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? :-)