Rock Art Vocabulary

This page is part of the
British Rock Art Collection
 
If you see some-'thing', and you don't now what it is, how do you call it? Alright, in most cases 'thing' will do. That must have been the case around 1850 when the abstract rock art in England and Scotland was discovered. "Have you seen those strange things on the rocks?". But more serious people, like the Duke of Northumberland, the Clergyman and the Bishop couldn't use this common indication. So they tried to be more specific. But that wasn't easy for 'things' you don't know! The following descriptions were used between 1830 and 1977:
 
Lapidary Art, Ring Cuttings, Sculptured Stones, Circular Carvings, Incised Markings, Ancient Sculpturings of Cups and Concentric Rings, Incised Sculpturings, Cup-marked Stones, Cup-and-ring Carvings, Rock Carvings and Petroglyphs.
 
It was not until 1977 that Ronald B. W. Morris introduced the, now fully accepted, summarizing phrase: "Rock Art" for the abstract open-air rock carvings in Britain as a whole. By doing so, this special rock art category was linked to the great worldwide "Rock Art" tradition. 
 
 
The late Ronald Morris, a solicitor from Glasgow, who gave such a great part of his time and live to the research of abstract rock art, was a serious man. So thanks to him we use the term "Rock Art" instead of a more trendy term like UCO's (Unidentified Carved Objects)
 
Classification of abstract Rock Art
(1852-1983)
 
Right from the start in 1852, efforts were made to classify the different motifs. With gradually more motifs found, it became difficult to create a clear classification system. In 1852 Mr. George Tate made an attempt to classify the different forms by numbers (1-12)
 
Mr Tate's early classification of carvings  (1852)
(Beckensall, 1983, p. 31)
 


In 1934 Mr Breuil published his classification system of British and Irish rock art. He believed that the motifs were representations of the human figure. The drawings strongly enhance this believe (note the arms, legs and eyes). (Bradley, 1997, p. 39).


In 1967, 1969 and 1977, Morris made several classification diagrams, a.o. with (capital) letters. This was followed by Stan Beckensall in 1983 with drawings of the motifs combined with short descriptions.

 

Classification and vocabulary of abstract Rock Art (1999)


In his book "British Prehistoric Rock Art" (Tempus, 1999), Stan Beckensall gives a clear outline of how we should refer to the 'things' we see. He gives a logic build up:

Elements form symbols or motifs. The arrangement of symbols or motifs on a rock forms a panel.

This important classification scheme may well end the 'confusion of tongues' in prehistoric abstract rock art. That's why we took the liberty to copy the drawings and descriptions from Mr Beckensall's outstanding book.

 

  

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