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CHAPTER TEN

ADDITIVE SUBTRACTION: ADDRESSING PICK DRESSING

IN IRISH PASSAGE TOMBS

There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture. Michael Heizer

Cascades of images

I have been thinking for a while on the themes of erasure and overlay in some Irish passage tombs. I am interested in the occurrence of pick dressing on the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath sites (e.g. Newgrange Site 1, Knowth Site 1, and Dowth)i, which often constitutes the last episodes of imagery on the stones in the Irish Neolithic (broadly, fourth to third millennium cal BC). It is the decorative form that is least discussed and its presence raises critical questions. Can the disturbance of previous imagery and the removal of a stone’s surface create absences and deliberate dissolution, or does it instead produce fresh sublime iconoclashes?ii Are our visions of passage tomb images merely the sum of previous destructions and do acts of defacement produce fresh refacement? In this article, these themes will be explored via the politics of spectatorship and visuality. In a move away from textual and representational understandings of imagery, I utilise sculptural analogies to discuss how unfinished or incomplete sculptures/stones work on a spectator – the creation of cognitive indecipherability and ambiguity. Such interpretations focus on what images do, as opposed to what they might mean.

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The associations between archaeology and the modern regime of vision are one of the primary concerns of this volume (see Thomas; van Dyke, this volume). Indeed, with the perceived ocular supremacy, it is argued that other senses have been neglected and under explored in archaeological interpretations (Witmore 2006). To address these issues, I will incorporate positions of “visuality”. The term was first used in academia by the historian Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) in the mid nineteenth century. Opposed to panopticism and modernity, Carlyle strove to understand the past through visual narrative, to use visuality as a mode of presenting or contesting a worldview (Mirzoeff 2006, 54). Carlyle deplored attempts at the physiology of vision, and described the spectator less as a see-er and more as a Seer, thereby allowing more expressive and emotional visions. For Carlyle, visuality as an approach incorporated amongst other things, the sound effects, the drama, the complexities, the poetics, the images, the narratives, the taste, touch and the aroma of the past (Mirzoeff 2006, 54-7). It is this understanding of visuality that I employ here.iii Indestructible reflections Pick dressing is a method that removes the surface of a stone to alter the colour, to eliminate irregularities or previous motifs (C. O’Kelly 1971, 109; Shee Twohig 1981, 116). The term “pick dressing” is derived from the masonry and sculpture industries and describes a facing made by a pointed tool (e.g. flint or quartz chisel or point) repeatedly hitting a stone, leaving the surface in little pits or depressions. As a mode of imagery, it is found almost exclusively in the Boyne Valley, with nearly all the orthostats at Newgrange Site 1 being pick dressed (C. O’Kelly 1973, 377). Almost all the cell stones and corbels are dressed, with some of the kerbstones (e.g. K1 and K52, Newgrange Site 1) also displaying this imagery (C. O’Kelly 1971, 108). The kerbstones and orthostats at the

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passage tombs are mostly Lower Palaeozoic greywacke stones (a green/grey coloured coarse slate) from the Clogherhead coastline, north-east of the Boyne Valley (M. O’ Kelly 1982, 116; Eogan 1986, 112; Cooney 2006, 702). The stone is hard and when not warmed by the sun is often cold to touch, and if you wait long enough, the pulse in your hand can create the sensation that the stone is beating - for me this is oddly satisfying. Pick dressing was performed when the stone was in situ (C. O’Kelly 1982, 150), with the imagery only being located on accessible places (i.e. none is “hidden”) and often terminating c. 0.25m above the current ground level (e.g. orthostat R8 at Newgrange Site 1). Pick dressing is amorphous and displays a marked interest in exploration of the stones surface; often termed plastic imagery (O’Sullivan 1986), it is generally located on the stone’s face which is nearest to the passage tomb entrance (O’Sullivan 1996, 87). If indeed pick dressing was designed to just be seen, it was positioned to favour a person entering the space, rather than exiting. When modern spectators engage with passage tomb motifs today many see them as complete compositions. These images may, however, have not always appeared as one exhaustive display; there were episodes and sequences, be it by substitution or replacement of existing motifs by imposed motifs (Eogan 1997; Jones 2004; Cochrane 2006). O’Sullivan (1986; 1996) detailed the sequences from the standard geometric style, through to the extreme pick-dressing style as a final and “mature” phase (C. O’Kelly 1971; Shee Twohig 2000). These successive episodes demonstrate the plurality of performances in the fabrication of images (Cochrane 2006, 266). The application of successive images can also be seen as an ongoing replenishment of place and identity. Jones (2004) described the processes of superimposition as a visible citation of events of prior significance, as earlier incised motifs are erased or enhanced by later pick dressing. He

