Rock Art

Cup and ring marks

​Enigmatic carvings, popularly known as ‘cup-and-ring marks’, are found in many places throughout the North East, from around Wooler in north Northumberland down to Barningham Moor in the south of County Durham. Many of these sites have been recorded over recent years by teams of volunteers, but they remain poorly understood in terms of chronology and function. Most archaeologists that study them agree that they date from the Neolithic and early Bronze Age (roughly between 4000 and 1500 BC) and that the motifs must be linked in some way with the ‘religion’ of the people who made them, but attempts to comprehend aspects of Neolithic and Bronze Age ‘religion’ are fraught with difficulty. For example, people probably didn’t distinguish ‘religion’ as something separate from everyday life.

The North East Regional Research Framework and several recent publications stress the need to study our rock art within its landscape context, and move on from survey to carefully targeted small-scale excavation. The challenge is to find well-recorded landscapes presenting opportunities to undertake small-scale excavations of rock art in context, offering a good chance of recovering new and important information relating to chronology and function. The Belief in the North East project is rising to this challenge, and aims to complete important fieldwork in 2023.

Belief in the North East fieldwork

​In spring 2022, project volunteers undertook important conservation work at Roughting Linn, near Wooler, one our most important rock art sites. Following this, a detailed survey programme, including geophysics and lidar, was completed. A similar survey programme was undertaken at Lordenshaw, near Rothbury. Details of these surveys will soon be made available on the website. Plans are now being drawn up for small-scale excavations by project volunteers, closely supervised by Durham University archaeologists, at rock art sites in spring and summer 2023. It is hoped that this work will provide new information about the chronology and purpose of the carvings. Further details will be posted here in due course.

Stan Beckensall

Stan Beckensall has made a phenomenal contribution, on an entirely amateur basis, to the discovery, recording and interpretation of rock art in his home county of Northumberland and elsewhere. Much of this work was done during the 1970s and 1980s, when the subject was largely shunned by professional archaeologists. Anyone with an interest in rock art is greatly indebted to Stan, not only for his own work but also for the inspiration he has provided, and continues to provide, for the work of others.

When the Belief in the North East programme was being revised following lockdown, it was realised that the new timetable coincided with Stan’s 90th birthday, in August 2022. Following discussion with NLHF, a proposed festschrift for Stan was incorporated into the project, along with a photographic exhibition. The exhibition will initially be installed in the north transept of Hexham Abbey (28 Sept – 2 Oct, and 8-20 November 2022; free admission), and during 2023 it will tour various venues (details yet to be determined) throughout the region.

Belief in the North East lectures

Among the many presentations now available on the project Youtube channel are a couple about rock art, one by Aaron Watson and one by Paul Frodsham and Kate Sharpe. Further lectures are being planned; details will be circulated in due course to all registered volunteers.