The Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor

Graham Hill Abstract A fancy stone I found in a ploughed field flint scatter in April 2005; I recognised its lithic scratched marks and thought that it had been used as a resource for coloured pigments. With other possibly ochre related objects it was rejected by specialists when a group of thousands of flint tools, prehistoric pottery sherds and the groundstone evidence of an axe factory were catalogued in 2011-12 as the Clodgy Moor Project. In February 2014 I returned to that tin of rejects after studying the also not understood Clodgy Moor Boat Slate. This is what I found:

This document contains much material used in Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, part 3: Through The wall with references to parts 1 and 2 but the topic grew to require a dedicated document in March 2014. 1

Contents
Title page with abstract Contents The ochre deficit and other blind spots Scratches on my bin: a comparison An owls head Some British idols Arms of the Goddess And below the arms Omphalos Fertile triangle Ovaries Below Scratched motifs Checker-board scratchings The other side The male year god With thanks to EASE Archaeology/Historic Scotland The Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor Many thanks; C. J. Evans for the use of this image I had not found many fossils when this rock caught my eye Look into my eyes Im proud of my poo ! Similarities between The Goddess and DSCF3543 Super Natural Art Nets and checkerboards Acknowledgements References and notes 1 2 3 5 7 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 22 23 24 27 30 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 41

The ochre deficit and other blind spots

[There now follows a polemic which after the very positive interactions with archaeologists in March 2014, I hope belongs to an earlier time.. The Boat Slate has through my persistence in its cause, left me alienated, but perhaps The Goddess will help me to share these fortunate and wonderful finds. ]

What was returned in my tin of rejects may or may not be related to the extraction and use of pigments in the stone age in Cornwall, but given that I was looking for them from near the beginning of my hunt for stones in 2004 and that everywhere else in the world to this day that there are the artefacts of human beings and even their ancestors there are traces of pigment and its use on body, bones, stones and rock walls: there should be some ochre related artefacts in Cornwall. Perhaps it was me who was less in contact with my human roots and culture than the specialists who rejected my ochrous objects as apparently in all this time to the present I did not find one genuine artefact related to human pigment use! Of course; I err on the side of caution. If just one archaeologist had said this then I would not be ladling out another paragraph of sarcasm, but it must be taught in the first year of every archaeology degree. It is already obvious that I dont have one and I have recently realised that rather than being a total disadvantage, it has at least left me untutored enough to find objects that I was not told did not exist. Of course, caution is a good thing and archaeologists must protect the body of knowledge from poor practice and bad scholarship. However I do not think that unusual or unexpected observations are given fair treatment. Inconvenient results and not easily paralleled examples have been ignored. The cult of specialisation and personality mean that an archaeologist is not open to logical argument or the presentation of evidence if they can point to another specialist or colleague to do the thinking for them. Passing the buck; in other words. In archaeology and I suggest that the problem is common to all professions (where the status of the professional grows to dwarf any other consideration) then to make mistakes is seen as failure rather than the healthy sign of scientific enquiry. This is compounded by the professional ethic of dont argue in front of the kids[the public]. Time Team archaeological dig BBC programme was fascinating for doing just that. If I have disagreed with a specialist on any point another archaeologist only has to hear their name for any argument I have to make to be ignored . Pope Urban VIII, if he is known for anything is known for only one thing! (The tormentor of Galileo) We should ask why; given that we have some of the most fantastic Neolithic monuments in Europe; if not the world then why do we feel so ignorant about the lives of the people who raised them? But of course we will never know! and its corollary brought to bear several times for dogmatic emphasis It is arrogant to think otherwise; is another archaeologists maxim repeated to me. The unknowing of the other might be a truism that could be applied to any other person or animal; even in the same room and time. Taken to extremes;[salt your prose with Latin if possible: in extremis] then any archaeologist making such a statement should fall on their sword as they have just suffered the revelation that their profession is a waste of time. At least they are not in the business of answering the publics questions. But perhaps they never were. That was the job of TV programmes such as Time Team. No there must be a middle way in which through great work then small insights might be made by professionals into the lives and motivations of people through the discipline of archaeology. Articles on pits and pot sherds may be leavened by the last line speculating about the people who made ritual returns to these special places in the landscape. Big deal! 3

We may never know everything about the past for sure and some of the details already agreed may be too trivial to care about and irrelevant. The typology of pot sherds in the absence of other dating evidence has become a shibboleth. The retrospective distinctions become labels for whole peoples and a notional label for an artefact of unknown use such as wrist-guard or pot lid can mould our thinking erroneously for generations. But there are daily efforts to understand. I am sure that one of the easiest ways is to re-enact the past through making and using ancient technology and not necessarily understanding what to do next but simply avoiding what is not given in the era to be contemplated. We can all be the worst stone-age axe maker without a craft tradition to fall back upon but we will not compound our ignorance by shortening the task with modern machines and cutting tools.
If we are pleased with our work we will not sell the stone but rather barter it or give it away to someone we appreciate. We may not answer the questions that we set at the beginning of the task but at the end I bet we will be answering ones we had not even thought of! Do you know why people grind axes near their dwellings and get their rough-outs from beaches and from the tops of particular mountains? I know because I make the things. To do it another way would be less convenient and sometimes even impossible; not just for me but for anyone. Is that not a hypothesis but an arrogant assertion? I can use scientific method but a lot of things you find out are without strictly using it and archaeology being a historical project about history and prehistory is not very scientific. We cannot normally run control experiments for history. The what if?s remain speculation. A lot of what passes for fact and is taught as though it is, is the reporting of what other people wrote and if it is not your colleagues then who better than an unreliable Greek or Roman scribe? My genes have hardly changed in 50 000 years, according to geneticists and my bones tell a similar story so I prefer experiments. My ancestors cave art from 30 000 years ago is as good as I can do now even if as archaeologists say; we cannot understand what I or someone like me was thinking at the time. On the spectrum of knowing, I think that with the skills and knowledge base we have and stripping away as much of the recent cultural baggage as possible, we may find that the arrogance is in imagining that just because in this era we are at war with nature and hence ourselves that we now have a special blind spot to what we were like in the past. You might have; but I am unlearning as much of this plastic nonsense as I can. Join me or just do it yourself. Pick up some litter from the hedge , or street or beach and make it your Sunday worship. This modern confusion is what we really can never know about and its time is but the sooted tip of the iceberg that is human awareness in nature. So what are archaeologists for if it is not uncovering the past? The clues are in plain view. The British Museum trustees hang on to The Parthenon marbles and cannot be challenged. You or I would relinquish anything that was demonstrably belonging to someone else, out of a sense of justice and/or a fear of imprisonment. Archaeologists are complicit in the plunder of weaker interests. The British Empire still rules in The British Museum. The Piltdown Man was not a great hoax but lasted a long time in Britain and despite archaeologists saying that they were not fooled, it took foreign evidence to prove that the first (intelligent) ape was not an Englishman. The rulers need to tell the stories about the past that cement their hold on power today and to close the possibilities of alternatives in the future. Our rulers admire the Romans (and the Normans) who brought civilisation to the barbarians and gave them culture, by writing about their own and destroying the alternative past. The stories to justify the present are upheld here in Cornwall as elsewhere where diligent archaeologists are keen to explain the high status of the remains that they find to make echoes of divine right to the lords and princes that still impose today.