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further argued that remembrance is activated through visual engagement and repetitive image making. From this perspective one can argue that the motifs are part of a “work in motion” (Whittle 2003, 25) that bring a particular worldview repeatedly into existence. Neo-visuality So what does all this mean, and what can we deduce from knowing that images were sometimes applied in succession? One possible answer might be that it does not mean anything. This response takes its influence from the writings of the anthropologist Maurice Bloch (1995), who has commented on the abstract geometric carvings on Malagasy dwellings (see Figure 1; see also Cochrane 2005). The visual images are stated by the Zafimaniry engravers to be meaningless and pictures of nothing. They may possess the names of other objects or entities, such as the moon and the rain, but they do not in any sense mean those objects (Bloch 1995, 213). For the Zafimaniry, it is the process of successive decoration that is important, rather than the completed composition itself.

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Figure 1. Malagasy non-representational motifs (photo: Maurice Bloch).

The Zafimaniry images do not act as signifiers revealing something signified, in the manner that a literary text would signify meaning by arbitrary signifiers (see discussion below). Rather than “meaning” the images “magnify” and continue the growth and impermanence of life (Bloch 1995, 215; see also Turner 1982, 14). For the Zafimaniry, it is the process of maturation that is important (Bloch 1998, 33), with the motifs being a celebration of this movement; it should be noted that maturation need not always be thought of as a linear and progressive practice. In another context, it is noteworthy that pick dressing is often termed a mature practice (Shee Twohig 2000, 101), and I argue that it also operates as a magnifier. This mirrors Gell’s (1998) position that it is the process of decorating an object that is important, rather than the finished product itself – the creation of unfinished business (Gell 1998, 80).

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We do not need to just rely upon the ethnography of non-Western societies to further illuminate image flux in Irish passage tombs. Processes of superimposition can be seen in the work of the contemporary artist Idris Khan. In Khan’s photographic pieces, we are invited to explore visual palimpsests - nothing is erased, but rather overlaid to the point of illegibility (Dillon 2006). For instance, in his every… page of the Holy Koran (2004), texts from the religious book are repeatedly pasted upon each other producing a blur of superimposition. The vertical gutter from between the pages creates a channel that is not dissimilar to the vertical channels that are carved into some passage tomb kerbstones (e.g. K1 and K52 at Newgrange Site 1; K74 and K11 at Knowth Site 1), in that they create vertical voids that direct the spectator’s gaze and invite contemplation. In another work by Khan, every… stave of Federick Chopin’s Nocturnes for the piano (2004), the scores are subjected to similar processes of overlay and produce similar blurs. In both works, overlay masks the material traces that might allow us to interpret the thought processes that went into the “original” makings, but they are still nevertheless present, and therefore influence the character of the newer image. Yet are we really looking at processes of erasure here? What we can surmise is that more complex pattern recognitions are being created by acts of interference. Or is it something else? Maybe a form of excess and saturation with images being imbued with too much resonance? As Khan demonstrates, this can be a form of erasure in its own right. Orthostat R8, Newgrange Site 1, may demonstrate these forms of excess in action, with an earlier panel of horizontally divided lozenges being overlain and obscured by later pick dressing (see C. O’Kelly 1982, fig. 42). In investigating the motivations for why some people feel the need to destroy images, Latour (2002, 21-30) devised a rough categorisation comprising five types of impulse or mentalité to eradicate images. These include: people against all images; people against the freeze-framed image;

