Rock art, Drummin, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Settlement Sites

Rock art, Drummin, Co. Wicklow

On a south-facing slope above the Keocha Brook in County Wicklow, a granite boulder sits fixed in the ground with six shallow circular depressions ground into its upper surface.

These markings, known as cup marks, are among the most ancient and most enigmatic forms of prehistoric art found across Ireland and Britain. Each one measures roughly four to five centimetres across and about a centimetre deep, small enough to fit a thumb, yet deliberate enough to have survived thousands of years in the open air.

The boulder itself is not large, measuring 1.6 metres along its northeast to southwest axis and 1.2 metres across. Its surface tilts gently towards the southwest, and the six cup marks are concentrated at the higher, northeastern corner of the stone. Cup marks appear widely across the Irish landscape, carved into earthfast boulders and rock outcrops during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, though their precise purpose remains unknown. Interpretations have ranged from ritual or ceremonial use to astronomical alignment or territorial marking, but none has been conclusively proven. What is clear is that someone chose this particular stone, on this particular slope, and worked it by hand. The Wicklow Rock Art Project, based at the School of Archaeology at University College Dublin, has recorded the site using photogrammetry, a technique that generates precise three-dimensional digital models from overlapping photographs, allowing researchers to study surface detail that the naked eye can easily miss.

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