The Rock-Art Landscapesapes of Rombalds Moor,r, West Yorkshire: StaStanding on Holy Gro Ground

by byV Vivien Deacon Archaeopress Archa Archaeology Archa May 2 2020

£45 pp222 pp2 pb isbn 9781789694581 978

This is an edited version of the author’s doctoral thesis, written at the University of York “after a career in nhs Mental Health Services”, which she found “curiously similar to archaeology” – meaning people in the past, as now, should be understood in their own terms, not ours. The rock art of Rombalds Moor has been well studied (see feature Mar/Apr 2015/141), but largely in isolation, a common theme. A matter-of-fact style comes with a critical awareness rare in this subject, as Deacon reviews the art, the moor and historic

analogies. On the principle that the art may be hard to date (she is sympathetic to suggestions that some may have Mesolithic origins), she sets out instead to see it in the landscape in which it was made and still resides, especially to examine the idea that views of and from sites were important. She concludes that in most cases they were, also taking in five undecorated rocks or “natural monuments”, but locally and not as part of a grand system – and, she thinks, reflecting “animistic understandings of the cosmos”.