Drumtrodden Rock Art in the cold, winter gloaming.
It’s a bitterly cold afternoon in early December, the sun is lowering towards the horizon. I’m stood by a small outcrop of rock at Drumtroddan, setting up my camera on its tripod as I’m waiting for the sun to set, with nothing but a herd of sheep for company.
This corner of Drumtroddan Farm is home to several panels of prehistoric rock art. Carved into rocks by pecking with a stone tool, often on the horizontal surfaces of outcrops and land-fast boulders, large concentrations of them can be found in groups mostly around northern England and in Scotland. They commonly are composed of a central depression, sometimes surrounded by a ring or several concentric rings, sometimes with accompanying grooves. Known as cup and ring markings, limitless variations can be found on this theme, often with regional variations regarding the use of concentric rings, meandering grooves and clusters of cup marks.
The mystery is, unlike other prehistoric features, it is very hard to decipher their meaning. There are no associated organic remains to help date them and no historic references that mention them. The only clues we have are their associations with datable monuments, such as the rock art panel, levered from the bedrock and repurposed as a capstone in the Bronze Age Nether Largie North cairn, in Kilmartin. The carvings show signs of weathering, meaning they had sat in their original position for quite some time, before inclusion in the cairn. It seems they still had some meaning to the cairn builders of Kilmartin, despite already being of some considerable age.
Another clue can be their position in the landscape. Often on the slopes of hills, very rarely on the top, with wide ranging views, perhaps they mark out a special space, route or view of significant landscape features. The rock art included in the magnificent enclosure of Woofa Bank on Ilkley Moor, lies between two springheads. It is conjectured that in prehistory, they may have been painted, or designs replicated on wood and fabrics. Over 100 theories have been put forward about what rock art could mean, from the banal to the mundane, but the truth is we will probably never decipher their real meaning, being long lost in the mists of time.
Drumtroddan Standing Stones are just a short distance to the south of the rock art panels and beyond them, I can see the hill tops of the Isle of Man. I watch the last flecks of light strike the Galloway Hills to the east, as the sun slips below the clouds, a deep orange glare behind the small copse of trees to the west. Perhaps it is this view of the hills that have some relevance to the position of the carvings, or that the outcrop points south west, towards the mid-winter sunset.
The sky slowly darkens as light flees over the western horizon, soon it is dark enough for the lights to work on the rock art. In daylight, just a few rings and cup-like depressions are visible, but once a low, raking light is placed by the rock, the carvings spring to life. Concentric rings and grooves, virtually invisible by day cover the surface of the outcrops. It is one of those ‘wow!’ moments.
As the darkness grows, it gets colder, dropping below freezing. After just over half an hour of trying different compositions and lighting angles, I find the cold is affecting my fingers to the point it is difficult to operate the camera, despite double layers of gloves. Crunching back across the thin, frozen layer on top of the mud, I make my way home.
Illustrations of Drumtroddan Rock Art panels, from 1912.
Dark Galloway 