HomeUpSearchMail
NEW

Megalithic art studies by G. Eogan

Interesting issues

Only a few places in Ireland still show the megalithic art on the rocks in passage mounds/cairns. It could be that some passage mounds/cairns have no petroglyphs (e.g. due to bad rock: like limestone or granite), but had other means of depicting art, like pictographs with paint on rock, textile or skin. These pictographs would not have survived the damp Irish climate.
The methods for making petroglyphs were a) picking/pocking (line picking or pick dressing) and b) incision (less used).
Pick dressing seems only to be found in the Boyne Valley. Pick dressing is sometimes used to obliterate earlier motifs. Stratigraphy of motifs is also used. Incision was sometimes used to guide the line picking.
At Knowth the amount of invisible art seems much smaller than at Newgrange.

Motifs

Several classification schemes of motifs are available:

Styles

G. Eogan [1986] defines fifteen styles (compositions of motifs) on decorated surfaces:

Compositions

No full corpus of known Knowth art is published in G. Eogan [1986]. An overview is given of the position of megalithic art at Dowth South, Newgrange, Knowth site 1 to site 18, Barclodiad y Gawres (Wales) and Fourknocks I.
The spirals on the macehead are depicted below:

Directions

Knowth has an eastern and western direction in its two passages. More information on real azimuth of these passages can be found on this page.
Directions of the sites around Site1:

Origins

According to G. Eogan the origin of the megalithic art must have been introduced to Ireland. Almost all motifs could have some origin in European except perhaps the spirals (although a native origin has not been demonstrated).
But the Irish passage-tomb art as a whole clearly shows native originality, as is seen in the polling of angular and lavish elements to form the angular-spiral style, or even in the disposition of motifs in the circular style and in the style with the prominent central motif. External borrowing, coupled with native pooling and reorganization, characterizes the Irish passage-tomb art. (G. Eogan [1986, page 171])

Chronology

The angular style is earlier than the rectilinear style.
Styles with curvilinear motifs (like lavish) were earlier than the rectilinear style.
Although in Knowth site 1 (and Newgrange) integration exists between various motifs over the sites and also between the styles. Knowth site 1 must be dated later neolithic (circa 3100 BCE).

Some remarks

Questions to author

  • It seems the lines C-D and A-B are at the wrong position in figure 15 (comparing this with fig. 16).

  • Disclaimer and Copyright
    HomeUpSearchMail

    Last content related changes: May 7, 2002