books, 1998), jointly authored by Stan Beckensall and Tim Laurie. The one example at Riddings Rigg was first identified by landscape archaeologist Professor Andrew Fleming and was illustrated in his book Swaledale: Valley of the Wild River (1998), pp. 119-120. The two examples at Mud Beck, Arkengarthdale, were discovered by Tim Laurie in around 2000. Another eight of the Swaledale examples were discovered by independent archaeologists Paul and Barbara Brown between 2002 and 2007.
Those latest discoveries brought the number of examples of rock art in the Swaledale and Arkengarthdale area to 23, which were all featured in a comprehensive illustrated guide: Prehistoric Rock Art in the Northern Dales, by Paul and Barbara Brown, published in 2008, see pages 61-78 and 222-225.
SWAAG database records
The SWAAG database Category PDF Rock Art contains 32 records, covering examples over a wide geographical area but including only nine of the 23 sites recorded by Brown and Brown in the Swaledale and Arkengarthdale area. It has descriptions and photographs of a selection of rock-art sites including some at Holgate How, all those in and around Skelton Moor, one of the two in Arkengarthdale, and others at Brough, Barningham Moor, Cotherstone Moor, Aske Moor at Whashton, Gayles Moor, Hunderthwaite in Teesdale, and Kircudbright in Dumfries and Galloway.
For rocks at Downholme Moor, see the SWAAG database Earthworks category PDF (record no. 787).
Photographs of the rock art at the cairn at Addlebrough summit in Wensleydale can be seen in Burial Mounds and Cairns category PDF (scroll to record nos. 257, 403, 795).
For several photos of the Holgate How rocks see Burial Mounds and Cairns category PDF (record no. 425) and Burnt Mounds 3 category PDF (record no. 974),
For rocks at Whashton, see Burnt Mounds 2 category PDF (record no. 83).
There are also photographs of rock art in the SWAAG database Photographic category PDF – see records: 785, image 9; 788, image 3; 900, images 1-10; 939, images 7-9; and 979, image 18. See also the Geographic category PDF, scroll to record 645, image 6.
Matching the accounts of the rock art in the area as featured in the database and in the different publications cited above is a complicated task because descriptions of individual rocks vary, drawings and photographs are often orientated differently, and photographs have been taken under different light conditions and at times when differently surrounding vegetation obscured different parts of the rocks. The task is further complicated because different recorders have numbered the rocks differently and because of occasional errors in recording OS grid references, notably in Beckensall and Laurie (1998).[1]
In addition to the sites described above, there is another posited rock art site in Swaledale, which is the only one in the two dales that has been listed by Historic England as a scheduled monument. Ironically, it is the one about which SWAAG president Tim Laurie has expressed doubts. Located inside the army firing range on Stainton Moor, above Juniper Gill to the north and above White Bog to the east (OS grid ref. SE 0809 9574), it is a large isolated, irregular-shaped moorland rock that has been incorporated as a modern marker on the boundary between the parishes of Ellerton Abbey and Stainton. On its upper surface are about 20 apparent cup-marks. It is described and drawn in Beckensall and Laurie’s book (p. 103). However, in Tim Laurie’s later entry in the SWAAG database Category PDF Standing Stones and Circles (record no. 391), he questions whether the marks might be merely depressions caused by natural weathering. Note that this rock is not recorded in Brown and Brown, Prehistoric Rock Art in the Northern Dales. The Historic England listing can be read here: Cup marked stone on Stainton Moor above White Bog, Ellerton Abbey – 1012610 | Historic England.
Other ideas on the purpose and meaning of rock art
While a common speculation about the purpose and meaning of prehistoric rock art is that it displays sacred or religious symbols, Tim Laurie and others have expressed a different hypothesis – that its existence along a geographical band might signify informal boundaries or territory markers made by early farmers who drove livestock from lowland pastures in the east to the Pennine foothills for summer grazing, the practice known as transhumance. The conclusion is drawn in an article by Tim Laurie. He compares the style and locations of the north British rock art with that of the Libyan Sahara, where the art is associated with the early domestication of farm animals, and the rock art of the Alpes Maritimes on the border of south-east France and Italy, which is directly associated with the ancient and continuing practice of transhumance.
The article draws together Tim Laurie’s extensive studies and mapping of coaxial fields systems, burnt mounds, and rock art, and concludes that the practice of making rock art in Yorkshire and Durham died out in the Early Bronze Age (no later than c.1200 BC), while the equally mysterious practice leading to the existence of burnt mounds in the dales continued into the Late Bronze Age (up to about 800 BC), explaining their much greater geographical spread, as farmers extended their territories and settlements farther westwards through the dales.
To read the full report click here: Timothy C Laurie, Norman W Mahaffy, and Robert White, Coaxial Field Systems in Swaledale: a reassessment (SWAAG, 2010). An abridged version was published in Prehistory in the Yorkshire Dales, ed. R D Martlew (PLACE/Yorkshire Dales Landscape Research Trust, 2011).
In June 2017, Tim Laurie gave further expression to his developing thoughts on the international nature of cup-and-ring rock art in an entry on the SWAAG database Category PDF Rock Art (record no. 996), noting an example in Sardinia, on a rock associated with a myth of the creation of the universe. Later in 2017, Tim posted another entry on the database Category PDF Rock Art (record no. 1007, updated in 2018) linking his photographs of the Sardinian rock with multiple photographs taken during his visit to the Libyan sites of rock art and rock paintings, which he had visited in 2004.[2]
Rock Art Discovery Code
Anyone thinking of searching the moors for examples of rock art should be aware that many of the examples cited above are on military land, or other private land, not necessarily designated Open Access, in which cases all necessary permissions must be sought and obtained. Even Open Access land may be subject to notified restrictions of access, which must be checked and observed. And if any examples or likely examples are found, then it is important to observe the Rock Art Discovery Code:
- never remove turf from buried rock art panels as any newly exposed surfaces will be especially vulnerable to erosion.
- never remove lichen as you may remove part of the rock surface and the tiny root fissures left behind will fill with water and be susceptible to freeze-thaw erosion, weakening the surface matrix.
- never use any substances (including water) to “clean” surfaces or use any stiff brushes or metal tools.
- never add chalk or other substances to “enhance” the carvings or undertake any recording technique that involved direct and/or repeated contact with the surface, e.g., wax rubbing.
This article by Will Swales 30 April 2024
[1] For example, the Swaledale section of Beckensall and Laurie (1998) and in some SWAAG database records, the OS grid references given for rock-art sites north of the River Swale should correctly begin NZ, not SE or SD. The sites in Swaledale that are south of the River Swale have grid references beginning SE, and only the Wensleydale sites are at grid references beginning SD.
[2] Note that in both these entries on the database, references to the Skelton Moor rocks were a little mixed up. The photograph example in both entries shows one of the cup-marked rocks on private land at Musgrove or Cleaburn Pasture, below Cock How, on the south-east side of Skelton Moor, NZ 085 002 (also at record no. 614), not the one at Forty Acres Allotment on the south-west side of the moor as indicated by the location identifier in record no. 996, and the caption in record no. 1007.