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people against their opponents’ images; innocent vandals and acts of subversion. We may never be able to determine all the social or political contexts that occurred in the Neolithic (if any), but we can consider what happens when people pick dress and maybe some of their motivations. Here, I am interested by acts against freeze framing and acts of subversion, as I feel they resonate well with the performance of pick dressing. By considering pick dressing as subversive we can imagine human engagements with visual imagery as sometimes being “anti-canonical”. Pick dressing can potentially deconstruct not only the canon, but also the generating processes that make canons and universal narratives. As such, this superimposed imagery may have been employed as a technology of momentary inversion. The motifs themselves may have been the result of actions as opposed to the instruments for progressive social construction. Relationships and mixtures of people and motifs may have been ambiguous, needing to be constantly worked at – against freeze framing. The superimposition of motifs may have assisted in producing these renegotiating practices. Such acts can be contradictory, messy, problematic and stimulating – especially for the modern writer. The archaeology of infamy On the 26 February 2001, Mulla Omer, the Taliban leader in Afghanistan, ordered the destruction of the Bāmiyān Buddhas and they were attacked with rockets, tank shells and dynamite in an attempt to erase them. In total it took 20 days of sustained work (Centlivres 2002, 75). After their destruction, Mulla Omer sacrificed 100 cows as an act of atonement for the eleven centuries in which the Buddhas were not erased. By ordering the destruction of the Buddhas, the Taliban had inadvertently suggested that the people who had occupied Afghanistan previously were not proper Muslims (thereby destabilizing their own claims to political legitimacy), as they had let them stand un-harmed

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(Clément 2002, 218). The erasure of imagery can often result in unintended consequences. The events of this destruction were recorded by Taliban photographers and al Jazeera cameramen – although iconoclasts, the Taliban recognised the power of images and how best to use them for political gain (Frodon 2001). The destruction of one cosmological image effectively created new ones. Legend has it that the faces of the Buddhas were erased either by the last of the “great” Mongol leaders, Aurangzeb (1618-1707), or the “Napoleon of Persia” Nāder Shāh Afshār (1698-1747), in the seventeenth century with cannon fire. More recently, it was proposed that the figures never had faces, and that masks were attached to the empty face façades – if this is true, then the Buddhas were created unfinished, and the Taliban just attempted to finish off the absence (Centlivres 2002, 77). Process is always in flux, and damage can often involve moves towards completion, if indeed this state is ever achievable. What is interesting is that an attempt at erasure has now created a new space and viewpoint. We are witnessing at some level the clash of worldviews – yet the Taliban aims are not fully realised, and ironically Buddhism often sees the ultimate truth being present by emptiness (Śūnyatā). As such, the erasure of the Buddhas enhances their power to stimulate and create new engagements.iv Images are not always representations of beliefs – but they can simulate or dissimulate them. Often destructions create new ambiguities that can percolate through perspectives and interpretations. For instance, one can argue that the Taliban at some level were merely fulfilling the requests of the Futurist’s Manifesto (1909) – critical aesthetics and the violent erasure of a stagnated past (Bexte 2002; Cochrane and Russell 2007, 15). v Acts of image erasure, however, need not always be moments of aggression or resistance. For instance, Robert Rauschenberg attempted to further explore the work of

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Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) by completely erasing one of his drawings (Katz 2006). This performance created the image Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), and according to Rauschenberg was not inspired by negativity, but rather a desire for ongoing process (Katz 2006, 41). In this sense, and depending upon the spectator’s belief system or taste, something negative has the capability to produce positive repercussions. These effects can be seen occurring on some passage tombs. On stones K1, K52 and K67 at Newgrange Site 1 pick dressing is used to add dimension and illusion to the “performance” of the image, which is objectively congealed in the stone (see also orthostat 41, Western tomb, Knowth Site 1). The addition of the dressing and the removal of the stone’s outer skin produce surface tensions and “false relief” motifs (Shee Twohig 1973, 167; C. O’Kelly 1982, figs. 24, 28, 29; Eogan 1986, fig. 49). Once created, motifs on passage tombs are susceptible to defacement and alteration, be it intentional or otherwisevi. Regarding access into Newgrange Site 1, there probably was potential for damage/change to the motifs once stones K2 and K97 were placed on either side of stone K1. Shee Twohig (2000) has noted that the only way to enter the passage would have been to climb over the kerbstones, thus crossing over a liminal threshold and then proceeding under the carvings of the roof-box lintel, which is pick dressed to create “false relief” images. Such demarcation and distinction may also have been emphasised by the colour of stone K1, which demonstrates red qualities and greenish hues (Wilde 1849, 193) that are released via the occurrence of pick dressing. Colour enhancement is evident on the right-hand recess orthostat C12, south tomb, Dowth, which is easily discernible as the natural weathered surface is a yellowish colour, whereas the picked areas are greenish (O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983, 177). Such colour distinctions would have been more apparent when the stones were first decorated. Pick dressing was employed in some instances to accentuate earlier incised designs, as seen on the lower part of orthostat C12, south tomb, Dowth, near Wilde’s

