The largest panel of prehistoric rock art in Britain is at Achnabreck, just a short distance from Lochgilphead. Jill has long been fascinated by rock art and the questions posed by it so we took the opportunity to visit Achnabreck on our way to the start of this walk.
The first rock art was discovered on Old Berwick Hill in Northumberland in 1822. Since then thousands of other sites have been recorded and it is widely accepted that the marks were made in the Neolithic period over 4000 to 5000 years ago continuing for at least 1000 years into the early Bronze Age. This was a period of transition from hunter-gatherers to more settled agricultural communities.
In some parts of the world, art on rocks gives a pictorial record of human activity such as hunting or rituals but British rock art is almost entirely of abstract symbols or motifs comprising cups, cup and ring/s, grooves and arcs. Similar motifs can be found in many other parts of the world. Nobody knows what the motifs mean but those found on rocks in the landscape, rather than those on monuments such as graves or standing stones (eg Long Meg in Cumbria), were almost certainly used to “sign the land”. The marked slabs of usually sedimentary rock are found on higher, less fertile ground, often at the best viewpoints, on ridges overlooking river valleys and plains. These flat rocks are open to the sky but cannot be seen from lower ground and may well have been surrounded by forest in the past. Pastoral nomads may have used these rocks to find their way through the landscape.
Richard Bradley found that complex motifs are often at the higher levels leading to monuments in a carefully constructed sequence or at the “entrance” in the natural terrain leading to significant places. The simple motifs tend to be found lower down on the margins of more fertile land.
There is a very readable article about England’s Rock Art, for which the same principles and questions apply, at
It remains the case that we know remarkably little about the purpose and significance of rock art and will probably never know precisely what the symbols mean.
There is now far greater interest in trying to understand this enigmatic art form and, more importantly, of recording and protecting sites from damage by animals, acid rain, quarrying or even simply the growth of lichen and mosses on the rocks.
These are some of the photos we took at Achnabreck.
Just Coasting 
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