AVEE
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3520384.stm

Archaeologists have rediscovered a huge rock art site in southern
India where ancient people used boulders to make musical sounds in
rituals.
The Kupgal Hill site includes rocks with unusual depressions that
were designed to be struck with the purpose of making loud, musical
ringing tones.

It was lost after its discovery in 1892, so this is the first fresh
effort to describe the site in over a century.

Details of the research are outlined in the archaeological journal
Antiquity.

A dyke on Kupgal Hill contains hundreds and perhaps thousands of rock
art engravings, or petroglyphs, a large quantity of which date to the
Neolithic, or late Stone Age (several thousand years BC).

Researchers think shamen or young males came to the site to carry out
rituals and to "tap into" the power of the site. However, some of it
is now at threat from quarrying activities.

Granite percussion

The boulders which have small, groove-like impressions are called
"musical stones" by locals. When struck with small granite rocks,
these impressions emit deep, "gong-like notes".

These boulders may have been an important part of formalised rituals
by the people who came there.
In some cultures, percussion plays a role in rituals that are
intended for shamen to communicate with the supernatural world. The
Antiquity work's author, Dr Nicole Boivin, of the University of
Cambridge, UK, thinks this could be the purpose of the Kupgal stones.

The first report of the site was in 1892, in the Asiatic Quarterly
Review. But subsequent explorers who tried to find it were unable to
do so.

Dr Boivin has been documenting the site. A few pictures of the site
were taken in the 19th Century, but the originals were either lost,
or allowed to fade.

Destruction imminent

Many of the motifs on the rocks are of cattle, in particular the
long-horned humped-back type found in southern India ( Bos indicus ).

However, some are of human-like figures, either on their own or with
cattle. Some of these in chains, or holding bows and arrows.

The typically masculine nature of the engravings leads Dr Boivin to
suggest that the people who made the images were men and possibly
those involved in herding cattle or stealing them.
The motifs themselves were made by bruising the rocks, presumably
with a stone implement.

She believes that the people who made the motifs and those who went
to view them must have been physically fit and agile.

Some of the images are in locations so difficult to reach that the
artist must have suspended themselves - or got others to suspend them
- from an overhang to make the images.

Modern-day commercial granite quarrying has already disturbed some
sections of the hill. A rock shelter with even older rock art to the
north of Kupgal Hill has been partially destroyed by quarrying.

"It is clear government intervention will be required to elicit
effective protection for the majority of the sites in the [area] if
these are not to be erased completely over the course of future
years," writes Dr Boivin in Antiquity.
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