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“representation of a lotus, or lily-leaf” (1849, 208) or Coffey’s “small leaf-like” image (1912, 58), and in other places obliterates earlier designs, such as on the top right-hand part of stone C12 where a three-ringed concentric circle motif is effaced (O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983, 178). At Newgrange Site 1, on orthostat R21 one can see deep pick dressing produced in bands that create a corrugated effect (Shee Twohig 2000, 94); the pick dressing stops before the top of the stone and avoids earlier motifs. Orthostat R21 resides between the passage and the chamber, and rests opposite orthostat L22 that is also heavily pick dressed (see Figure 2). The pickdressing on this stone removes some motifs but also spares a panel of motifs on the bottom lower left of the stone and scratched patterns at the top (C. O’Kelly 1982, fig. 41). Orthostat R12 is located on the junction between the inner and outer passage, and also demonstrates pick dressed bands that create a rippled effect (Shee Twohig 2000, 94); interestingly the top of the stone is not decorated and appears unfinished. Devereux (2001, 85-7) argued that these orthostats create specific points along the length of the passage that help resonate sound-wave patterns (see further discussion below). The transformation of the outer surface of the stones at specific points in the passage may therefore have marked transitional moments in a persons’ journey within and along the structure.

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Figure 2. L22 (on the left) and R12 (on the right),

Newgrange Site 1, Co. Meath (photo: Ken Williams).

Cell 2 at the north end of the chamber, houses one of the most famous motifs in Newgrange Site 1 on orthostat C10, the “three-spiral figure”, often incorrectly termed a “triple spiral” (C. O’Kelly 1982, 177). The entire motif is 0.3 x 0.28m. It is interesting to note that although the later pick dressing on this stone slightly encroaches on the left side of the spiral, in the main it respected the spiral and left it undamaged (see Figure 3).vii At the midwinter solstice, weather permitting, the three-spiral figure and the pick dressing are illuminated by reflected light from the sun-beam that enters via the roof-box. With the three-spiral figure remaining largely untouched, we are witnessing episodes of image rejection and construction, of image confidence and diffidence (Latour 2002, 21).

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Figure 3. The “three-spiral figure”, orthostat C10,

Newgrange Site 1, Co. Meath (photo: Ken Williams). The labour of the negative So what actually happens when you attempt to remove a surface or image? In essence, it creates new traces and residues. Examples of this process can be seen in the photographic deletions of political colleagues by particular dictators in the twentieth century (e.g. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung). These erasures can be chilling, in that the removed subject was not only airbrushed out of history, but also often executed or assassinated. In many examples, however, the photographic retoucher has not removed all trace of the victim, while in other instances erasure produces fresh images (see King 1997; Farid 2006). As with the Bāmiyān Buddhas, motivations for these types of erasure can be for ideological, political, personal and social purposes.viii Claire O’Kelly did speculate that the destruction of an image by pick dressing may suggest “bad blood” (1971, 110; see also Lewis Williams and Pearce 2005, 199). If motifs on passage tombs are at some level about the creation or citation of memory (e.g. Jones 2004),

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then trace residues made by pick dressing may indicate attempts at the erasure of memory. Orthostat L19, Newgrange Site 1, obliterates and mutilates two earlier spiral motifs, leaving just their traces. Interestingly it stops near the ground level, which is probably why the lower rows of chevrons are preserved (C. O’Kelly 1971, 109; see Figure 4). If we adopt a representational approach, then the pick dressing also respects the face like motif, which may have been conceived as an anthropomorphic guardian (O’Sullivan 1993, 40). On orthostat R3, Newgrange Site 1, we again can witness attempts to erase earlier images, with pick dressing on this stone extending downwards to about 0.3m above the current floor level, erasing the top parts of a 0.25m in diameter spiral in the process (see C. O’Kelly 1971, pl. 23b).

