Transcript: Professor Richard Bradley: VFT 3 Kilmartin Glen
Question 3: Kilmartin Glen and its environs have the highest concentration of
prehistoric rock art sites in Britain. Why did this area emerge as such an
important place for this form of Neolithic expression?
There are a number of possibilities; first of all we have to say that Kilmartin Glen was settled from an early
date. That’s come out from Richard Tipping’s pollen analysis. So the notion that it’s an empty sacred
landscape isn’t tenable. People are living there. At the same time it’s on one of the major routes for
crossing form east to west; I mean the clue really is the existence of the Crinan Canal. And people moving
from the west mainland, if we can call it that, in Scotland towards Ireland face the problem of the Mull of
Kintyre. Either one sails around it, which is a very considerable distance and not a particularly easy journey,
or one passes across it, essentially along Kilmartin Glen or along the current path of the Crinan Canal which
practically goes past Achnabreach and Cairnbarn anyway. So it’s strategic in terms of human movement.
Why human movement? Well one of the strongest arguments is that this is on the route which copper from
southwest Ireland enters Scotland. Now there’s a slight problem with that argument, I believe it, but we do
know that copper could potentially be obtained at Kilmartin. I have to say that there is absolutely no
evidence at present for the exploitation of local ore. So it may be that it is essentially a landfall; it’s
essentially a staging post on an extremely important long distance route involving the movement of
materials that at the time would probably be regarded as a having magical and not simply practical
properties.
There’s also the curious thing that Kilmartin Glen in its broadest sense is tremendously accessible from a
large number of directions. Essentially there are a series of valley routes leading into it from different
directions in the hinterland and indeed on the coast. For example, one might come from the south past
Lochgilphead past Achnabreach; one might come from the north or rather northwest past Orlink into
Kilmartin Glen. Then there are the valleys leading off to the east. One thing that is very noticeable is that
the major, the conspicuous, panels of rock art overlook those routes and often they align those routes or
they overlook the point where those valleys essentially enter the main Kilmartin complex. And on the
whole, and it’s a very subjective thing to say, the rock art in each of those valleys is a little different as if we
are also dealing with people who are moving into those areas at particular times for particular reasons. I
think one institution that we might very seriously consider is something like pilgrimage. Not least because
the larger monuments would require quite a number of people to build them and not necessarily people
who were ordinarily resident in the area.
So it’s a very strategic point in terms of the movement of resources, movement over land, to some extent
access to the sea but it’s also very important, I think, because of its history. Long before copper becomes a
significant feature we already have chambered tombs. It’s arguable; I think it’s pretty well shown that the
first rock art is earlier than the metal. In other words it can’t just be a function of metalwork coming from
southwest Ireland and finding its way, to some extent, to northeast Scotland where it’s been particularly
prevalent.
Kilamartin has already achieved a prominence through chambered tombs, through what I would regard as
Late Neolithic rock art, possibly the Ballymeanoch henge though I have to say it’s completely undated and
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Transcript: Professor Richard Bradley: VFT 3 Kilmartin Glen
12/02/13
perhaps undateable (it might be later). So, the metal component is secondary and it’s sort of … to an
existing significance. There seems to be at Kilmartin, as indeed in many parts of prehistoric Britain, an
obsession with this past, in the past itself; a looking back to monuments that we built a long time ago which
may not be properly remembered, which may be reinterpreted, may be invested with powers they never
originally had or associated with mythical beings, ancestors, who could be invented or actual, we don’t
know. So I think once Kilmartin has a certain note of importance I the Neolithic, in a way the timetable is
set for more developments in the Bronze Age which very frequently refer pretty directly back to those. We
started, we were talking about the reuse of rock carvings, we could equally talk about the siting of Bronze
Age cairns in places that already have rock carvings very close to them like one of the tombs at Nether
Largie that applies to. I think all these elements come together and you have the same thing carrying on
near the Ballymeanoch henge - you have standing stones that may be themselves reused pieces of outcrops
that were carved who knows, maybe a thousand years earlier.
So it’s a pivotal point in terms of communications, it’s a pivotal point in terms of the significance of the past
and I suspect it’s pivotal also in terms of people going there for special reasons that are not directly
concerned with what we call trade or exchange but with the use and operation of those monuments. And
remember that the recent quarry work has just shown that there are more monuments than we ever
imagined and not all of them were built of stone. And that’s raising lots of possibilities, not least that some
of those monuments are even earlier than we had supposed. So I think all those elements come together.
The danger is to write it off as something called a ‘ritual landscape’, a horrible term which I have a suspicion
I may have coined myself when I was much younger. The fact that a particular area contains an unusual
abundance of specialised structures does not mean that it’s empty of ordinary inhabitants. And I think
recent work has just simply shown that you can’t make that separation between the mundane world and
the sacred, it just doesn’t work. I mean, work in Orkney has shown this very clearly with settlements right
outside stone circles.
I think one has to ask, was there something special about the resident population at Kilmartin? Well, at the
moment we simply don’t know because there has been effectively no settlement excavation and it would
be very difficult, I suspect, in that landscape even to locate surviving structural evidence of settlements. It
must have existed but it may have gone.
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