Scratches on my bin: a comparison

Yesterday on 13th March 2014, at my house, between about 2 and 3.30pm 2 people I had not before met face-to-face, discussed The Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor. Their impressions were very favourable and I have renewed strength and confidence to continue the task of publicising it, thanks to them. Much of that time was spent in the sunlight with our plastic council issued bin as the plinth to study the object. With hindsight I should have at least provided a cloth or cleansed the bin lid but I think we were all too wrapped up in our appraisal to more than notice the bizarre and possibly insanitary situation as we intensely exchanged observations and stories. That morning I had been compiling another You tube video2; looking at the scratches on the figurine with the intention of interpreting them in the light of Marija Gimbutas sign system. With the precaution of the self-criticism of over-enthusiasm and wishful thinking I have chosen to consider images of some of the many scratches on that bin lid to look for intelligent signage or at least wilful scratch-work.

A few representative scratches are colour coded. Red ones are close parallel ones from a scuff which may have grit at the contact point, so producing the lithic type striations. The black ones, knowing the partly repetitive nature of the refuse collection might be one wide scuff with separated similar striations or many almost identical mechanical operations. The blue lines are where pseudo-patterns are formed by meetings of lines. Chance will produce some and the groups produced by mechanical repetition make more interesting patterns likely. However the changes of direction and respect of one line for another seem to be missing. The purple lines have formed some triangles but this is the simplest shape so some would happen in a dense field of lines and the ones of interest do not stop where they meet and the over- runs are of variable length.

Bin dated by makers stamp to 1994 and marked between then and 2014. This image is of what I think is a deliberate human scratch-work. It might be produced otherwise by a shake and wander during a human and mechanical bin emptying operation but I think not. The main scratch is about 45 mm wide and the zig-zagged bottom part is towards the outer edge of the bin lid. I think that this is where the design began but it seems more of an expression of action or a brain chemistry rewarded tag. A stereotyped tagger would be of an older male child or adolescent with a metal tool such as a nail or small knife. In support of this minimum age is that the height of the scratching above ground on the horizontal lid is 1.02m and is suggestive of someone comfortably taller than that in order to see what they were doing and have strength and control to achieve the incision Starting at the bottom of the scratch. There is a definite beginning, rather than a shallowing trail off, then three sharply defined zig-zags, before the rhythm excites a vigorous zag to the right which on bouncing back possibly judders or skips then pulls a return loop towards equilibrium and full stops. A tiny lift-off shoots away to the right then above it near equilibrium a final sign-off with a downward dig before another strong sweep to the right. Perhaps we see some hints of proto-writing here with the page starting at the bottom and alternate lines running in opposite directions. The hard information seems to be not there but if we look at this temporally like musical notation then we have a rhythmic and emotional piece and helped by a nearly secure context of being outside a house on offer once a week it has attracted attention in the human equivalent of male dog behaviour marking its territory!

An Owls head

DSC02294

Yellow head with suggested owl interpretation in smaller version below and a barn owl at Paradise Park, Hayle.

The (?)ground flat surface has had preferential removals of yellow limonite(?)1 at what I call the head in a diagonal direction with repeated sculpts using a serrated tool. Other doubled marks associated with these removals suggest sharp flint tool use. This is the second owl interpretation I am proposing from Clodgy Moor. This is covered in part 3 of Clodgy Moor Boat Slate(Google).Marija Gimbutas describes owls as guardians of the underworld with a liminal position in the world, being active at dusk between day and night and metaphorically between life and death.2The Bird Goddess imagery is developed further with other motifs that will be revealed on her body.

