Archaeologica.org

shawomet wrote:10,500-14,800 years old. Of note is the panel of "cupules" or cup marks covering one of the rocks on the right side of the outcrop. Cupules are a common design motif found at rock art sites around the globe...

kbs2244 wrote:RE: The Nevada site,

One of the things that a lot of people have a hard time grasping is The Great Basin, now one of the largest deserts around, was once a huge lake.
Most of these discoveries were once water front sites.

RE: Cupules

I will try and find the reference, but I remember reading some speculation that the “cupules” were at sites of female only worship. They were visited by pregnant women who pounded the holes and ate the dust as a mineral supplement needed due to their pregnancy.
It was a folk practice, even in the “civilized, western world” until the modern practice of packaging minerals need by the body into pill form. Those pills could then be prescribed by doctors that would have a hard time suggesting a woman eat dirt.
Those who practiced it were despairingly referred to as “dirt eaters.”

kbs2244 wrote:

"I can now see an almost embarrassing number of vulvas when I look at rock art."

Probably due to the influnece of Gimbutas who couldn't see a V withouut seeing a vulva .

"New to me was the concept the pecking out rock art is a form of "tattooing Mother Earth."

Signing the land Bradley 1997 is similar .


"And it seems it wasn’t just the leaving of a mark behind, but the eating of the stone powder that was produced by pounding out the cupules that was inportant. "

Of course that type of info can't be retrieved from the arcaheology and is conjecture .


"In the book there is a relatively new line of reasoning espoused that says that as agriculture became more important so did the social position of women .... with their increased prestige came female oriented rituals, traditions, and with them came art related to those traditions.
"

Rock art was current long before the introduction of farming


A new thought to me was that there are noticeable differences in Light Room, or exposed to the sun, rock art and Dark Room cave art.
The Light Room art is often calendar related and has markers for the sun or shadows to hit and thus mark solstices, equinoxes, etc.
The Dark Room art is often more ritual oriented.

I can't talk for American art but in Europe there is a cler difference between "open air " rock art and the megalithic art of passage graves . On basic level the latter tends to be more ornate and has motifs rarely found in the former .In the former it's worth noting that the motifs found on promient rocks tends to differ from that those that are more ,hidden i.e. flush with the ground and likely to be covered in turf , in these cases the latter also tend to be more ornate than than the prominet boulders . If there is an astronomical association then it is more likely related to the passage grave examples as some of the passages are aligned on Thom paradigm events .
George

Ernie L wrote:Perhaps semiotic anthropology would not be a useful tool understanding cupules..why not semiotic archaeology if it does not already exist.

Tiompan wrote:

Ernie L wrote:Perhaps semiotic anthropology would not be a useful tool understanding cupules..why not semiotic archaeology if it does not already exist.

Semiotics, both Saussurean and Piercean have been applied to material culture and rock art but there must be a sign that can be reconised as a signifier or having an iconic , indexical or symbolic meaning ,which is not apparent in a cup mark or combination of cups .

George