>Ian Dawson

>Digital imaging and prehistoric imagery: a new analysis of the Folkton Drums

>Antiquity / Volume 89 / Issue 347 / October 2015, pp 1083-1095
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2015 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2015.127 , Published online: 09 October 2015

Abstract: The Folkton ‘Drums’ are the most remarkable decorated artefacts from Neolithic Britain. A new analysis using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and photogrammetry reveals significant new evidence for previously unrecorded motifs in addition to plentiful evidence for erasure and reworking. A case is made for understanding the decoration of these chalk artefact as an ongoing process of working involving experimentation. The authors also argue that such practices of making may have been more widespread in Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Additionally the study demonstrates the ability of these new techniques to not only record visible motifs, but to clearly document erased and reworked motifs.

Andrew Meirion Jones, Andrew Cochrane, Chris Carter, Ian Dawson, Marta Diaz Guardamino Uribe, Lena Kotoula and Louisa Minkin.