As was said above about stonelifter's wall stone - when you ain't seen them you cannot be sure. You can have an opinion, I've no problem with that, but you can't say for sure ... or have you studied Irish quarryman's chisel marks of the 19th Century and the elongated cup-marks of the Wicklow Mountain monuments in detail? Many of those are a long way from roads or walls and there are plenty of more accessible stones nearer to the roads. Some of them are now accepted as the real deal by archaeos*.
A few of them may be chisel marks, but nowhere near half of them.
* I had to stop myself going ... ner-ner-na-ner-ner! there :-)
http://www.megalithomania.com/show/image/63
http://www.megalithomania.com/show/image/2427
http://www.megalithomania.com/show/image/6244
...and a couple of others look rather dubious to say the least. What's the folklore on:
http://www.megalithomania.com/show/image/6480
Who are the archaeo's who've authenticated 'em? In all honesty, cup&ring art is a new thing to many archaeo's who are just getting in on the act, with little real history behind them. I've been out with plenty of archaeo's who didn't know what they were looking at until I'd pointed stuff out to them. For god sake, we all make mistakes. I've thought some carvings were authentic in mi time and, when looking later, had to change mi mind, or had other folk point out my errors. It happens to us all y' know. StoneLifter - you tell him.
