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Hi Rhiannon,

You are right, the day at Eggerness was special for Suzanne, Jan & myself. It was obvious to us looking at the deer and horse carvings that they were pictish, but i am not too concerned with the age gaps etc, i was more interested in the location and the placing of the carvings next to cup and ring carvings, the reason and thought process behind the carvers linking and re-using the same rock as the previous carvers. Also why that stretch of land and no where else in Galloway. Other interesting facts include some very worn animal carvings deeper below ground than the more deeply carved deer higher up on the rock which would have been more prone to weathering, perhaps a difference in time scale even between the animal carvings..a fascinating place. Other panels have still to be visited, but they will be looked at during the winter, those include deeply carved spirals next to animal carvings.

rockartwolf wrote:
why that stretch of land and no where else in Galloway.
There are so many possibilities for that. The carvings could have been done by a bored Pict youth who was tending cattle on his own and decided he'd make his mark next to the old markings or maybe just thought he'd practice on that bit of rock that was already marked with some stuff, just in the way that people have marked other monuments with their names in the past.

Then again, maybe there was some long-lasting local tradition in that particular area and the addition of the figures was hugely symbolic.

Pictish ritual or pictish vandalism ... could be either.

If it's vandalism should we all be saying, "look what some bastard did to this 1500 years ago!"? We would if it had been done last year.