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British Rock Art Collection (BRAC) - back Online


British Rock Art Collection (BRAC) - back Online

http://ukra.jalbum.net/brac

Quite a few people will hopefully remember BRAC - the online image gallery covering British rock art sites. It was originally setup in 2004 by the Dutch rock art enthusiast Jan Brouwer (alias Rockartuk on TMA) and his friend Gus Van Veen. Over several years Jan went on to expand the collection to well over 18000 images, covering 1200 sites.

Sadly, in 2011 Jan Brouwer became ill and passed away, a great loss to all his family and friends.
Around this time Fotopic (the internet company hosting the BRAC gallery) also closed down and so the rock art collection was lost too. The online nature of Fotopic meant that gallery owners had no real back up of their sites. Attempts to contact the company drew a blank until early 2013 when the old Fotopic servers were brought temporarily back online to allow customers to retrieve their images. At this point Jan’s friends took the opportunity to rescue the collection.
Unfortunately the old BRAC website no longer existed and only the images were available for download, so these images have now been compiled into a new website using Jalbum photo gallery software.

As with the original BRAC site, this new version consists of photographs from Jan Brouwer’s own collection and those of his many friends, who provided copies for inclusion in the BRAC. Other images were used with permission from the owners, but as Jan is no longer with us it is difficult to know what the arrangements were for every single image.
Many filenames include the name of the contributor so it has been possible to compile a ‘credits list’ on the new site to both acknowledge and thank those who contributed to the collection. As would be expected there are quite a few TMA members listed (some simply by their usernames) so we are hoping these people are still happy for their images to be part of the British Rock Art Collection.

At the present time BRAC is effectively an archive of all the images brought together by Jan Brouwer and it still forms a useful resource for anyone interested in British rock art. In the future new sites could be added to it, but it will be hard to match Jan’s dedication in this respect.

Please take a look at the new BRAC. It’s a kind of tribute to Jan’s interest and passion for these ancient rock carvings and also his wish to share this with everyone.
As BRAC was and still is a collaborative effort we hope it can continue to be the largest website dedicated to UK rock art on the net.

Northumberland (County)

Rock art Meeting - Northumberland (RAM 2011)


This years RAM (Rock Art Meeting) has been arranged for Sunday June 5th at Lordenshaw. Northumberland.

Lordenshaw is just to the south of Rothbury in Northumberland (see a detailed map Here and then zoom out for road directions etc). There is a good sized car park (shown on map) on the minor road nearest the rock carvings and we will meet up there at 10.30AM.

This is a very informal meet so just bring the usual things like boots, waterproofs, camera and something to eat and we will see who turns up on the day. We plan to take a look at a selection of the carved rocks, cairns and the "hill fort/settlement" etc. The location of the Lordenshaw carved rocks on the ridge leading up towards Simonside Hill (defined as a sacred hill on TMA) might us give some food for thought.

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Update

Some readers will be aware that Jan Brouwer passed away on the 25th April 2011, after suffering a serious illness. It was Jan who established the annual rock art meetings as a result of his deep interest in British prehistoric rock carvings. This interest led to regular field trips from his native Holland in order to study the carvings first hand and these visits also created the opportunity for people to meet up with Jan and take a look at some of the rock carvings in a particular location.

Obviously things have changed with Jan's passing and it would be easy just to cancel this years RAM given the circumstances. However Jan indicated that he would like the RAM to go ahead and picked out a photo to go with the RAM details posted on his British rock art Blog (link). So a few of us will still be meeting up at Lordenshaw on June 5th, to remember Jan and take a look at some of the ancient rock carvings that so fascinated him.

News

Spare a moment for Jan Brouwer


Some very sad news about Jan

http://rockartuk.wordpress.com/

I am lost for words - but my deepest sympathy goes to his family.

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