Editing Cup and ring mark (section)

==United Kingdom==
[[Image:Cupandring.JPG|thumb|A replica of an unusual cup-and-ring-marked stone from Museum of Ayrshire Country Life and Costume, Dalgarven, North Ayrshire, Scotland.]]

Precisely dating megalithic art is difficult: even if the megalithic monument can be dated, the art may be a later addition. The [[Hunterheugh Crags]] cup and ring marks near [[Alnwick]] in [[Northumberland]] have recently been demonstrated to date back into the [[Early Neolithic]] era through their [[stratigraphy|stratigraphic]] relationship with other, datable features. Some cup marks have been found in [[Iron Age]] contexts but these may represent re-used stones.

Where they are etched onto natural, flat stone it has been observed that they seem to incorporate the natural surface of the rock. Those at Hunterheugh are mostly connected to one another by gutters that can channel rainwater from one to the next, down the sloping top of the stone.
It has been suggested by [[archaeologist]] [[Clive Waddington]] that the initial Early Neolithic impetus to create the marks was forgotten and that the practice fell into abeyance until a second phase of creation continued the basic tradition but with less precision and more variability in design. The markers of this second phase moved the art from natural stones to megaliths as its symbolism was reinterpreted by Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age people.

Their purpose is unknown although some may be connected with natural stone outcrops exploited by Neolithic peoples to make polished stone axes. A religious purpose has been suggested.
[[Alexander Thom]] suggested in a [[BBC]] [[television]] documentary, ''Cracking the Stone Age Code'', in 1970, "I have an idea, entirely nebulous at the moment, that the cup and ring markings were a method of recording, of writing, and that they may indicate, once we can read them, what a particular stone was for. We have seen the cup and ring markings on the stone at [[Kilmartin Glen|Temple Wood]], and that's on the main stone but we can't interpret them ...yet."<ref name="The Spectator">{{cite book|title=The Spectator, p. 608|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oBw-AQAAIAAJ|access-date=28 April 2011|year=1970}}</ref> He created diagrams and carried out analysis of over 50 of the cup and ring markings from which he determined a length he termed the [[Megalithic Yard|Megalithic Inch]] (MI).<ref>Systematics: The Journal of the Institute for the comparative study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences, Vol. 6, Number 3, Coombe Spring Press., December 1968</ref>

This whole idea has been ignored almost completely apart from a critical analysis carried out by Alan Davis in the 1980s, who tested Thom's hypothesis on cup and ring sites in England by examining the separations of neighbouring cupmark centres. He found some weak evidence for the "Megalithic Inch" but it was not statistically significant, and he suggested "strongest indications...towards the use of a quantum close in value to 5 MI at certain sites" and that "the apparent quantum seems strongly associated with ringed cups."<ref name="Ruggles2003">{{cite book|author=Alan Davis in Clive Ruggles|title=Records in Stone: Papers in Memory of Alexander Thom|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oZ3JGYd1kJoC&pg=PA422|access-date=30 April 2011|date=13 February 2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-53130-6|pages=392–422}}</ref> Davis made an initial effort to build on Thom's start, and to answer the question he posed: "Why should a man spend hours – or rather days – cutting cups in a random fashion on a rock? It would indeed be a breakthrough if someone could crack the code of the cups."<ref name="Ruggles2003"/>

Subsequently, Davis investigated the idea that the prehistoric carvers used an elementary method of diameter-construction in laying out the carvings. This investigation (incorporating both Scottish and English sites) suggested a possible explanation for many of the characteristic shapes of carved rings, and also produced evidence in the ring diameters for the use of a unit of measurement close to Thom's MI (and 5 MI) that was of high statistical significance. The evidence is consistent with the use of rough measures such as hand- and finger-widths (rather than the formal, accurate system proposed by Thom), but the important conclusion is that a similar design ritual, apparently involving a consistent measurement system of some kind, was in use over a wide geographical area.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=MacKie|first1=E. W.|last2=Davis|first2=A.|title=New light on neolithic rock carvings: the petroglyphs at Greenland (Auchentorlie), Dunbartonshire|journal=Glasgow Archaeological Journal|date=1989|volume=15|issue=15|pages=125–155|doi=10.3366/gas.1988.15.15.125|doi-access=}}</ref>