Blaze O'Connor - Awarded 2006
Supervisors
Dr. Muiris O'Sullivan, Archaeology
Dr. Joanna Brück, Archaeology
Funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Arts Open Post Graduate Scholarship from University College Dublin
Petroglyphs, motifs pecked into the surfaces of natural boulders and outcrops during the Neolithic, and possibly into the Early Bronze Age, are amongst some of the most enigmatic sites in the prehistory of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Relatively little is known in terms of the ways people interacted with the rock art panels in the past, or the ways these panels related to the rest of the archaeological landscape. Rock art sites are often viewed as isolated ‘natural monuments’ where the pecked motifs are the only sign of human presence, and current trends in archaeological literature have emphasised the apparent importance of route-ways and views across the landscape as influencing the distribution of rock art sites.
Blaze O’Connor’s doctoral research into prehistoric rock art aims to explore the context of these sites within both their immediate and wider archaeological landscapes using a range of integrated techniques in selected study areas. By using a ‘nested’ approach to archaeological landscapes the research aims to investigate the potential for broad regional patterns in distribution, through to local level evidence for the ways people used rock art locales in the past. A Geographical Information System (GIS) is being used to explore potential broad scale patterns by incorporating a range of environmental and cultural variables to answer specific questions. These focus on the extent to which particular environmental and terrain variables correlate with rock art distribution, and the spatial relationship between petroglyphs and other prehistoric site types and artefacts. In this way the work attempts to develop our understanding of the way rock art locales operated in the prehistoric landscape, and the possible human choices and experiences reflected in their positioning in the landscape. In addition, qualitative data are incorporated into the analysis, in order to investigate whether there are any identifiable patterns in the distribution of particular motifs and stylistic attributes at a range of spatial scales, and to discuss the potential significance of these patterns in social terms. This line of inquiry allows the idea that different types of rock art sites may have performed different roles in prehistoric society to be explored. At the local level, a large scale and fine resolution geophysical survey has been conducted across a study area featuring a particularly dense concentration of rock art sites. In this way, the work attempts to investigate the nature and extent of evidence for human activity both in close proximity to the petroglyphs, and at random ‘control’ areas within the rock art landscape, which do not feature the motifs. This will allow our ideas as to how people used rock art locales to be developed in a more detailed manner. It is hoped that this project will enable a number of current theories in rock art research to be tested and explored.
This research is funded by a Government of Ireland Research Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), and the Faculty of Arts Open Post Graduate Scholarship from University College Dublin, and has contributed towards the European Prehistoric Art Project for the European Commission Culture 2000 Programme (www.europreart.net).