Jane wrote:
Mr Hamhead wrote:
Around two months ago the local council re-erected two milestones nearby Hamhead Villa's...The stones are good Cornish granite but it was decided to paint them white and highlight the wording in black...I noticed this last week that the white paint is already coming off...what hope for paint applied in 2ooo BC?
Indeed. Which is why I said:
"The weather up here in these harsh wet northern climes would have meant that any stones outdoors here would have to have been painted afresh each season or according to whatever festivity was being celebrated."
There are examples of rock art that have been engraved then used as a cist cover or side slabs rather than reusing or quarrying an existing exposed panel . In those cases if they were painted there is a good chance , even in our cllimate and acidic soil conditions that there would have been some residue particularly when you consider the slabs usually faced the corpse . Absence of evidence doesn't mean there was no paint in these cases but it does look less likely when you consider the outdoor Scandanavian paint that survived . The same would appply to freshly engraved megalithic art which is much younger than than the surviving Paleolithic cave paintings . I assume that there was plenty of colour and art , most of which has been lost due to being organic , in british prehistoric society but it's only an assumption .
