...another Unrecorded Cup-Marked Stone on Ilkley Moor

Hi again!

This carving aint owt special, but it's not in any of the archaeo-surveys. We found it a few months back near the end of a wet, grey day, under dark clouds and high winds. We were cold, wet and thought it best to come back on a better day in the hope of gerrin better images. So we were up there again today (that's ErraticDave, Mikki, Mad Bob & moi!) and, sadly, the weather was grey and overcast when we got here, so we didn't manage to get any really clear pictures. This is one of the best, below. The carving comprises just 8-10 cups, two of which are double-cups (an unusual motif up here). A couple are 'dodgy', but I know some archaeo's who'd stick it in their surveys without question!



...and its name? The Gay Stone! You'll read why on TNA in the coming days...

It may be wise to look at the Geological make-up of the Gritstone Plateau Cap that overlays the sandstone core of Ilkley Moor. If these 'indentations' are man-made then I could put up thousands on this site.

300 million years is a long time ago, lots of great rivers and mountains then - and deltas that silted up ...

The rocks here were formed during the Carboniferous Period some 310 million years ago. At that time, this part of the Earth stood in tropical latitudes. The area formed part of a large river delta system similar to the modern day Mississippi Delta. Powerful rivers carried large volumes of sand and mud, derived from the erosion of a large mountain range to the north (Iceland & Scandinavia are all that is left of a mountain range that once stood higher than the Himalayas), and deposited their sediment loads in the delta system.

At times, the areas between the river channels on the delta formed swamps, covered in tropical forests. At other times, the sea rose over the delta, flooding the forests. Sand was deposited in the river channels and later solidified to form sandstone. Mud was deposited in the river flood planes or in the sea and formed shale. Thin coals were formed from the dead remains of plants growing in the swamps ... etc...etc...


Take good care and enjoy the outdoor exercise in the awakening of Spring 2010!

LOWERGATE

Hi John -

lowergate wrote:It may be wise to look at the Geological make-up of the Gritstone Plateau Cap that overlays the sandstone core of Ilkley Moor. If these 'indentations' are man-made then I could put up thousands on this site...

I get wot y' mean. But you'd have to see this stone in its context. There are a couple of cups on it that I think are natural, but several seem the real thing. But additionally we have a number of other archaeological features within yards of the stone itself. Not sure wot to make of them. ErraticDave was up there with us t'other day and he couldn't make out what remains they might be, though we all agreed they were man-made.

Simply: some low walling, seemingly Iron Age in nature; along with at least 2 small man-made rings of stone - seeming hut circles of sorts, with another couple "possibles" nearby, all of the same nature. The oddest thing of these however, was that 3 of them had long, seemingly worked stones, not unlike hearth-stones, running horizontally at ground-level up against the walled-edges of the respective 'hut circles.' They're odd inasmuch as I aint previously seen such workmanship in Bronze Age or Iron Age hut circles - yet the small circles themselves seem, at first glance, to typify prehistoric structures. No remains at all have ever been recorded in the section of the moor where these remains have been found, so I'm at a loss to account for them. If you know anyone with good knowledge of Roman or medieval history & architecture, it might be worth getting 'em up here for a look at them. But it'd have to be pretty soon, as the heather's gonna be growing back over the site in the coming months and it'll then be impossible to see them.

The closest potential reference is an obscure one by Cowling (1946), when he curiously described some prehistoric remains near the edges of the legendary Yellow Bog - but his directions were way out (unusual for him). The pictures below, poor though they are, poorly highlight the remains we were looking at - but they're obviously a lot better 'in the flesh'.



In this image - poor though it seems - the long stone is laid flat along the edge of an early walled structure, but seems very "worked", if y' get wot I mean: as if cut by tooling. There are a couple others like this hereabouts in the edge of the crude small circles. The other photo below shows some walling which, when you see it in the flesh, is pretty obvious. Our cup-marked stone is just a few yards away from this. There's also another possible cup-marked rock (2-3 cups) amidst these curious remains - and the cups on this other rock are more typical in size and erosion to those commonly scattered up here. But I'm less sure about that than the original questionable one!