Details

LOT 0351

Bronze Age Ceremonial Cup Stone Slab

CIRCA 2ND MILLENNIUM B.C.

22 3/4 in. (50.6 kg, 57.5 cm).

Irregular slab fragment with weathered upper face, cluster of seven cup-marks without surrounding rings. [No Reserve]

Provenance

From a collection acquired on the UK art market from various auction houses and collections mostly before 2000.
From an important Cambridgeshire estate; thence by descent.

Literature

See Glob, P. V., Helleristninger i Danmark Vol. VII, Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter, Odense, 1969; Milstreu, G.& Dodd, J., The cup-mark: the smallest, most frequent, cosmopolitan and most complicated symbol in Adoranten, 2018.

Footnotes

The fragment plausibly represents one corner of an arrangement such as that at Tanum, Denmark (Milstreu & Dodd, 2018, fig.8) in which a cluster of shallow depressions forms a larger pattern. The depressions may have been used to collect dew or rainwater, visualised as a gift from the gods provided without human intervention, as well as for ceremonial uses.