Haystack details
The Haystack is a prominent monolith on Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire - British Isles. Visible from afar, it is a reference to find other guide marks such as Backstone Beck and the 'Bigs rocks'.
The rock is at 1000 feet in altitude, or around 300m - not high, but enough to bunch up the slowing clouds that have swifted over the Atlantic, making the moor a collection point for mist and low cloud variety.
The moor's ice age cap was not driven by dramatic mountain degrees of gravity and did not have to assimilate the constant weight of falling moraine that comes from a landscape of steep sided mountain peaks. See how smooth and wide the striations are (lower right) - as if summer melt-water rushes had squeezed through gaps in folds as the ice buckled over resistant obstacles. The Holocene is the name of the post ice age period and starts around 11,700 years ago. Before that there was ice over Ilkley. Before the ice there were Neanderthals and Homo Erectus over the British Isles. With the cups and rings dated from around 4,800 ybp this would leave the striations nearly 7,000 years free from rock art and in climatic conditions similar to today's. The Mesolithic came and went, and as it did, man left some flint artefacts here and there.
Some of the 'cups' pictured top left might have originated as natural basins opened through the attrition of stones captured and rotating in pockets like the natural basins that come with many waterfalls.
The crest visible to the left is like the rock 'crests' of Ilkley moor's 'Big rocks' and the 'Sepulture stone' and near to the 'Tree of life' stone - all with ragged clusters of cups. The extent to which these marks are man-made and/or natural being a particularly difficult debate. Can the dumbbell of joined cups (visible to the left) be compared to the man-made (late bronze age?) dumbbell pictured below? Was the small basin used or made by man, for example for ritual fermentation at a time when the precious alchimies of milk to cheese, dough to bread and barley to beer were turning man towards greater precision and abstractions.
The dimples of cups along the crest (left) seem to lack the definition and singularity of the cups and 'cups and rings' elsewhere on the surfaces (right side). Might the crests of appropriated rocks have been revered for powdering and applied rites ? (See J.S. Flickr). The right hand shots document a relatively standard cluster of cups and 'cups and rings' (standard in that there are no complicated combinations of canals) and I would include this monolith within a model for a 'hunters stone' : a gathering point for before and after a hunt : individuals leave a register in their cup prior to the hunt to show that they took part, an old-timer administrates the stone for the day, relaying data and preserving the combination, with the registered hunters then sharing the distribution. With this model, people from afar are the most likely to add their local geography to their cup in the form of a ring that represents their local totemic hill - thus remembering and 'relaying' the moment of plenty to far away kin. On the image top right, a 'man of the hill' may have profited of a natural fissure to give his 'visitors cup' shoulders. It could be argued that there is a qualitative similarity between this shouldered 'cup and ring' and the contemporary names Hill and Hilary (the person who lived on the Hill). A tail to a cup and ring might here have shown that the person lived down the line to a position under a ritual marker hill.
AJM 04.10.18
Haystack details
The Haystack is a prominent monolith on Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire - British Isles. Visible from afar, it is a reference to find other guide marks such as Backstone Beck and the 'Bigs rocks'.
The rock is at 1000 feet in altitude, or around 300m - not high, but enough to bunch up the slowing clouds that have swifted over the Atlantic, making the moor a collection point for mist and low cloud variety.
The moor's ice age cap was not driven by dramatic mountain degrees of gravity and did not have to assimilate the constant weight of falling moraine that comes from a landscape of steep sided mountain peaks. See how smooth and wide the striations are (lower right) - as if summer melt-water rushes had squeezed through gaps in folds as the ice buckled over resistant obstacles. The Holocene is the name of the post ice age period and starts around 11,700 years ago. Before that there was ice over Ilkley. Before the ice there were Neanderthals and Homo Erectus over the British Isles. With the cups and rings dated from around 4,800 ybp this would leave the striations nearly 7,000 years free from rock art and in climatic conditions similar to today's. The Mesolithic came and went, and as it did, man left some flint artefacts here and there.
Some of the 'cups' pictured top left might have originated as natural basins opened through the attrition of stones captured and rotating in pockets like the natural basins that come with many waterfalls.
The crest visible to the left is like the rock 'crests' of Ilkley moor's 'Big rocks' and the 'Sepulture stone' and near to the 'Tree of life' stone - all with ragged clusters of cups. The extent to which these marks are man-made and/or natural being a particularly difficult debate. Can the dumbbell of joined cups (visible to the left) be compared to the man-made (late bronze age?) dumbbell pictured below? Was the small basin used or made by man, for example for ritual fermentation at a time when the precious alchimies of milk to cheese, dough to bread and barley to beer were turning man towards greater precision and abstractions.
The dimples of cups along the crest (left) seem to lack the definition and singularity of the cups and 'cups and rings' elsewhere on the surfaces (right side). Might the crests of appropriated rocks have been revered for powdering and applied rites ? (See J.S. Flickr). The right hand shots document a relatively standard cluster of cups and 'cups and rings' (standard in that there are no complicated combinations of canals) and I would include this monolith within a model for a 'hunters stone' : a gathering point for before and after a hunt : individuals leave a register in their cup prior to the hunt to show that they took part, an old-timer administrates the stone for the day, relaying data and preserving the combination, with the registered hunters then sharing the distribution. With this model, people from afar are the most likely to add their local geography to their cup in the form of a ring that represents their local totemic hill - thus remembering and 'relaying' the moment of plenty to far away kin. On the image top right, a 'man of the hill' may have profited of a natural fissure to give his 'visitors cup' shoulders. It could be argued that there is a qualitative similarity between this shouldered 'cup and ring' and the contemporary names Hill and Hilary (the person who lived on the Hill). A tail to a cup and ring might here have shown that the person lived down the line to a position under a ritual marker hill.
AJM 04.10.18