Above head: still3035 and below overlapping still3039

Some British idols

Above are free sketches of British Idols. The corpulent Grimes Graves example had doubts raised about its authenticity soon after its discovery but was featured in (Piggott,1954)1. The two other chalk figurines to the left are also from that source. All the others bar Clodgy Moor are from Orkney Isles and found from 20092 onwards. Top left is Brodgar Boy3 A week later a lower clay section was found completing the idol; if it is, essentially cylindrical. The others are from the North of the islands at the Links of Noltland and from domestic rooms giving the exciting impression that Neolithic people were carrying out this practice throughout The British isles. There may be more to find and some unrecognised in collections from excavations ( ignoring what ended up on the spoil heaps.) Part of our problem in recognising idols is that we have preconceived notions of what they should look like. The Old Testament gives the impression that pagans were making craven images of animals, human-like gods and images of objects in the heavens such as sun and moon to worship4. This may have been so but it may also have been a necessarily derogatory and simplistic view of what was going on. If the objects were more a way of focussing religiosity towards something beyond the object then often simpler objects like many of the 360 stone idols of Ma,aqa that Mohammed[blessings upon his name] destroyed were stones5. Some idols may be significant rocks in the landscape. Some Hindu idols are an upright rock with ochre upon it. Therefore much of the Neolithic pagan world will be invisible and conjectured. The suspicious manuport pretty pebbles and cobbles found amongst the flints of prehistoric scatters may be their last trace. It is the holed flint cobbles, perhaps with some flint working towards greater symmetry or other nodules which whilst seeming to have utilitarian purposes illicit the response as though looking at something chosen and subtly reworked to resemble a bird or other archetypal animal which may make up the bulk of potential idols. Also at the scale beyond portable or 9

household there are orthostats and modified boulders and rock carvings in the landscape which will stretch the continuum and definition of the word idol. The Folkton drums with their eyebrows and stylised faces, the (Irish) Knowth macehead similarly would be two more examples of anthropomorphised stones that might be objects of or intermediaries to worship. Whilst researching this article I found an orthostat from Barclodiad y Gawres on Anglesey, Wales and following the lead of Gimbutas with reference to the anthropomorphic orthostats of Gavrinis then there appears to be an idol represented here. Left: all in a days work; an idol megalith and a domestic Goddess below, described as a decorated stone

This morning (24th March 2014) whilst researching the Noltland idols I had the page open of British archaeology magazine no. 113(JulyAug 2010) and the oft seen decorated stone resolved itself post Clodgy Moor Goddess as an idol. Amanda walked past a few seconds later and without prompting said; Its like yours. Email about the similarity sent to enquiries@westrayheritage.co.uk the same afternoon and they forwarded my claim of the parallels and ID to local archaeologists[who turned out to be EASE]. I checked if there were more images and information and Sigurd Towrie in his excellent Orkneyjar blog had the same picture. He returned my email to tell me that image copyright is with EASE Archaeology, the award nominated excavators of Links of Noltland. Co-directors Hazel Moore and Graeme Wilson made short work of finding and sending me the image. This image commands page 29.

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Arms of The Goddess

DSC02341. The arms are picked out in a red ochrous material which flowers in a natural mineralisation through the white outer layer. It and the yellow pigment above must have surely attracted the attention of the person who first picked it up. In the dictionary of motifs Boyne culture: art motifs(based on Breuil).designs similar to this are incised in passage graves and may contain circles or pits and lozenges. Piggott, 19541 on page 213 says: Scalloped outlines are rare but distinctive, and without subdivisions represent, in fact, multiple face motifs joined together. I agree and have mentioned this in Clodgy Moor Boat Slate 2, but will emphasise the visual puns and transformation of life into death and vice-versa with the arms clutching her pregnant belly. Later we will look for pits or circles in the arms and incised lozenges there too!

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And below the arms

DSC02292. There is a deep gouge at her shoulder and another on the other side and her right arm has the interior white layer largely removed and also in places outside so that the red scallop is outstanding in relief. Below the arm in the white feldspar region is a visible X. This is in the region of her belly button and will be investigated next.

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Omphalos

Still5008

An incised lozenge within the lower triangle of the hourglass with an extra chevron below it to emphasise the bird goddess 13

Still5027,5032. Above: Vinca Neolithic culture Bird Goddesses and below her belly

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Fertile triangle

The top line of the triangle is symmetrically nicked and this is to indicate the position of the ovaries. This surprising conclusion is in line with Marija Gimbutas who claims that the bull horns and skull imagery of Catal Huyuk and beyond is a visual metaphor for the female reproductive system and that this anatomical knowledge is from the practice of defleshing bones to prepare them for the role of ancestor after death.1 The upper region of the triangle is also reddened; likely indicating the blood of life and this pigment may have been exposed by scraping away the outer white coating or ground into the rock structure afterwards. A natural explanation of the ochrous pigment coming from the soil, for instance proximity to rusting iron compounds I will not rule out.

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Ovaries

Still5028

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Still5032

Less well defined than the other ovary but showing signs of centred lozenge imagery.1

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Below

DSC02366

Still3346

Vulva is an important symbol from Palaeolithic times onwards1 18

Scratched motifs

Still2328 Scratchworks are visible in her right flank. The next pages explore that area in greater detail. There may be many more symbols here and on other areas 'than we can reasonably discover as the placing of them as an act of worship may have been more important than their ability to be seen again by human eye.

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Still5037

Net motifs?1 There are likely more scratchings and piercings than highlighted here.

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Still5040 A complex area of scratchings on her right flank. Is that a fish?1

Amanda saw the fish, which is convenient for my tale! More net motifs visible.

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Checker-board scratchings

Still5017 Below where her arms nearly meet. Water signs. Amniotic fluid!1

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The other side

DSC02280 oblique view with groups of horizontal scratches crossing the vertical banding and 4 X 6 mm view Still3224

The back of the Goddess is more curved and without the hard white layer. This exposes a vertical oblique banded structure which is perhaps naturally, perhaps intentionally pigment stained. The banding is emphasised by incising at the shoulder and at least 2 passes of a toothed tool run horizontally across the back. One of these passes is seen in image still3224 and the striated nature of the grooves indicates a lithic(flint?) tool. The diagonal pitched decoration on the front and checker-board on the back is a parallel to Woodcock Corner Later Neolithic slate disc,1 which was excavated in 2012 at Truro, Cornwall. Greater decorative complexity to the back of the Goddess is implied with hints of diagonal and curved motifs with pigmentation or is this clever suggestion from the artist without embellishing in any way? 23

The male year god

Still5023

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DSC02302

The male god is a[I suggest a cylindrical(phallic) or circular(spring sun)] bead around her neck. The Clodgy Moor Goddess makes the connection explicit and connects with the Vinca horned male god imagery.

