Cupmarked Rocks - Minoan Style!
Jun. 2nd, 2010 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endlessraritiesI refuse to leave my nightly blogging session on a dismal note, so I'm going to return to Crete and the Minoans...
Malia was the first Minoan site I visited, and I'd barely ventured onto the site when something very strange and yet oddly familiar caught my eye:-
Those of you familiar with British archaeology will hopefully be well-versed with prehistoric rock art. No,I'm not talking about the album covers gracing ancient recordings of Fred Flintstone covering Rolling Stones songs (with Dino on backing vocals...), but the cupmarks and cup-and-ring marks that grace rocky outcrops in isolated places throughout western Scotland and Northumberland.
When I looked at this rock, with its pecked out 'cups', I thought of our indigenous cupmarked stones, though this is obviously very different in that its cupmarked are so beautifully arranged. Further investigation revealed that it was in fact a feature known as a kernos.
These objects are thought to be little altars. Offerings of grain or liquid might be left in the 'cups'. Were different cups used for different substances (olive oil, grain, bull's blood, or whatever...) or was each individual cup used by a different family or community? Who knows! But they certainly crop up everywhere.
Malia has another beautiful example which unfortunately I didn't manage to photograph. Imagine a perfectly circular stone, a bit like a small millstone, laid out with similar, though more perfectly executed, cupmarkings to those shown on the kernos I've featured above. And lurking in the Minoan town of Gornia, another small example lurks near one of the entrances. It almost looks like it's been reused, but there's various other 'special' features in the vicinity which suggest that this small cupmarked stone has, once again, a (dare I say it!) 'ritual' role:-
I didn't find one at Knossos, but I'm sure there must have been one hiding somewhere on the site...
Malia was the first Minoan site I visited, and I'd barely ventured onto the site when something very strange and yet oddly familiar caught my eye:-
Those of you familiar with British archaeology will hopefully be well-versed with prehistoric rock art. No,I'm not talking about the album covers gracing ancient recordings of Fred Flintstone covering Rolling Stones songs (with Dino on backing vocals...), but the cupmarks and cup-and-ring marks that grace rocky outcrops in isolated places throughout western Scotland and Northumberland.
When I looked at this rock, with its pecked out 'cups', I thought of our indigenous cupmarked stones, though this is obviously very different in that its cupmarked are so beautifully arranged. Further investigation revealed that it was in fact a feature known as a kernos.
These objects are thought to be little altars. Offerings of grain or liquid might be left in the 'cups'. Were different cups used for different substances (olive oil, grain, bull's blood, or whatever...) or was each individual cup used by a different family or community? Who knows! But they certainly crop up everywhere.
Malia has another beautiful example which unfortunately I didn't manage to photograph. Imagine a perfectly circular stone, a bit like a small millstone, laid out with similar, though more perfectly executed, cupmarkings to those shown on the kernos I've featured above. And lurking in the Minoan town of Gornia, another small example lurks near one of the entrances. It almost looks like it's been reused, but there's various other 'special' features in the vicinity which suggest that this small cupmarked stone has, once again, a (dare I say it!) 'ritual' role:-
I didn't find one at Knossos, but I'm sure there must have been one hiding somewhere on the site...
