ABSTRACT
Prehistoric rock-art has been recognized in Britain since the early days of antiquarian inquiry. One of the first known drawings of British petroglyphs was made in 1785 by Colonel Montgomery and showed a cist cover from Coilsfield in Ayrshire, Scotland, with a spiral and cup-and-ring marks (Wilson 1863, I, 480). Forty years later, John Langlands recognized two decorated boulders at Old Berwick in Northumberland, England (Beckensall 2001, 14), a discovery that signalled the start of searches for decorated stones across the country. Publications including those by G. Tate (1865) and J. Y. Simpson (1865) with delightful and detailed illustrations brought rock-art to the attention of the academic community and the general public. Surveys and interpretative reviews continued to appear through the later nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries, creating a very considerable literature variously covering Britain and its main constituent parts (Beckensall 1999; Bradley 1995; Darvill and O’Connor 2005; Darvill and Wainwright 2003; Morris 1989; Waddington 2007) as well as rock-art–rich subregions (Beckensall 1983; 2001; 2002; Beckensall and Laurie 1998; Boughey and Vickerman 2003; Brown and Brown 2008; Brown and Chappell 2005; Ilkley Archaeology Group 1986; Van Hoek 1997). More than 2,500 sites with rock-art are known across Britain, about 1,600 of them in England, but it is widely recognized that many more still await discovery.
