Rock-art book

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"How much recorded open air rock-art is there in ireland? From my quick review there doesnt seem to be that much, so would there be enough to put together a book"

If the British mainland is anything to go by I would lay a pound to a pinch of shite that there's a lot more to be found in Ireland than has currently been recorded.
Mr Beckensall began by publishing small booklets, nowt too grand just lots of descriptions of sites, drawings, photos and maps.
I guess rock art is one of the few areas of research where an amateur, with a good eye and a blue bucket, can make a meaningful contribution not only to the discovery of new carvings but to the interpretation of their place in the landscape.

Thanks !

(but at the moment I've three yellow buckets and one white and one black one).

There's not been much Rock Art searched for in Wales either ...

Masses of Irish stuff was destroyed in the 1970s or there abouts in County Louth. Bits keep turning up, re-used in souterrains etc. There's a load in Wicklow that's waiting to be rediscovered. I have rough directions to some of it. Some Wicklow based stuff has also been destroyed recently.

Rock art seems to have been a taboo in Ireland at some point, as much of it has been buried or blown up.

fitzcoraldo wrote:
I guess rock art is one of the few areas of research where an amateur, with a good eye and a blue bucket, can make a meaningful contribution not only to the discovery of new carvings but to the interpretation of their place in the landscape.
Don't know if I have a good eye, but the old hooter can usually smell a rat a mile away. Take this for example: http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/4873
Something tells me that whoever carved this wasn't just happening by Rathgeran hill and thinking "what a nice rock to decorate. I think I'll put a load of concentric circles on it and head off back to whence I came." I'm not hung up on the purpose, be it 'art for art's sake', as Lewis-Williams call it, or otherwise. It just seems pointless in isolation like that. I take Fourwind's point further on in the thread that a lot of it was destroyed, but what about the stuff the bastids didn't find? Now where did I leave that bucket? :-)