THE CATLOW 'SCRATCH STONE'

AN EXAMPLE OF INCISED PORTABLE ROCK ART WITHIN EAST LANCASHIRE

John A Clayton: December 2014 The Burnley, Nelson and Colne Archaeology Survey Project

Context and Description The BNCAS Project is an open-ended archaeological survey (January 2013 - ) within East Lancashire extending along the upland corridor from Wycoller in the east to Cliviger in the west - an area of 63 square kilometres. Within this area is the hamlet of Catlow, a small farming cluster surrounded by settlement scatter. Catlow is of particular archaeological interest; contained within its boundaries are Bronze Age burials, lithic evidence for Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement, a probable hilltop defended settlement and a minor hillfort. There is also evidence for a continuity of occupation of the area through the Medieval to the present day. The western boundary of Catlow is defined by Catlow Brook, a stream running through a moderately deep valley before joining Walverden Water and continuing through the town of Nelson. For a number of years local historian, Peter Rutkowski (a native of Catlow), has been finding examples of ancient stone artefacts within (and alongside) Catlow Brook - among these are fossilised tree ferns, a saddle quern, iron slag from smelting and possible tools. In the summer of 2014 Peter discovered the most fascinating artefact to date - a stone tablet with clear evidence of deliberate working. The artefact has been shaped from a tablet of sandstone measuring 20cm in length, 16cm in width and 7cm in thickness (Fig: 1). The natural stone in this immediate area is a closed to medium sandstone grading into a coarse gritstone on the higher ground around Boulsworth Hill some 2k to the south. While the tablet is of a closed grain type it contains narrow bands of silica, some of which run the whole length and width of the tablet, thus suggesting that the stone originated to the east of the Pennines, along the sandstone/limestone interfaces of West Yorkshire. It is also very possible that the stone is an erratic - what is very likely is that the unusual silica banding meant that the stone had special qualities that would appeal to anyone intent on making their mark upon it.

20cm Fig: 1 Incised face of the tablet As we shall see, the tablet has distinctive working on both faces each one displaying a particular form that is suggested here to have been created by the hand of man within the prehistoric period. The argument for this is set out below, beginning with the incised surface evident in Fig: 1. The tablet displays the common features of long-exposed stones in this district where a brown to blackish ferromanganous accretionary deposit conceals the natural colour of the rock surface. This patina is formed by mineral matter of oxides and hydroxides of iron accompanied by low volumes of silica, clay minerals, quartz grains and organic particles. An advantage of this dark patina is that it can be utilised in the creation of markings such as writing or artistic depiction. There are two methods of creating imagery on patinated rock (we are not concerned with painted surfaces or ‘cup’ marks here) - a motif can be created by controlled removal of the patina to leave an exposed form in the exposed lighter surface (the scraffito/petroglyph technique Fig:2). This technique is useful where large figures of 'filled' forms are required.

16cm

Silica band

Incised lines

The second method is to use stone or metal tools to engrave scratched or pecked relief into the surface, either as deep grooves of a sufficient depth to provide dimensional imagery (Fig: 3) or as a shallow, narrow groove penetrating the patina to expose the lighter rock. It is thought that as the deeper grooves required more labour to create they may have been cut prior to the development of patina.

Fig:2 Petroglyphs near the Colorado River Fig: 3 Deep grooves on Quinta da barca's Rock - Portugal

The majority of grooves, or scratched relief lines, on the Catlow tablet measure 2mm in width with a fewer number of around 1mm. The natural silica bands are .5mm to 1mm wide with the exception of a single 1.5mm band running diagonally across the tablet. With a mean depth of .5mm the shallow incised lines form a degree of visual relief but the principal effect is that of contrast between the lines and the dark patina - the filiform technique.

Fig:4 Rock carving of a bison and antlered head on Boulsworth Hill. The deep grooves utilize natural fissures in the rock and provide a strong relief. However, the age of this carving is uncertain - the rock is exposed and, given that this type of stone erodes at a rate of 5mm to 50mm per millennia, it is probable that the relief was created in the Victorian period

Engraved Rock Art

The subject of ancient rock art is a wide-ranging one of a largely subjective nature. The art form is often considered an important part of archaeological evidence and has been included in scientific research since the end of the 19th century (Boman 1908). This is not to say, however, that there is a general consensus in the approach of archaeologists towards rock art.