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DSC02239crop and still5022

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With thanks to EASE Archaeology/Historic Scotland

To recap: whilst making a very short corpus of British idols on Monday 24th March I spotted a spitting image of The Great Goddess in a magazine and Amanda recognised it too, before I could open my mouth. I noted that the stone was only described as decorated and that the same image in Orkneyjar, the essential blog by Sigurd Towrie said it was pecked without interpreting the eyebrows. I contacted Westray Heritage centre and they kindly forwarded my email to local archaeologists. I asked Sigurd for permission to reprint the image and he told me copyright was with EASE Archaeology. Hazel Moore was very positive about the comparison between the Clodgy Moor and Orcadian stone and explained that her find predated the Westray Wife and other eyebrowed finds in the Orkneys. Swiftly on Friday 28/3/14 her codirector Graeme Wilson forwarded DSCF 3543 which I present to you in slightly cropped form with thanks to EASE Archaeology/Historic Scotland. I apologise to copyright holder, ancestors, pagans and The Great Goddess for the brightly overwritten and provisionally annotated version which faces Her image on a later page. The coloured key is below: 0. Dimensions from corrugated card with 13 and a half corrugations per 10cm on a similar box; gives 42.3 X 23.1 cm for the front face, close to the 45 X 25 quoted by Sigurd Towrie on Sept 18, 2008 and different to L36.5cm in British Archaeology 113, p.17 1. Eyes and beak 2. Eyebrow motif 3. Circular bead on pendant 3a. [disorganised counting]Chevrons 4. False relief emergent lozenges, some with raised lozenge island in the middle 5. Pecked hatched triangles 6. Tilted lozenge emerging through surface 7. Running zig-zag 8. Small stabbed lozenges 9. Faint diagonal lines suggesting subliminal shapes 10. Strongly incised group of hatched lines forming pubic triangle 10a. Outline of wing 11. Your imagination is set free. You have permission to play with the solid surface; the light and the shadows. See what emerges. You are part of nature that stands apart and emerges from and disappears into this surface. Super natural. Lose Yourself. Be.

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DSCF3543 Copyright EASE Archaeology/Historic Scotland Found at The Links of Noltland rescue dig in Summer 2008. Our stone was found prior to the discovery of the Westray Wife and although the eyebrow motif was noted the stone was found amongst surface rubble and we felt uncertain about making more of it at the time.(Hazel Moore, 2014)1 My comment on the photo is that the use of slanted sunlight has brilliantly captured the surface details. 28

Again I am not proud of my overwriting and do not feel that even a much tidier attempt would be appropriate. Drawing a moustache on an image of The Mona Lisa would be silly if it were done more often than is required to make an important point.1 Please look briefly at these provisional scribbles; only enough to get your eye in. I call this art; Super Natural Art 2and there are at least two examples from Clodgy Moor with many more emerging as we look!

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Further micro-montage images of The Great Goddess to be found in Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, part 3; Through the wall. (Scribd.com) A complete view of her back on pages 155-158 and her front lit from below on pages 149-152. Page 140 opens the findings of the rejected tin of ochre pallettes in February 2014 . A concordance between Boat Slate, Goddess and Woodcock Corner slate is on page 159. A concordance between Boat slate, Goddess and DCF3543 is pending.

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This image shows how within the left flower arm the white matrix has been excavated. Between it and below the other flower there are scratchworks including a checkerboard and crosses. The other flower arm has a great triangle carved out from the edge of the stone.

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Many Thanks; C.J. Evans for the use of this image 1

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I had not found many fossils when this rock caught my eye1
On Saturday July 3rd, 2010 in Needingworth Quarry, Cambridgeshire, business studies teacher, Susie Sinclair was taking part in an earth sciences course and seeing a rock with what she thought were some fossilised worms catching the sunlight she showed it to her tutor, Dr. Peter Sheldon. He realised that this was no fossil and contacted Christopher J. Evans, director of Cambridge Archaeological Unit. I saw details of this object in the media be but did not really see it as more than a curiosity, but searching urgently for a mainland Britain Grooved-Ware Super Natural Art link between The Orcadian DCSF3543 and my Clodgy Moor examples on 30th March 2014, I asked for a larger picture in order to look for that liminal boundary between art and nature. Within a day C.J.Evans delivered the image and I was delighted by his generosity and promptness. It is on the previous page. This description is from news reports: The hand-sized artefact is thought to be 4,500 years old , it was found by a woman taking part in a weekend geological course run by Cambridge University at Over2 Susie was impressed with the beauty of the object and hoped that it would contain meaning, and according to the account in The Telegraph newspaper she said: Everyone who has seen it has interpreted it differently. Its a talking point whether its a piece of art or a meaningless doodle.1 [A description of the object makes it clear what is not always apparent from smaller photos that the key motif is repeated (at a smaller scale)]: It consists of a hand-sized slab of weathered sandstone with two pairs of concentric circles etched[sic] into the surface- a motif which according to archaeologists is typical of Grooved Ware art from the Later Neolithic era.3 My description of the photo: A slab of sandstone with a plan reminiscent of a pointed hand-axe with a semicircular base and bilateral symmetry suggesting some human intervention or at least a stone chosen for its unusual shape. The side of interest has a nearly flat, slightly wavy surface, perhaps preserving fossilised ripples. What caught Susie Sinclairs eye is an interlocking pair of concentric circles nearly centrally placed between the major ripples. The circles are cut, displacing the quartz crystals from the matrix; likely using a strong and sharp tool like a flint burin and one is pit centred whilst its neighbour has a tiny circle at its centre. Just when the brain has accommodated the spectacle; a second smaller set appears to its lower left with a bilateral line sketched back to the main set. (The smaller eyes seem further away)4 With the tuition of other Super Natural Art objects in this document, the artists intention becomes apparent; even to an adult and any child 5will visually interrogate every vacuole and shadowy swirl of the rock surface, finding ghostly images towards the pointed end, snakes and scalloping near the base and lozenges and spirals on the slabs side visible in this image. How much is humanly worked beyond the two sets of conjoined circles? I suggest nearly or actually zero. How much is intended to be perceived? The Infinite!