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Figure 4. Orthostat L19, Newgrange Site 1, Co. Meath

(photo: Ken Williams). Erasure of the stones’ surface and of previous motifs is therefore not merely a matter of making things disappear as there is always a residue produced, some change in the surface, some reminder of action taken – it is illuminating power at its greatest (Taussig 1999, 2). We are left with not just an absence, but rather an active and ongoing palimpsest. What we have is permanence and impermanence in flux; the overlay may be an attempt to preserve actuality. We have a creative destruction – we are presented with new images, media and works.

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Neolithic revelations I agree with Thomas (1998, 108) when he suggested that any metaphor that enhances relationships in the world deserves consideration, and that text-metaphors have certainly been useful in creating narratives of the past. I do not believe, however, that representational analogies are the best to understand non-representational images. Furthermore, my concerns with modernist semiotic approaches (be it Saussurian or Peircean), are similar to my disagreements with dialectics (Cochrane 2007) – both attempt to bridge the gap, or create a middle ground, between two opposing elements (see Latour 1993, 62-65). Such attempts result in the reification of dichotomies – be it sign: signifier, or representamen: object, with an interpretant middle ground. Many previous accounts of the Neolithic past have described objects and images (if indeed it is useful to distinguish the two) as signs and tokens that reside in the “real” world, alluding to a hidden cosmological world (e.g. Tilley 1991; 1999; Lewis Williams and Dowson 1993; Lewis Williams and Pearce 2005). Particular persons in the past are assigned by the modern interpreter a social status determined by the fact that they could presumably decipher and transcend the surfaces of the material artefacts and uncover the worlds beyond.ix Such a scenario is, however, suspiciously similar to the roles that some modern archaeologists assign themselves. These scholars interpret materials by attempting to uncover and penetrate the meanings and social realities that exist beneath the surface layer (Thomas 2004, especially chapter 7). I am sure that there are many anthropological examples available to show that some people believe that certain images or objects passively represent hidden or generally unavailable worlds beyond or below the surface. Indeed, elsewhere I have utilised representational analogies in drawing upon Western visual movements, anthropological examples and neurological theory as a means of illuminating the unfamiliar (e.g. Cochrane 2005). My concern, however, is that these

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representational approaches, which are so akin to the modern archaeological condition and mentalité, dominate most contemporary discourse. Some academics for instance strive to see through illusions in the modern world (e.g. excavated pots and cremated bones) in order to understand past people’s interpretations of a reality, which of course can be the greatest of illusions (see Baudrillard 1997, 18). I am not arguing that we do away with representational understandings, as to do so would be to “throw the baby out with the bath water”. Instead, I suggest that we attempt to move beyond this presiding position and create a sense of conceptual or cosmological equivalence in our interpretations. Rather than decode the possible meanings of pick dressing, I will utilise non-textual analogies. Unfinished business Some interpretative models are heavily influenced by literary criticism, deconstructionism and post structuralism; most predominantly through the writings of Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Umberto Eco. Rather than continuing to follow literary works, I suggest we very briefly consider sculptural ones – since the term pick dressing is borrowed from stone masonry and we are essentially dealing with sculpted stone, I feel this is fitting.

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Figure 5. Replica of Michelangelo’s non-finito “Slave”, Grotta di Buontalenti, Florence, Italy. (photo: author).