On the one hand it is considered by some that where no emic evidence can ever be obtained in relation to a specific panel of inscribed relief, or painted imagery, then the modern 'educated/literate' mind cannot possibly conceive of the original intention of its creator. In other words, is it possible for individuals who are not part of the culture who made and lived with the rock art ever to truly understand its meaning? It is fair comment that the literate mind views the world in a different way to the non-regimented mind of previous millennia. For instance, it is possible that a form of code was utilised by the ancient creators of rock art where there was a need to externalise the existence of different landscapes in the same place at the same time. Different social groups could have inscribed the landscape with any particular cultural significances that had valency for them - as opposed to others. Rock art, in its commonest form, is found on 'fixed/earthbound' rock faces within protected places such as caves and sheltered outcrops - in this way people were marking the land in a highly symbolic way and it is these symbols and inscriptions that could only be read and understood by those who knew the code. A great deal of work has been carried out on the rock art found in many regions of the Australian outback and it was found that some of the art was only recently created by Aboriginal natives. One ethnographer, who had been assessing the art reliefs for over twenty years was able to visit a carved panel with its creator. It was realised that the expert had misinterpreted the meaning of over 90% of the work. Given this difficulty of cognition many archaeologists choose to simply ignore the global corpus of rock art. On the other hand, a large number of specialists are willing to study the subject scientifically and to publish their results to an international audience. This by no means solves the enigma of, say, a 30,000 year old cave painting or a 45,000 year old scallop shell carrying well defined filiform inscriptions. The debate engendered, however, allows for the recognition of common typology, technique and landscape context across the continents of the world. The filiform rock art apparent on the Catlow tablet can be seen to share a commonality with similar forms of stone inscription within western Europe. Several regions here share a typology of motif with the depiction of asterisks, net patterns, zig-zags, pentagrams, scalariforms, cruciforms, tree-like motifs and arrow heads etc.

Fig: 5 is a Neolithic rock slab showing scratched depictions of the moon and stars (asterisks). Fig:6 shows an asterisk cum-wheel/sun motif on the Catlow tablet

Fig:6 Fig:5

Fig:7 Ancient anthro-sun figure scratched on a rock at Formiguera, France. The head/sun depiction closely resembles the Catlow tablet motif in Fig: 6 Many examples of filiform rock art have been dated to the Palaeolithic period while others were created at different periods between the last Ice Age (c.10,000 BC) and the British Roman period (c.45 AD to 410AD). Perhaps the most common period for rock art within Northern Europe was the Late Neolithic to Late Bronze Age (British - c.3,000 to c.2,000 BC) although filiform engraving survived within Britain as 'witch marks' or 'witch charms' through to the modern era.

Fig: 8 Witch marks inscribed on a floor joist in southern England during the 17th century. These 'charms' or 'spells' were intended to prevent witches from entering the house and probably illustrate a direct descendance of ideas from the prehistoric period

Study of modern tribal culture provides a useful emic insight into the intentions of past rock art creators. Studies of the Hopi and the Zuni pueblo tribes of Western America show that their rock art had multiple purpose as a coding system used and maintained as a method for organising experience (Olsen. N. H.) The purpose of their art was to externalise unseen boundaries between social and kin groups - regulate ownership and maintenance of land - identify participation and validate the hierarchical responsibilities of priests and clan members - count time - document events - record oral and traditional histories of clans and societies - commemorate portions of the cosmology

A round thirty years ago a rich corpus of Palaeolithic rock art was discovered along a dried riverbed in Côa Valley, Portugal. The incised panels found there show a distinct commonality of design and execution with other European examples of filial and scraffito/petroglyph techniques. In a number of ways the designs of the Catlow tablet can be directly compared to certain panels of Côa Valley art.

Fig:9 Côa Valley Fig:10 Catlow Fig:9 is a scratched Palaeolithic rock art panel from the Côa Valley depicting a stag or possibly two stags, one superimposed over the other.

Fig:10 is taken from the Catlow tablet and can be seen to carry an almost identical style of depiction. Black lines represent scratched incision while the red is a natural silica band - we shall see later that this band is probably of importance within the whole design.