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Look in to my eyes
Look into my eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, the eyes, look into my eyes, youre under.1 The catch-phrase of Kenny Craig, unsuccessful stage hypnotist in BBC comedy sketch show, Little Britain. The importance of the eye gaze to humans is evidenced by the many idols from ancient cultures which have enhanced eyes2. The spectacle idols of Mesopotamia with perforations for eyes may be asking the worshipper to gaze through the stone itself. Susie Sinclair speaking of her find at Needingworth Quarry said3: Some people think it is a pair of eyes or a map. I think that its more than just a doodle and I hope one day well find out.

My impression is that the humans who experienced the unknown ancient artefact from the quarry have already suggested a correct answer in their discussions, given their genetically millennia old bodies and minds. I think that eyes are the correct answer and that like The Clodgy Moor Boat owl, The Clodgy Moor Goddess and The Knowth macehead, only one of the two eyes is gazing at you so giving half attention and day-dreaming. This inner imaginative world is fixed by looking then at the smaller set of eyes, then imagining into the stone itself. The Needingworth circles are similar to those associated with the eyed Folkton drums and the eyes themselves of the Almeria, Spain decorated bone idols. 36

Im proud of my poo!
The Brodgar boy figurine is a strange segmented cylindrical object. I have drawn it after the ORCA image in orkneyjar1. It looks like a poo![In my opinion: will it ever look the same again to you?] The scatological and the sacred might seem untenable and perhaps this object was meant to amuse rather than evoke the divine but perhaps it was that too! We are familiar that the products of the cow, including its dung are sacred to Hindus and we can find the reasoning practical and logical.2 The Romans had a god of manure, particularly the spreading of fertiliser in fields;3 Sterquilinus, Stereutus or Sterculius and various sources, from Gimbutas4 to myself5 give evidence of this practice to as early as Neolithic times. The Ancient Egyptians had the dung beetle (scarab) as a sacred part of their mythology with etymological associations with coming into being and transformation6. To those of you unfamiliar with the stylings of Trey Parker and Matt Stone , in their cartoon South Park, here is after Mr Hankey(the Christmas poo). His best song contains the lines: Its the poo of the antelope, the poo of the giraffe. Which falls on to the earth, and becomes the blades of grass.7

Above: with the lower part of the baked clay Brodgar boy found a week later, the colour, size and shape must have left a thought at the back of someone elses mind which they were too polite to mention? The breather rings8 and departure from straightness at one end9 are compelling and difficult to explain otherwise. Was the poo a hanging toilet10 sign for the smaller northerly building; structure 14 for public use, convenient collection for manuring and for prevailing winds to blow the smell away from the ritually pure temple?(Structure 10).11 Nick Card, director of the Brodgar dig(ORCA) knows of my hypothesis.12 37

Similarities between The Goddess and DSCF3543 Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor DSCF3543
Diagonal pitched notional grid Lithic tooling evidence Triangle motifs Chevron motifs Lozenge motifs Cross-hatched designs False relief example Pubic triangle Neck defined Owl face Eyebrow motif Pierced/pecked out work Chevrons above beak Faint scratch-works example Zig-zag/ sawtooth Grooved Ware findspot Lithics findspot Bead under neck Incorporates rock features into the design. Super Natural Art Head sculpting and on body details Parallel scratches in hard minerals Excised on head, scratches on body Doubled below navel Sculpts on head , scratched on body On head, and between hands Defined flowery arms Cut through white layer and hatched Most body details Parallel scratches Pecked on body Many doubled on body On body On wing next to pubic triangle Centre island of some lozenges Deep horizontal lines surrounded by pecking Removal of line of white layer and Natural fracture separates head shoulders nicked from sides from body as if chosen for this. Beak with in/out eyes Beak with eyebrows Upper edge of owl face Repeated above owl face Inside arms Surrounds pubic triangle Centrally from beak to brow Through eyebrow On white flank On smooth wing On her left side above arm Above pubic triangle On surface of next field Excavated from the site1 Surface finds: flint tools, greenstone Excavated skaill knives, stone axes, axes, stone balls stone balls1 Vinca horned head shape black Circular , defined by false relief deposit with incised necklace string Yellow mineral head and red flowery Natural crack used to differentiate feature used as arms the head from the body

A comparison between Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor and Woodcock Corner slate disc is included in Through the Wall, part 3 Of Clodgy Moor Boat Slate. on Scribd.com

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Super Natural Art1

I have been educated about this art or more properly, outlook of ancient people by The Clodgy Moor Boat Slate2 and Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor and recognise now other examples including DSCF3543 and Susie Sinclairs Needingworth Quarry find. Ancient people saw the fabric or weave of the universe in the world around them and experimented with the texture of rock and organic materials, enhancing this aspect of the substrate in their art-works and manipulating the willing viewer into seeing this deeper structure beyond even the marks of the artist. In a sense a religious and visionary trance or day-dream, meditation or prayer is being induced by these objects and given that we are 50-100 000 year old beings then these objects still work! Here are some drawings after the excellent photos of Upper Palaeolithic examples included in Jill Cooks 2013 book: Ice Age Art,3 which accompanied her British Museum exhibition. Continuity of motifs into the Neolithic is noted by Gimbutas4 and evident to anyone familiar with Grooved Ware. The incised cross-hatch has lines that follow the (purple and yellow) grain of the ivory. The incisions on the head mark where the grain emerges on the head and the notched or saw-tooth break to the neck shows that the very structure of this cave lion is harlequin. Cook gives the age as 3040 000 years The oldest English example of art has been suggested a fake or salted from somewhere else but Cook includes it and I agree. If so it is in the 1015 000 year age range Like the Clodgy Moor and Truro Woodcock Corner examples the artist has chosen to express a checkerboard grid on one side and at least the pitch for a diagonal set one on the other.

