Furness Rock Art

Furness Neolithic Rock Art, Naas, Co. Kildare, Ireland – National Monument KD019-024003.

Unearthed one hundred meters south of Furness medieval church in 1975, this boulder, of local greywacke, was recognised as significant by the then owner of Furness House, David Synott, who notified the National Monuments Service.

The carvings on the boulder were subsequently classified as Rock Art (KD019-024003- in the Record of Monuments and Places), and dated by Elizabeth Shee to between 2000 – 1500 BC, therefore, Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age (see: Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, Volume XV, No. 5, 1975, Shee, E.).

Recent dating evidence points to a potentially earlier date range for carving of ‘quintessential’ rock art motifs as a tradition began as early as the Middle Neolithic (possibly even earlier) and continued into the Later Neolithic period, possibly extending into the Early Bronze Age (see: Inscribed landscapes: contextualising prehistoric rock art in Ireland, O’Connor, B., 2006, UCD PhD thesis).

Model Details

The 3D model embedded in this page were created using photogrammetry and the versions hosted on Sketchfab were decimated from the original model of 39 million triangles (used in the video below) to a simplified 1 million triangles. The walls, ground, and back of the boulder were simplified further to help maximise the detail of the carved surface while keeping the triangle count low. The data was captured in Oct 2019 and processed in Sept 2020.

Untextured View

The model below has been uploaded without a “texture” (i.e. photographic image data projected onto a 3D model) in order to remove colour information and other details, such as lichen, that can distract the eye and obscure the true form of the surface topography.

The 3D model has revealed a small number of additional cup marks and features not previously recorded.

Carving Motifs

This rock features a number of rare motifs including two enclosed cup mark rosettes, possible unenclosed cup mark rosettes, and a motif of concentric rings with an outer ring that changes direction to enclose another ring and cup mark. The long narrow gouges on the lower section are modern ploughshare scoring.

Furness Neolithic Rock Art – Raking Light on HD 3D Model Video

The video below was created with the following objectives:

  1. To make the Furness Rock Art boulder virtually accessible to all, as the original monument is physically inaccessible due to being on private land.
  2. To maximise the visibility of the carved details on the surface of the rock and allow a greater appreciation of the numerous features – some of which that are visible in the video have not been previously recorded.

The video depicts a high resolution 3D model of the Furness boulder. The model was created using photogrammetry and contains 39 million triangles. The completed model was subjected to raking light from an artificially generated directional hard light source that was set at various angles. The purpose of the raking light is to maximise the visibility of the details on the surface of the model (and therefore the original rock). Rendered orthographic images of the model were captured for each lighting setup and then combined to create this demonstration video. Each individual frame is numbered and corresponds to a unique lighting angle. The numbering enables easy retrieval of a frame where the lighting has highlighted a feature of interest – via the video controls, i.e. play, pause, and/or skimming though the video by manipulating the progression bar.

Please set the video quality to 1080p manually.
Youtube defaults to “Auto” quality to best suit the available bandwidth As a consequence, the auto quality setting may result in a visually poor video, despite displaying the “HD 1080p” icon, which defeats the purpose of this video as an aid to enhance detail on the rock surface. It is, therefore, recommended that you set the quality to “1080p” manually in the video setting when viewing.