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1504) was an artist and creator of works that attempted to express the full breadth of the human condition, from a neo-Platonic perspective. Being a Christian, Michelangelo was particularly interested in Jesus Christ, especially the passion narrative (i.e. the crucifixion). This fascination resulted in the production of several sculptures on this topic, which he left unfinished. Among these unfinished works, also known as non finitos, we can include his San Matteo, the Slaves and Day (see Figure 5). Although there may have been extenuating reasons for these pieces remaining incomplete, such as being called back to Rome, it is believed that Michelangelo’s non finitos reflect the sublime qualities and power of his ideas (Schulz 1975; Liebert 1977). That almost three-fifths of his sculptures remain unfinished (Schulz 1975, 367) suggests some degree of intentionality. These unfinished sculptures invite the spectator to be imaginatively engaged, with the (non finito) view activating previous thoughts, concepts and beliefs. Such processes are not as prevalent with finished works, with the

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piece demanding, and the viewer requiring less active cognition (Zeki 1999, 32). We do not know why some stones at passage tombs appear to be unfinished although some have forwarded reasons. For instance, regarding some the motifs on orthostat C2 in the north passage tomb at Dowth being left incomplete (they are not fully picked), O’Kelly and O’Kelly remarked that perhaps “…the tomb builders wrestled the stone from the artist before he was finished!...” (1983, 170). Rather than continuing to speculate on social dynamics, I will focus on what these images do to us. The unfinished works in effect create a neurological trick – they activate imaginative processes and create cognitive indecipherability – the spectator is stimulated by the ambiguity of the sculpture and is enticed to try and interpret what is missing or what is happening. These effects work whether one imagines the images as being carved into, drawn out of, or passed along the stone; here surface is semi-permeable and multi-directional. That pick dressing often stops short of covering the entire stone and is so similar in form is interesting, as it creates the occurrence of a stereotype. Produced via conceptions of generalisation, exaggeration and distortion, stereotypes (from the Greek to mean rigid trace) create relations in the world, smooth and mask ambivalences, and are in essence illusions (Bailey forthcoming). As with all the images on passage tombs they are simulations of interpretations of reality (Cochrane 2006). When engaging with an unfinished pick dressed stone, the viewer will try and determine what is happening; where do the images start and the stone stop? Why are parts of the stone left unfinished and undressed? Is there another trace image below? As such, pick dressing invites questions that the spectator will often not be able to answer, rendering the images as “anti-rhetorical” (see Bailey 2007, 123) and “noncontractual” (Taussig 1999, 104). With pick dressing we have ambiguity

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triggered by the visual puzzles, allusion, hesitation and a resistance between image making and breaking.

Transmedia

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) once advised that we should deal with a work of art as we would deal with a Prince – that is to wait until we are spoken to (Gombrich 2001, 90). In a more modern context, that of an exhibition in Leeds, England, questions have been raised regarding the ways in which one can listen to sculpture, and why we assume that these things are inherently silent (Curtis et al. 2004). Certainly, some writers do often mention how these objects “resonate”, implying that maybe one is already ‘listening’ to their form (Curtis et al. 2004), while others comment on how engagements with passage tombs can be “orchestrated” (Thomas 1993, 93). Pick dressed stones may not speak to most modern visitors (see Cochrane in press), but their creation would have created cacophonyx. The act of removing a stones surface would also produce chipping and dust, and this may have been discarded or consumed internally, for instance, ingested or snorted (Watson and Jones pers. comm.), possibly mixed with psychoactive substances (e.g. Psilocybe semilanceata or Datura stramonium). This stone residue may also have been mixed with the cremated bones and liquids in the stone basins that occur in some passage tombs (e.g. Newgrange Site 1 and Knowth Site 1). Touching the altered stones and motifs may have created tactile understandings, which vision alone cannot provide (Cochrane In Press). These embodied acts would incorporate the pores and skin and may have assisted in developing dynamic experiences of the motifs (see Diaconu 2005, 121; Knappett 2006, 240). In a darkened environment (e.g. the passage tomb), we need to consider how much people would have actually been able to see. Flickering torchlight would certainly create the impression

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of image movement (Lynch 1970, 40; Herity 1974, 97), while touching the pitted surfaces of the stone would facilitate complementary and yet omnifarious sensations. Different to ocular sensations, touch is not just an adjunct to seeing, it can create haptic kinaesthesia and erase or stimulate doubt.

