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Sharkey, John "The Meeting of the Tracks. Rock Art in Ancient Wales". Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, Llanrwst, Cymru. Pbk, 2004. 148pp, illus, figs, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-86381-853-6 £6.50 10.50 euros

There aren't many books currently available covering "rock art" in Wales. There are three main reasons for this Firstly there's the fact that as an academic discipline it has only recently become established; secondly there's the paucity of relevant art that has so far been recorded in Wales; and finally it isn't seen as part of the tourism industry (probably just as well) so there's not much profit to be made from promoting it. So we should congratulate the author and the publishers for at least attempting to address the paucity of non-academic / antiquarian material in bringing out this book for a general audience.

Now, if you're all excited by the prospect of reading about exciting discoveries of in situ rock art - exotic paintings on cave walls, open air boulders covered with strange inscriptions and motifs, then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed, as, as far as I can see, there simply isn't very much of it that has been recorded in Wales. Instead, this book concentrates on what can be described as "monumental art", that is art that has been placed on stones that form part of monuments of some form another. And being about "ancient art" that should exclude the roman and early Christian period.

At which point we hit another snag, and that relates to dating such markings. There isn't a reliable and accurate way of dating markings on rock. One can infer from style, weathering and proximity to other archaeological material a rough date but there's no proof. So, for example, there is a chapter, which deals with hollowed out "cupmarks" which can be found in various places (thankfully this shown by a list on an accompanying map, supplemented by an addendum in the text.) All very well but we have no idea when exactly these markings were made. Let alone the meaning of them! The matter extends to more elaborate markings, including one, which the author discovered on a slab near where he used to live in Pembrokeshire. Which might, it seems, might be anything but an ancient stone but a more recent "fake", as indeed could a celebrated stone found at Llywel and now housed in the British Museum.

Given this indeterminacy it is hardly surprising that the author devotes much space to highly speculative "readings" of the markings. Which may, or may not be, to the reader's liking. Not only that, but we are treated to much background material on the likes of the antiquarian Edward Lhuyd. In short there isn't really enough material here for a book - a simple pamphlet maybe. Furthermore the production values let the text down. The first half of the book is a tiresome read - although once you get to the final sections the author suddenly hits his stride and shows what he's capable of in terms of fluent and readable prose. The photographs are gathered in one central section but not properly tied into the text so you have to keep flicking to them to see if what the author is writing about is illustrated or not. On the upside there is a useful bibliography and the author is aware of some of the possibility that there may be a connection between some of the markings in burial chambers (for instance) and it's acoustic properties.

In the absence of anything better to recommend if you're really interested in this subject this book will do for the time being, but I'd say that it's far from the last word on the subject, but given the difficulties anyone is going to have in actually saying much more on the subject (unless they make some major discoveries), it's unlikely we'll see many more books on this subject coming out soon.

6/10

Richard Alexander