Joana Valdez-Tullett

For some authors (e.g. Bradley 1997; Fairén 2007) Atlantic Rock Art is an artistic tradition that spreads along distinct geographic regions such as the British Isles (namely the Northeast of England, Scotland and Ireland), Brittany and Northwest Iberia, unified through the cup and ring motif. But is a single motif enough to unify a phenomenon?

Several approaches have been developed on the theme, creating different theories. Despite all the suggested interpretations it still has not been possible to outline a satisfactory social and cultural framework for these manifestations.

If we consider Atlantic Rock Art to be a single phenomenon that spreads through such different regions, then it is important to study it across modern administrative borders.

However the most basic and essential questions are yet to be answered and these will form the basis of my study, namely:

–          Who created these images?

–          When?

–          Why?

 

This research will involve the characterization of Atlantic Rock in three main study areas: Northwest Iberia, Northeast England and Southern Ireland. These regions were selected because:

–          Northwest Iberia: starting point of the study. I have extensive fieldwork experience dealing with rock art in this region and a good understanding of the academic debate surrounding it. This topic formed the basis for my Master’s thesis (Valdez 2010);

–          Northeast England: a wealth of well recorded rocks that have been studied since the 1820’s (Fairén 2007), but with only insular comparisons. In addition, this region’s Atlantic Rock Art is found in a wide variety of contexts making it good for comparison with the other two study areas;

–          South of Ireland: a region that has historically lacked extensive research but for which formal similarities exist with Northwest Iberia in terms of motif morphology.

 

The study will start with a review of the existing literary record regarding rock art research and published corpuses of rocks in each of the regions. This information will be supplemented through Sites and Monuments Record Office data for Southern Ireland and Northeast England, IGESPAR’s Endovelico database for Portugal and the Consellería de Cultura y Turismo of Xunta de Galicia for Spain, to highlight areas requiring additional fieldwork and site surveys.

For each of these regions I will employ a range of analysis including physical investigation (micro-scale) of the rocks and spatial analysis (macro-scale) of the social and cultural landscape where they are set.

The physical investigation will scrutinize the techniques used to carve the rocks, the deployment of the motifs regarding surface organization, sequence superimposed motifs, the characteristics of the outcrops and their settings in the landscape. I will select a number of emblematic panels in each region where the existing records are unsatisfactory and trace them using state of the art techniques to allow a finer perception of the details. These methods will be engaged to formally distinguish the morphological character of Atlantic Rock Art in each of the regions.

The spatial analysis will use GIS tools to investigate certain characteristics of the rocks’ locations, covering the following:

• The rocks prominence in the landscape, the range of territory that they control visually and whether carved rocks are inter-visible.
• Patterns of the rock distributions in terms of motifs, altitude and slope direction.
• Their relationship to natural or historical routes of movement and accessibility, and how these tie in to the position of natural resources such as water sources, metal ores, sources of stone for tools, land use patterns such as pasture; along with their relationship to known archaeological remains such as settlements, funerary contexts and material culture.

These analyses will establish the cultural setting of the rock art and the locational decisions that lie behind its creation.

Once the regional analysis has been conducted we can compare motifs, rock morphology, techniques, chronology, along with the physical and cultural settings for each region. This will establish similarities and differences allowing an informed decision to be made as to whether Atlantic Rock Art represents a homogenous phenomenon along the Atlantic façade.

  I completed my undergraduate degree in History and Archaeology at the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) in 2005 and in 2007 I finished a diploma in GIS at the University of Porto (Portugal). I then collaborated on projects with the Laboratory of Landscape Archaeology (LaPa-XuGa) in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), mainly working with GIS tools and landscape analysis.
I accomplished my Masters Degree in 2010 at the University of Porto where I defended a dissertation based on my research project about the study the two main rock art traditions in northwest Iberia, based on their interaction with the landscape.
Whilst undertaking these courses I have also worked in commercial archaeology with several companies, mostly in Portugal, Spain and England. I supervised several teams in different projects, especially in jobs that required fieldwalking.
In 2012 I started (part-time) my PhD at the University of Southampton and was awarded funding from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology in 2013, when I moved to full-time. My project will look at Atlantic Rock Art drawing comparisons between the different regions where it is said to exist. I will be using GIS for the spatial analysis and RTI to record the motifs on the rocks.

I am also a member of the Portuguese CEAACP (Research Centre in Archaeology, Arts and Cultural Heritage).