A key concept of Côa art is the superimposition of several animals in the same area of a rock panel leaving blank other suitable carving zones on the stone face. Sometimes older grooves have been reused within these superimposed engravings. Animals are well individualised as if hovering in an ideal space (Baptista. A. M. 2007) The imposition of one motif over another explains why many rock art examples appear to be a complete mish-mash of lines without particular order or purpose. Antonio Baptista, who has studied the Portuguese rock art for many years, is of the opinion that certain of the art panels were created within the Gravettian period (25,000 to 20,000 BC) when people were utilising rock art to monumentalise their landscape and the animals and watercourses within it. Engraving continued less intensely through the Solutrean (20,000 to 15,000 BC) at least to the Magdelanian (15,000 BC to the end of the European Ice Age c.10,000 BC). Baptista considers the Côa Valley as a 'Vast open-air sanctuary, traversed and understood by successive generations of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-artists.' Fig: 11 A rare example of portable rock art found at Farizeu's Rock, Côa. This small schist plaque is thought to date to the Magdalanian and carries fine scratched incisions of a geometric and zoomorphic nature. There are striking similarities here to the Catlow tablet

The Catlow Tablet – Pragmatism or Art? The Catlow tablet displays working that can be directly compared with many other examples found throughout Europe. However, to reiterate the problems within translation of these motifs it has to be said that we can never be fully confident when assessing the true belief behind these ancient depictions. Rock art expert, R. G. Bednarik states that:

Most rock art traditions of the world are far from naturalistic in the modern European sense, but appear to be highly stylized, schematized, or conventionalized. Depending on the degree to which such cultural treatment departs from Eurocentric conventions, meaning tends to be inaccessible to the cultural outsider, including the modern scholar. The meaning of rock art for which an emic explanation is lacking is simply not accessible to the alien investigator.

The most pervasive human reaction to rock art, irrespective of the age, ethnicity, or conditioning of the beholder, is to try to figure out what it depicts and what it means. If adequate clues are spotted in a motif to invite “identification”, it is considered to be figurative or iconographic, and it is then interpreted on that basis. Clearly, then, this process reflects the values, mental constructs and visual responses of the beholder rather than the producer of the rock art motif. It is an entirely subjective procedure that can only tell us about the cognition, perception, and mental world of the former; it tells us absolutely nothing about the mute maker of the object, his or her worldview or beliefs.

The self-deception practiced by archaeologists is easily explained. The world’s rock art was typically produced by illiterate people, whose brains differed significantly from those of literates in how they were organized, interconnected, and integrated. Those of non-literates operate largely through “magical thinking”, whereas the operation by cause and effect reasoning is acquired ontologically. Therefore the most reliable modern interpreters of rock art should be infants, followed by illiterates. The least qualified are modern academic sophisticates .

In short, the process of the beholder convincing himself/herself that this is a depiction of any specific animal is completely subjective, in that confirming aspects are accepted and disconfirming ones are rejected to arrive at a preferred reading. The same applies to the thousands of other “identifications” of animal species in world rock art: they are based on pareidolia and autosuggestion.

There is a vast body of literature around the notion that rock artists were either shamans or suffered from mental illness. The popularity such entirely unfounded fantasies enjoy is certainly in need of an explanation. It would seem that scientifically based elucidation of rock art lacks public appeal. It also remains profoundly unknown at what point in human history the practices we define as shamanism were introduced, despite isolated claims for Holocene evidence. In the entire ethnographic world literature there is not a single report

of a shaman having produced rock art. So we see that any attempt to interpret the design of the Catlow tablet might be considered to be based upon the attitude of the modern observer and is therefore purely subjective. What then are we to do when an artefact such as the Catlow tablet is discovered? The obvious initial step is to confirm that the apparent rock art is actually just that – designs and motifs created by the hand of man and not purely the result of natural process (weathering, marks created by action of streams beds, accidental markings created by using the stone for cutting leather or butchery etc.). Further to this, the Catlow markings have been analysed by means of reverse casting where an impression of

the scratched grooves was transferred onto modelling clay (Fig: 12). This allows for accurate assessment of the depth, width and linear extent of the markings and shows that the filiform was created by deliberate action with at least two tools – one square-ended and another of a sharper type. The possibility of the grooves having been created by friction against stones in the stream bed, or by use as a type of cutting block, are very slim given that the lines travel over the bump of the convex surface and down over the chamfered sides.

