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 Head To Head The Modern Antiquarian Rombald's Moor Forum | Start a topic | Search |
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| Rombalds/Ilkley Moor of "Bart 'At" fame is one of the most important late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age sites in the UK. It has also been a "lung" for the people of the West Riding for more than a century. There are few here who have not walked from Dick Hudson's to White Wells at least once in a lifetime, or in my case many times over <mumble> years, without finding more than a handful of cup and ring stones, because finding them was too difficult. It contains some 350 Cup & Ring stones and other neolithic sites. A few dozen of these were discovered and described in Victorian times: Cow and Calf Rocks, Swastika Stone, Pancake Stone etc. but another 300 have now been listed in Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding (PRAWR) K.J.S Boughey and E.A. Vickerman, ISBN 1 870453 32 8 http://www.alkelda.f9.co.uk/wybook1.htm, which includes an order form. Much of the information here is a derived from PRAW. It is IMO a pity that there are so many sites are almost impossible to find without a copy of the book and even then they are very difficult to find. It is my intention to list as many of the sites as I can, on Modern Antiquarian and Megalithic Portal to make finding them as easy as possible, but as I can only do about 10 sites per day, the job will be too much for one man. The copyright of PRAWR prevents one using the drawings and photos there. This is however an academic publication, so use of some information from the book is allowed with proper attribution. Quoting the PRAWR number is attribution. Having done an experimental weekend, the methods I propose to use are: Ignore the well known rocks, which are well documented. Find the lesser known rocks using a GPS and PRAWR, the rocks are surveyed to a 10 figure Grid reference by English Heritage, but a hand held GPS has an error of several meters, so one must also do a visual search of many square meters The illustrations, and descriptions in PRAWR are unfortunately IME difficult to interpret, to the extent that I have stood on a rock, looking at the PRAWR illustrations, and descriptions, and wondered where the h*ll it was. It is IME essential that photographs be used. This was 230,231,232,233. Take record photographs of what I have found, as is. Following the methods described and *used* by Boughey et al in PRAWR p 121 chalk up, with childrens chalk whatever I can *see* or *feel*. Some of the neolithic work is not visible to the eye, or camera. The chalk will wash off with the next rain of which we have lots on Rombalds moor. The chalk will most certainly be less damaging than: boots, sheep droppings, sheep hooves, lichen, rain, vegetation to which they have been exposed for millennia. PRAWR states that a high tech version of chalk is now recommended for such use, but otherwise the recommended method of recording rock art is the same. Reading PRAWR clearly indicates the authors opinion of this recomendaion. My artistic skills are close to zero, so freehand drawing is out of the question, it would confuse rather than educate the viewer. Photograph the rocks with markings, and a measuring stick (a 1 m Draper foldable carpenters wooden rule), and a Silva compass with the body pointing north. The number of PRAWR number of the rock. Reply | with quote | Posted by RombaldII 19th June 2005ce 22:47 |
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