< Well, Christian crosses are structures examined by other people, not me. They're Christian, historical (as opposed to prehistoric) relics, so I don't bother with them, much. I assume that the depressions on the base of Salford Cross were made by a Christian. Or perhaps they're natural. It's no concern of mine. In my opinion, they're not prehistoric rock art. >

That's fair enough. Christian relics on the whole bore me stupid, but I started looking at them many moons back after find a standing stone on Ilkley Moor which had been replaced in the same spot by a cross. Then I came across instances of cup-markings on cross-bases. And then the whole symbolism-lark on early decorated crosses was found to be an evolutionary development of earlier Celtic art-forms, some of them from cup&ring art. Hence my enquiries fanned out onto such boring xtian relics. I'm as much interested in the evolution in consciouness and the part which symbols play in things, as much as the cold dry archaeocentricism of these things.

The curiosity with the Salford 'cups' (whatever their age) is that there are no literary references to the site at all - not even in the Church records which I went through. Until Tom Wilson & I found them, it seemed that no-one had even seen them before. The Salford Local History group asked us to do a talk about it and other local curiosities, and we were surprised to find no-one in their group was aware of the markings. But I s'ppose if there's nowt locally about cup-markings (there'll all 'up north' aren't they?) who the hell would even look for them?

I've also gotta say that I've never been 100% easy about this site as a definite ancient carving, but until someone comes along and shows us that they were cresset stones or another decent explanation (apart from "they're natural" - cos they aint), I think their inclusion on TMA's much more valid than some other screwy 'carvings' which the eds seem to have kept.