Cup and ring mark

Cup and ring marks or cup marks are a form of prehistoric art found in the Atlantic seaboard of Europe (Ireland, Wales, Northern England, Scotland, France (Brittany), Portugal, and Spain (Galicia) – and in Mediterranean Europe – Italy (in Alpine valleys and Sardinia), Azerbaijan and Greece (Thessaly[citation needed] and Irakleia (Cyclades)[1]), as well as in Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland)[citation needed] and in Switzerland (at Caschenna in Grisons).

Similar forms are also found throughout the world including Australia,[2] Gabon, Greece, Hawaii,[3] India (Daraki-Chattan and Dwarahat[4]), Israel, Mexico, Mozambique[5] and the Americas.

Further inland, dating to at least 3000 BCE (exposed) and estimated up to 4000 BCE (unexcavated layer, under the layer which is exposed), is Rujm el-Hiri, a cairn (tumulus) type of megalith, consisting of concentric circles (as cup marks also are concentric circles, but much smaller than Rogem Hiri) estimated to contain 40,000,000 kg of stones moved by humans, with an opening in the outer circle which aligns to the summer solstice (just as sites throughout Eurasia also align to solstices) and which has a burial chamber in the center, with thousands of dolmens nearby, a "dolmen" being a 3rd and younger type of megalith found elsewhere in Eurasia, the oldest of which, thus far, are found in the UK, but date only to the 3rd millennium BCE in Israel.

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.

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.

[27] 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.

"[28] 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?

[29] Sites with cup and ring marks include: Work at Drumirril in County Monaghan has uncovered Neolithic and early Bronze Age occupation evidence around the rock carvings there and this dating is generally accepted for most of the art.