New Rock Art Find in West Cork

“I’ve found a funny rock carving and a friend told me to ring you” – that’s my favourite type of call to get! It doesn’t always work out: sometimes the marks are machine-made, or a natural geological feature of the rock. But the anticipation is always there that this time it will be the real thing.

And it was! Our caller was John Minihane, a retired harbour master and a Harley enthusiast, living in a beautiful traditional farmhouse near Union Hall, once the home of his grandmother. He had been tidying up the back garden and pulled ivy off what seemed to be just a big rock in a bank separating his property from a neighbours. It turned out to be a standing stone with prehistoric rock art on it.

Not all rock art is spectacular – some of it can be underwhelming, consisting of only a few cupmarks. Take a look at some of our previous posts on rock art (C2 on our Navigation Page) to see some of the examples, from simple to complex, we have written about. The one (below) is possibly one of the most iconic pieces of rock art in Ireland – it’s from Derrynablaha in Kerry.

This photograph (above) shows the rock art panel in its location, high in the Kerry Mountains, overlooking a beautiful valley and lake. The image is by Ken Williams, used with his permission. Ken is Ireland premier photographer of archaeological subjects – read more about him here or better yet visit his amazing website.

The latest thinking about Atlantic Rock Art (it occurs all down the Atlantic Coast, from Portugal to Scotland) is that it is Neolithic – that is, about 5,000 years old. In its elemental, form, the humble cupmark, it persists into the Bronze Age, sometimes occurring on Wedge Tombs and Boulder Burials. So this standing stone, with cupmarks and grooves, might be anywhere from 5,000 to 2,500 years old.

Most rock art is found on bedrock (like Derreennaclogh, above) or earth-fast boulders, but in West Cork, we do have other examples of rock art on standing stones. Two can be found about 9km east near Rosscarbery, both in the townland of Burgatia and both with cupmarks and cup-and-ring marks. Another is located on the townland boundary between Knockanoulty and Barnabah, about 14km to the SW. I’ve shown that one below, both as a photograph and as a drawing.

When I was a student (back in the dawn of time) and recording rock art, the conventional method was to chalk in the carvings, trace it all on to clear film, re-trace it in paper using Indian ink, and then have that photographically reduced. That’s how I produced the drawings above. Robert has used his architectural drafting skills to produce drawings more recently – below is his rendering of the cupmarked stone a local farmer showed us quite near where we live.

Mostly, nowadays, archaeologists favour techniques that do not interfere with the rock surface, and that usually means a photographic technique known as photogrammetry. The idea is to take lots of photos (150 in this case), moving at a steady rate and distance across the surface of the rock, load these into a program that can create a 3D image, and see what comes out.

We are very grateful to Nick Hogan of the University College Cork  Department of Archaeology who used their sophisticated software to create the 3D image. It’s been fun to play with the files he sent us, which are the best way of seeing what’s actually on the rock surface. 

You can set up a grid, or rotating axes, and turn the model so that the light hits it in different ways. This can help you to discern small cupmarks that don’t show up well in photographs. In the case of this rock, the thing that was hard to make out was the exact shape of the groove, and the 3D model shows this up well. If you turn it sideways it looks like an owl – but this is purely a chance occurrence – this art was strictly non-representational (although there’s a chance we might find a  deer or an axe some day, but that’s another story).

It’s always exciting to find a genuine piece of undiscovered archaeology! Thank you, John Minihane, for inviting us over to see your find and allowing us to record it. And thank you, Nick Hogan for the 3D modelling. A most satisfying project all round.

Nine beans rows will I have there, and a piece of prehistoric rock art!