Cup-markings on rocks and CUP-MARKED STONES belong to a peculiar class of archaic sculpturings which have recently attracted much attention among archaeologists. Cup-markings on rocks are chiefly of two varieties—circular cavities or 'cups' pure and simple, and cups surrounded by circles. The circles round the cups are shallow indentations, varying in number up to five or six. Both cups and circles often show the marks of a pointed tool, as if they had been formed by picking, but frequently they appear as if weathered or abraded to a perfectly smooth surface. The cups vary in size from about one inch to three inches or more in diameter. Sometimes they are confluent at the edges, but more usually separate, and occasionally two or more are connected by a shallow groove or duct. They usually occur in groups, sometimes to the number of several hundreds. In such groups the majority are plain cups, intermingled with occasional cups and circles. The circles placed concentrically round the cups are occa- sionally incomplete at one side, and a radial groove or duct passes from the central cup out through the circles. The circles are only approximately circular, sometimes oval, and occasionally even roughly quadrangular. These groups of cups, mingled with cups and circles, and occasionally with imperfect spirals and other rude and irregular sculpturings, are found on the stones of sepulchral structures of the stone and bronze ages, on rock-surfaces and earth-fast boulders, and on loose stones of small size in the neighbourhood of sites of early habitations or strongholds over nearly all Europe. They are still subjects of superstitious regard in Scandinavia, and while they are found in connection with the megalithic monuments of Europe and India, Mr Rivett Carnae has traced a resemblance to them in the conventional symbols of Siva in the modern temples. On the other hand Dr Veckenstedt found recent cup-markings (but without the characteristic circles) on the walls of churches in Prussia. Dr Rau has described a considerable number of examples from various parts of America, but few with circles. Many of the smaller cupped stones he attributes to the Indian custom of cracking hickory nuts, by laying them in such cavities and striking them with another stone. The larger-sized cups and basin-shaped cavities in earth-fast boulders and rocks he classes as mortars. But the more elaborate sculpturings on rock-surfaces present the central cup, the surrounding circles and the radial groove of the European and Indian examples, and the inference is that they belong to the religious or ceremonial symbolism of primeval man. The most remarkable examples of rock-surfaces sculptured with cups and circles in Scotland are those at Achnabreac in Argyllshire, described by Professor Sir J. Y. Simpson, and at High Banks in Kirkcudbrightshire, discovered in 1887 and 1888, and described by Mr George Hamilton in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
See Archaic Sculpturings of Cups and Circles, &c., by Sir J. Y. Simpson (Edinburgh, 1867); Incised Markings on Stone, &c., from drawings made for the Duke of Northumberland (Lond. 1869); Skandinaviens Hallristningar at A. E. Holmberg (Stockholm, 1848); and Observations on Cup-shaped and other Lapidarian Sculptures in the Old World and in America, by Charles Rau (Washington, 1881).