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Nets and checkerboards

Marija Gimbutas on page 84 of The Language of the Goddess found that the harlequin or net motif often was found with the checkerboard. At Truro, the Woodcock Corner slate disc has these grids on either side. The Great Goddess of Clodgy Moor is another example of this on front and back. Gimbutas is not quite sure what the precise connection is. On that page she says: The checkerboard alternates with the net in association with the same series of symbols and appears to be synonymous. It may however, be a variation of the net, representing a slightly different but related concept. Often the two appear together; numerous vases are painted with checkerboard panels next to net-patterned panels. After Gimbutas, below is an illustration of such a vase from Gumelnita, near Bucharest, dated 4500-4300 B.C.0

Quite simply, the sacred moist fertile weave or fabric of nature is in all dimensions and just as the seeded lozenge means a fertile field then the whole landscape is on a harlequin grid, such as the landscape to St. Michaels Mount seen on Clodgy Moor Boat Slate1. The checkerboard(in my opinion) is more closely related to rain falling and gives the horizontal bases of clouds and the horizon, particularly when it is on a lake or the sea. Clodgy Moor Boat is shown as a side view with a horizontal shoreline and vertical mast. Using the knowledge of the conventions of skewed perspective2 then such a composite view makes sense. On a [horizontal]map we are happy with vertical symbols such as a caravan(caravan site)3 and indeed any written place names, which otherwise would stand up like ants running across it. This sophisticated view is ancient and can be seen in face on antler sets on the side view of deer in Palaeolithic cave paintings.4 So the sacred weave of nature is a fully multi-dimensional experience, as satisfying as that of the physical universe to a modern atheist scientist!5[like me if I live up to being atheist or scientist.] 40

Acknowledgements
The opinions here and particularly the criticisms are mine alone. Original contributions and sanity checks have come from the noble and ancient minds of Adam Blunsdon, Alison, Amanda Hill, Cheryl Straffon,C.J. Evans,Eirlys Hill,Graeme Wilson, Hazel Moore,Lana, Nick Card,Oliver Hawker, Roger the geologist and the sharp eyes of the finders: Susie Sinclair and Jakob Kainz(Westray Wife)

References and notes [should be impressively long and boring]

7.1 Discussion with Roger, a geologist living in Newlyn on 2nd April and viewing The Goddess. He would have wanted to have carried out scratch tests for hardness, coloured streak etc., so his conclusions are more provisional than he would have liked. He thinks that the red flowery structure is red jasper, hence the yellow head is also (yellow) jasper (or citrine; all being coloured quartzes)and the white sheet mineral is likely quartz. The unusual combination of minerals are from its formation in a lode with high temperature solutions depositing volatile minerals including iron compounds. The staining might be natural as near the surface, weathering and oxidation occur. This solifluction or freeze/thaw in glacial conditions produced a decomposed granite(rab) layer a metre or so deep which by the cyclical process especially in cold summers makes the material flow down hill. A fault or mineralised vein could have been under the field and there might be other similar stones in the plough soil. The stone has numerous scratches which appear to have purpose and would have been less likely to be natural due to the apparently hard chalcedony and quartz materials. And: on 8th April I visited The Healing Star shop at the top of Causeway Head, Penzance and showing an image of The Goddess to the shopkeeper she said that it looked like Jasper and I bought a piece of brecciated Jasper which had some similar hues and scalloped features. 7.2 Gimbutas, Marija.1989. The Language of the Goddess. Thames & Hudson. p.194-5 The review made here of the symbols associated with the Owl Goddesssnake as umbilical cord, vulva, triangle, hatched or zig-zag band, net, labyrinth, biline, tri-line, hook, axe- shows them to be life source, energy, or stimulating symbols. Their association with the Owl Goddess of Death serves to emphasize regeneration as an essential component of her personality. The agony of death which we take so much for granted is nowhere perceptible in this symbolism. 9.1 Piggott, Stuart. 1954. The Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles, p.87, fig.14; 4Windmill Hill, 10 Maiden Castle and PLATE IV Chalk figurine from shrine, pit 15, grimes Graves Flint Mines 9.2 British Archaeology, Mike Pitts(Ed.) July/Aug 2010 p.13-17(p.17;[image of front and back] local sandstone figurine[Westray Wifie] from structure 8 held by finder Jakob Kainz 9.3 British Archaeology, Mike Pitts(Ed.) Jan/Feb. 2013(p.21[image] the Brodgar figurine, a clay object with a crude face, was found in 2011 in the rubble of structure 14. A few days later the rest of the object turned up(inset) leaving its true identity a mystery(head 30 mm long) 9.4 Holy Bible, New Living Translation. Exodus 20: 1-6 Then GOD instructed the peoples as follows: I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from slavery in Egypt. Do not worship any other gods beside me. 41

Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. You must never worship or bow down to them, for I am the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god! I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and forth generations. But I lavish my love on those who love me and obey my commands, even for a thousand generations. 9.5 Wikislam.net/wiki/Pagan_Origins_of_Islam The prophet entered Mecca and (at that time) there were three hundred-and-sixty idols around the Ka aba. He started stabbing the idols with a stick he had in his hand and reciting Truth(Islam) has come and falsehood (disbelief) has vanished.Sahih Bukhari 3:43:658 Veneration of the Black-stone. The pagan gods of pre-Islamic Arabia were worshipped in the form of rectangular stones or rocks. For example the pagan deity Al-Lat mentioned in quran 53;19 and believed by pre-Islamic pagans to be one of the daughters of Allah, was once venerated as a cubic rock at Taif in Saudi Arabia. An edifice was built over the rock to make it apart as the house of worship. Al-lat stood in al-Taif, and was more recent than Manah. She was a cubic rock beside which a certain Jew used to prepare his barley porridge(sawiq). Her custody was in the hands of banu-Attab ibn-Malik of Thayif, who had built an edifice over her[] she is the idol which god mentioned when He said, Have you seen Al-Lat and al-Uzza (Surah 53:19)? Kitab Al-Asnam(Book of idols), p.14 A principal sacred object in Arabian religion was the stone, either a rock outcropping or a large boulder, often a rectangular or irregular black basaltic stoneof numerous baetyls, the best known is the Black-stone of Ka aba at Mecca which became the central shrine object in Islam. Encyclopaedia Britannica 11.1 see 9.1 15.1 Gimbutas, see 7.2. p.265 Why is the role of bucranium so prominent among the symbols of becoming? And why such close association with the Goddess? It seems that the key to this question lies in the extraordinary likeness of the female uterus and fallopian tubes to the head and horns of a bull, as noticed by Dorothy Cameron in her book on Symbols of Birth and Death in the Neolithic Era (Cameron 1981a: 4, 5. She gives a diagram of the female reproductive organs from a medical textbook, here reproduced). (FIGURE 411) [image]This similarity Cameron believes, is likely to have been discovered with the development of the excarnation process of burial. 17.1 Gimbutas, see 7.2 p.144 FIGURE 222[image] These clay seals feature dots within lozenges, symbolic of seeds within the womb or field. 18.1 Gimbutas, see 7.2. p.100 FIGURE 161[image] An enormous pubic triangle fills the front of this ivory waterbird, also marked with Bird Goddess and aquatic symbolism. Here bird, goddess and human vulva are symbolically connected. Upper Palaeolithic(Mezin, R Desna, Ukraine; c. 18,000-15,000 B.C.) H.8.67 cm. and: FIGURE 162 The vulva continues to appear amidst aquatic symbolism in later epochs, as on this Neolithic clay figurine. It is the source of or gateway to the waters of life. Lengyel (Krepice, district of Hrotorice, Czechoslovakia; 6th mill. B.C. H.7.7cm. 20.1,Gimbutas, see 7.2 p.81 FIGURE 128 [image]On these figurines, the connection between the net motif and the pubic triangle or lower body of the Goddess is clearly made

42

21.1, Gimbutas, see 7.2 p.82 FIGURE 130[image] the net linked with fish and uterine forms and associated with Xs and tri-lines emerges during the Upper Palaeolithic, as these objects from the Magdalenian epoch indicate. 22.1,Gimbutas, see 7.2 p.82. Hourglass and cross symbols alongside net-patterned squares are known from the Neolithic subterranean tombs (hypogea) of Sardinia and also on Neolithic ceramics. The chronology of most of the Paris basin caves bearing such signs is likely to be Neolithic. These mysterious places were surely sacred to the Goddess, the owner of life-water, the Giver of Life. 23.1 www.cornwall.gov.uk Woodcock Corner: a Neolithic enclosure . And: www.Scribd.com Hill, G. 2013. Truro EDC incised slate disc 28.1 Email 26 Mar 2014 from Hazel Moore Re:Permission to use a finds photo. Email 28 Mar 2014 from Hazel Moore. Graeme Wilson sends image DSCF3543 29.1Duchamp. Marcel. 1919. L.H.O.O.Q In L.H.O.O.Q. the objet trouve (found object is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title. (Wikipedia) 29.2 Super Natural Art I set myself the task of naming it, using the conventions of a two word label ie Pop Art. Super split away from natural, I think will cause the careful reader to dwell on the subtle meanings in the new word whilst borrowing a lot of ideas already available in the supernatural In late March 2014 I drafted a manifesto and this edit on 3rd April: Super Natural Art We work with the grain. We improve on nature. Yet we are within nature. We emerge from the rock. And return. With sunlight and shadow As solid and surface. Move and change. Hide and reveal. A blank sheet is strange. We stare and stare. Until our attention wanders. And draw what is there. Or crumple it up and throw it in the bin. Then admire the crumples and begin. Every cut, every mark jostled by an imaginary crowd . 34.1 Email from C.J.Evans Re:Fwd: Grooved\Ware rock art found in 2010 . C.J.Evans sends rock art 1 copy.pdf 35.1 telegraph.co.uk 7:30 AM BST 17 july 2010 Worlds oldest doodle found on rock. 35.2 cambridge-news.co.uk 16/7/2010 Ancient rock art unearthed in Cambridgeshire village 35.3 wordpress.com Antiquarians Attic, Neolithic Stone. Tuesday, 20th July 2010. 35.4 Hawker, Oliver. 2014, Apr 9th.Comment by him in his shop(Olivers at Market Jew Street, Penzance.) after he had developed an A4 sized copy of image of 43