Fig:12

If we accept that the Catlow tablet carries genuine rock art then we are faced with the problem outlined by Bednarik where; ‘a depiction of any specific animal is completely subjective. . . based on pareidolia and autosuggestion.’ However, while accepting that many examples of rock art have been wrongly translated in the past (by amateurs and professionals alike) I would argue that when we are faced with a motif, design or zoomorphic figure that has been recognized and proven through archaeological and ethnographic evidence then we should accept the modern integrity of translation of that design. In other words, where we see a clear filiform depiction of a bird, a stag, a bovine, a fish, the sun and stars etc. we are capable of recognizing the depiction (if not the intention of the artist) – after all, a bird is and has always been a bird.

I am prepared, then, to suggest that the Catlow tablet carries a number of subtle ‘messages’ within the size, type and shape of the stone, the grooves engraved into its surface and at least two separate zoomorphic figures.

Fig: 13 Filiform grooves on the etched face of the Catlow tablet indicate the form of a bird with a fish in its beak. The bird faces east in orientation of the viewer facing the midday sun. The stars indicate asterisk designs – possibly the stars of Orion’s Belt?

The bird stands firmly within the darkness of night with its beak pressed hard against the natural silica band that runs diagonally across the face of the tablet. Birds were an ancient symbol of the transition between the cosmos and the underworld and it is possible that the silica band represents the boundary between the earth and the sky. Here we may be seeing a depiction of this where the bird is offering a fish to the sky gods to effect its transition from night into a new day when the sun rises.

Lozenge concavity – possibly representing the sun at noon on its traverse of the daytime sky

Silica band – may be the sky boundary between day and night. The sun rises bottom left, follows the band and sets top right

Fig: 14 When the tablet is rotated through 180 degrees the stag/deer depicted in Fig:10 becomes apparent. Here the muzzle presses against the silica band with the asterisk stars overhead. The form is orientated to the west and the sun is below the horizon of the silica band. Some experts are of the opinion that some rock art panels represent ancient stylised maps of rivers and trackways. Not being convinced of this I decided to load the accurate sketch (Fig:14) into GIS programming in an attempt to find any correlation between the engraving and local landscape features. GIS allows for an overlay of the sketch lines on aerial imagery, LiDAR and the sites resulting from the Burnley, Nelson and Colne Archaeology Survey. The problem here is that if the tablet was indeed designed to fill the purpose of a type of ancient local map then, to make sense of it we need to know the scale. This is not possible and so it became a matter of experiment – there are any number of combinations when it comes to overlaying the sketch onto the modern landscape. All permutations of orientation and size need to be covered – would the ‘map’ represent an area as large as a county, a village or a couple of fields? Having spent a great deal of time on this I found that it was relatively easy to find a few matches between the sketch and landscape features (rivers, streams, boundary ditches and walls etc.) but never of sufficient number as to be considered as firm evidence. The closest match found became apparent when looking at the confluence of the rivers Don and Calder in Burnley. The rivers form the head, beak and breast of the bird with the tail extending into Yorkshire – this is illustrated below as a matter of interest, as opposed to serious suggestion (Fig:15).

Fig: 15 The breast and head of the bird fit within the area proscribed by the rivers Don and Calder (blue line). No other significant alignment matches are apparent in this configuration excepting the fact that each line terminates at a common type of site i.e. defined hilltop enclosures, the majority of which form promontory features at the head of river valleys. The tail extends towards Leeds and the outline of the tablet can be seen to roughly conform to one boundary configuration of the Medieval kingdom of Elmet. Also the silica line follows the diagonal trajectory of the boundary between kingdoms that ran from the Mersey estuary to the Tyne estuary. However, there is a distinct lack of corroborative data here and without this we are firmly within the danger zone of autosuggestion as suggested by Bednarik. At this stage I can only say that no solid evidence has been found to support the theory that the Catlow tablet represents any form of physical terrain map. The engraved face of the Catlow tablet, then, has many parallels with the rock art examples of other countries. I am reasonably confident, therefore, that the stone is an important (and rare) representation of prehistoric rock art – whatever its original purpose might have been. However – we are not yet finished with this fascinating artifact. The stone becomes more mysterious when it is seen that the opposite face to the filial engraving displays a carved depiction of an animal head. To all intents and purposes the carving is a ram’s head – goat head depictions commonly had beards and the bull’s head was usually shown with a pronounced bulbous profile.

