Petroglyphs and the Stars in Northumberland
Cup and ring petroglyphs are found widely in Northumberland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal and further afield across the globe. They are mysterious and beautiful objects of art in the landscape, but, as this book explains, they are much more than that.
Nine petroglyph sites in Northumberland are examined here, and are shown to have depicted the night sky above them in the Neolithic era to a high degree of accuracy. This opens up a whole new field of study because, together, the Northumberland petroglyphs make up a star atlas. Decoding them is likely to yield valuable astronomical information about the sky 4,500 years ago.
This book provides the relevant astronomical background and explains carefully how these petroglyph motifs can be deciphered. It will be of interest to astronomers, archaeologists, conservationists of ancient monuments, and particularly to amateurs who would like a field guide on how to interpret the messages on these rocks for themselves.
Dr P. F. Tullet is a physicist with an MSc in Astrophysics from Queen Mary College and a PhD in Space Plasma Physics from Lancaster University, UK. His thesis studied the connection between Poynting flux detected in Polar satellite electromagnetic data and the Northern Lights, which are usually seen at high latitudes. He has worked for Marconi on signal processing algorithms and taught physics in Northumberland. His publications include the papers “Artificial Glow-worms”, “Fractal Accretion of Cosmic Grains”, “A Null ULF Wave Direction-finding Technique” and “Poynting Flux and the Ionospheric Switching of Geomagnetic Substorms”. He has also recently presented a library exhibition of astrophotographs entitled “From a Cranbrook Garden”, which was very well received.
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