Needingworth Quarry stone. He also said that his first thought on seeing image of the complete Brodgar boy was the same as mine. 35.5 Eirlys Hill(8 years old), my daughter after telling her about the image on the way home from school interpretted freely. Oh course that is not good science but her young mind is getting a credit from her father! 36.1 Little Britain, BBC TV series running 2003-5, starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams 36.2Hatcher, Paul.1999. The World Stare-out Championship Final. Bloomsberry. Acute anthropological observation also aired on TV in Big Train and preserved on YouTube. 36.3 see 35.1 37.1 orkneyjar.com, The Ness of Brodgar Excavations, The Brodgar Boy [image] The complete Brodgar Boy (ORCA) 37.2 religionfacts.com/hinduism, The five products (pancagavya) of the cow- milk, curds, ghee butter, urine and dung are all used in puja (worship) 37.3 Wikipedia.org/Sterquilinus 37.4 Gimbutas, Marija. 1991.The Civilization of the Goddess. Harper Collins, p.38 The LBK people kept domesticated cattle as their prime source of meat, milk, and manure, as well as sheep, goats,pigs and dogs. 37.5 Hill, Graham. 2013.Oh Mother, for the love of gold! Part 2 of Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, p.57 The Goddess of ALL fertility and Hill, Graham. 2014. Through the wall. Part 3 of Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, p.22 Pig behaviour and manure news. And: Bogaard, Amy et al. 2013. Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europes first farmers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(31):,12589-12594 37.6 Wikipedia.com/Scarab beetle. Several species of the dung beetle, most notably the species Scarabaeus sacer(often referred to as the sacred scarab), enjoyed a sacred status among the ancient Egyptians. Popular interpretation in modern academia theorizes the hieroglyphic(the language of the Egyptians) image of the beetle represents a triliteral phonetic that Egyptologists translate as xpr or hpr and translate as to come into being, to become or to transform. 37.7 Stone, Matt & Parker, Trey.2000. The Circle of Poo, Song from TV cartoon; South Park, first aired on Comedy Central, USA. 20 Dec. 2000. Season 4, 17th episode: A Very Crappy Christmas (Wikipedia) 37.8 Jones, Terry (wrote foreward). 2002.from the pages of VIZ; Rogers PROFANISAURUS,The Ultimate SWEARING DICTIONARY. Boxtree, p.26 Breather ring. An annular indentation on a long turd, indicating where the cable layer has had to pause for breath allowing the nipsy to partially contract 37.9 see 37.1 There is very little wear on it and its tapering, segmented form could represent a pendantthe site in which it was found-one of the last buildings constructed on the Ness[Nick Card, Ness of Brodgar site director]. 37.10 toilet-guru.com According to the explanatory material at Skara Brae site, drainage systems have been discovered in some of the cells. According to their interpretation, the cells may have been toilets. 37.11 see 37.1 given the area of the site in which it was found [structure 14]- one of the last buildings constructed on the Ness- I dont think its a reflection on the site as a whole. 44

May be, if it had been found in structure ten, the massive cathedral-like building, wed be thinking differently, but it turned up in what would appear to be a not particularly significant deposit.[Nick Card.] 37.12

RE: Brodgar boy reinterpretted.

FROM Nick Card TO You To [Graham Hill] [received 06 April 2014 19:49]

Now why didn't I think of that!

From: account.verify@cc.yahoo-inc.com <amanda.blunsdon@btopenworld.com> Sent: 06 April 2014 19:42 To: Nick Card Subject: Brodgar boy reinterpretted.

Dear Nick, The Brodgar boy, named after finding the top fragment would surely have had a different name if it had been found with the lower segment and even another piece below that. Could it be that structure 14 was northerly sited to take the smell away from the temple complex on the prevailing wind with purity of the site maintained and a convenient place to gather the manure for raising crops? Visitors would know that the building was a toilet (like the cell in the homes at Skara Brae) by the clay poo hanging in the doorway! All the best, Graham Hill Tel. 01736 330117. 38.1 see 9.2 39.1 see 29.2 39.2 Clodgy Moor Boat Slate (parts 1-3) published free online at Scribd.com 39.3 Cook, Jill.2013. Ice Age Art: arrival of the modern mind. The British Museum Press, p.48-50[Vogelherd lion] and p.250-3[Robin Hood Cave Horse] 39.4 Gimbutas, Marija.1989. The Language of The Goddess. Thames & Hudson. Introduction/xix The major aspects of the Goddess of the Neolithic- the birth giver, portrayed in a naturalistic birth-giving pose; the fertility giver influencing growth and multiplication, portrayed as a pregnant nude; the life or nourishment-giver and protectress, portrayed as a bird-woman with breasts and protruding buttocks; and the death-wielder as a stiff nude(bone)- can all be traced back to the period when the first sculptures of bone , ivory, or stone appeared, around 25,000 B.C. and their symbols- vulvas, triangles, breasts, chevrons, zig-zags, meanders, cup marks-to an even earlier time. 40.0 see 39.4, p.84 Examples[net and checkerboard] range from a lower Danube Gumelnita vessel of c. 4500 B.C. (FIGURE 135) to a Drakhmani II vase from Central Greece, c. 2800 B.C. (FIGURE 136)Even in the Iron Age the net and checkerboard appear together(see doe shaped vase from Kerameikos, Athens, 925-900 B.C.,fig.182). 45

40.1 Scribd.com. Hill, G. 2013. Clodgy Moor Boat Slate .2013. Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, part 2, Oh Mother; for the love of Gold! 2014. Clodgy Moor Boat Slate, part 3, Through the wall. 40.2 Aubarbier, J. L.et al. 1989. Wonderful Prehistory in Perigord. Editions OuestFrance. p.94 Lascaux 2: deer in the great hall [images showing side views of deer. Each head has one antler shown from the side and one from the front.] 40.3 Ordnance Survey Landranger 203, 1:50 000 map 1992 [image of caravan symbol Caravan site, Terrain pour caravanes, Wohnwagenplatz] 40.4 Guthrie, R. Dale. 2005. The Nature of Palaeolithic Art. University of Chicago Press. p.94-5. The halibut effect can involve most paired organs- horns, ears and legs- because these paired characteristics are such a central part of an animals identity. One other solution is to bring both horns or eyes into the drawing by simply twisting the head to a three-quarter view. Some Palaeolithic artists did just this but most artists took the shortcut and twisted the horns around and left the head in a straight side view. 40.5 Dawkins, Richard. 1998. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. There is an anaesthetic of familiarity; a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence.

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