Burnley

Leeds

Elslack

N

Fig:16 Carved face of the Catlow tablet depicting a (probable) ram’s head. Deep relief carving on the outer areas of the stone represents the fleece – a common technique found on a number of similar prehistoric and Romano-British carvings. Finer features of the face have eroded over time. Why the ram was carved into stonework is impossible to say with any conviction. There were probably many reasons for this including worship of certain gods who were connected with the ram symbol and ceremonies relating to the fertility of livestock. Perhaps a clue may be found within the cult of the dead suggested by many archaeological finds within Europe. Among Iron Age Celtic remains in Gaul are found andirons of clay, ornamented with a ram's head. These have been interpreted as symbols of sacrifice offered to the souls of ancestors. The ram was already associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of fire on the hearth, and by an easy transition it was connected with the cult of the dead there. It is found as an emblem on ancient tombs, and the domestic Lar was purified by the immolation of a ram. Figurines of a ram have been found in Gaulish tombs, and it is associated with the god of the underworld. The ram of the andirons was thus a permanent representative of the victim offered in the cult of the dead. A mutilated inscription on one of them may stand for Laribus augustis, and certain markings on others may represent the garlands twined round the victim. Serpents with rams' heads occur on the monuments of the Celtic god of the underworld.

Missing portion

Conclusion

The Catlow tablet carries two distinct types of rock art – the engraved face suggests a possible Palaeolithic to Iron Age origin while the ram’s head may be typical of the Iron Age to Romano-British period. This raises the question as to whether the art on each face is contemporary – or is it possible that the engraved tablet was created first? It is known that early artefacts were valued by later generations and preserved as ‘heirlooms’ within the family or clan. It may be that the engraved panel was valued for many generations before the ram’s head was created on the reverse face when a culture of the dead came to prominence within the culture of the artist.

The stone was discovered within a short stretch of the boundary stream known as Catlow Brook that has furnished a number of exotic stone types. This part of the stream runs below land where a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age flint tools have been recently found (2014). A short distance upstream is a defended promontory settlement of the Bronze and Iron Age periods and also the site of now-destroyed stone circle close to Ringstone Hill. An equally short distance downstream the BNCA Project found a Mid-Late Bronze Age ditched enclosure.

The Catlow tablet was discovered in the stream below an ancient ford; however, the slight degree of waterborne erosion apparent on the stone suggests that it had not been in the water for any considerable length of time. It does not appear, then, that the stone was deposited within the stream as a ritual offering. However, the presence of other exotic stones within the vicinity would suggest that certain artefacts were valued and gathered together for some special purpose within prehistory – although not for deposit in the water.

This example of portable ancient rock art is, as far as I am aware, the first of its type to be found within the North of England, if not the whole country. It is, therefore, of importance to the understanding of ancient British culture and to the wider international corpus of early communicable and cultural art.

Examples of American engraved Palaeolithic rock art

Sources The ancient landscape context of the Catlow district is covered in:

Clayton. J. Archaeology of Burnley and Pendle – PART ONE – Ice Age to Middle Bronze Age Barrowford Press 2014 Clayton. J. Archaeology of Burnley and Pendle – PART TWO – Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age Barrowford Press 2014 www.barrowfordpress.co.uk

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Anati. E. Mailland. F. Oosterbeek. L. Co-eds The Intellectual and Spiritual Expression of Non–Literate Societies BAR International Series 2360 2012 Baptista. A. M. Rock Art of the Côa Valley Archaeological Park 2007 Bednarik. R. G. Myths About Rock Art Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol. 3 No. 8 2013) Bednarik. R. G. Pleistocene Paleoart of Europe International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO) Boman. E. Antiquities del la Republique Argentine Paris 1908 Coimbra. F. Dimitriadis. G. Cognitive Archaeology as Symbolic Archaeology Edited by BAR International Series 1737 2008 Joaquinito. A. Pereira. A. Ribeiro. N. Zoomorphic Art in the Open Air Rock Art Complex of the Ceira and Alva River Basins and Adjacent Unhais River Basin – Portugal Portuguese Association for Archaeological Investigation - Portugal Olsen. N. H. Hovenweep Rock Art Institute of Archaeology University of California 1985 Simões de Abreu. M. Andrea Arcà. M. Fossati F. L. Jaffe. A. L. Palaeolithic Rock Engravings at Verelhosa, Coa Valley Archaeological Park – Portugal (Paper)