It has been suggested that architecture and location are a deliberate exercise in controlling and manipulating how tombs and the activities that would have taken place at them were experienced (Bradley 1989; Thomas 1990; Kirk 1993; Richards 1993; Watson 2001). Passage tombs can restrict and influence bodily movement, the senses, sound, light and darkness, space, airflow and temperature. Certainly, inside the passage tombs condensation caused by breath and movement can create the impression that the stones are “sweating” and pulsating. This effect of ‘breathing’ stone via interaction in an environment can be perceptively enhanced with the usage of intoxicants or psychoactive substances (Cochrane in press). Furthermore, tombs can disorientate, humble and generate fear in those who enter, creating an “architecture of inconvenience” (Squair 1998). This stressful environment could be accentuated with sounds produced by picking action and noise (Jones 2004, 208; see also Ouzman 2001; Watson 2001).

So what is happening when the surfaces are being removed – are the people with the pointed implements attempting to expose, denounce, disappoint or dispel people’s belief systems? Sound-waves produced by repetitive banging (such as drums) can induce altered-states of consciousness (Devereux and Jahn 1996; Watson and Keating 1999; Devereux 2001; Lewis Williams and Pearce 2005); it is, however, currently unknown whether pick dressing would be loud or rhythmic enough to stimulate this effect. Other modes of engagement with the stones may also have

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included song, speech and chanting. Certainly, both Lynch (1973, 152) and Sheridan (1985/6, 28) have made connections between passage tombs and oral communication. In more recent accounts some people report altered states of consciousness being stimulated by psychoactive substances, chanting, song, whistling, hissing and by intensively gazing at the stone (see Roche 1997; Gyrus 2007, 113). Pick dressed stones present more than mere image – combined with sound they have the ability to generate episodes of synaesthesia and hallucination, with the assistance of direct and remote manipulation (e.g. stimulating the neural system or sensory deprivation) or pathological/neurological conditions. Previously, I would have depicted pick dressing as multimedia; yet as Russell (2007a, 84) correctly highlights, media is plural, rendering the prefix of “multi” superfluous. As such, I prefer the term “transmedia” (Jenkins 2006, 308) for it describes the expression of ideas through varied modes of communication and media, such as imagery, sound, narration and movement – there is no single source to gain interpretation or experience. As transmedia pick dressing is visuality, it is the mixing of mixtures. Within such frameworks, choreographies of pick dressing therefore create new images, new media, new sounds, new experiences – it is creative destruction. Re-dressed capabilities

Can nothing be an icon too? Michael Taussig

The images and stones of Irish passage tombs are not passive receptacles for people to overlay meanings or significances onto. The stones are not inert, awaiting people to alter their surfaces, rather they are mixed within processes that include amongst other things influence and possibility. The damage to the earlier motifs does not just destroy them, it also draws attention to the newer, fresher

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overlays – it is revelation through concealment – it is the stimuli to illusion. Motivations for overlay and works left unfinished might be a fear of fixity – a fear of an image suspended in freeze frame and stasis. Pick dressing invites one to move from one image to the next – a constant flow or cascade of images – those of stereotype, evanescence, repetition and difference. In other instances, pick dressing attempts to obscure vision; it is simulation and dissimulation at the same time. The multitudes of tiny pick marks force the viewer to see what is and what is not there. Paradoxically, the act of obliteration and erasure can often allow the original images to endure longer. Pick dressing is the transformation of images within chains of alterations, usurping scopic regimes, which regard images as removed from the instability of life. The stones and images of Irish passage tombs often insist, and this simple but clear observation highlights the impossibility of erasure, via the ambivalent mixtures of destruction and construction. Pick dressing is the trace that simply will not go away. Acknowledgements I would like to formally thank the people who discussed many of the ideas in this paper with me for often giving me pause for thought. They include in no particular order: Alasdair Whittle; Murris O’Sullivan; Andy Jones; Aaron Watson; Chris Witmore; Ollie Harris and Kate Waddington. Doug Bailey was kind enough to discuss themes and allow me access to his unpublished work. Big respect and much thanks to Ian Russell, Robert Hensey and Dani Hofmann for critically commenting on earlier versions of this paper. I would like to express my gratitude to Maurice Bloch for allowing me to use his photography. Once again, Ken Williams (www.shadowsandstone.com) has kindly given me access to his spectacular work – you are a legend! Special thanks also to Julian Thomas and

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Vítor Oliveira Jorge for organising the TAG 2007 session and for making this volume happen. References Bailey, D.W. 2007. The anti-rhetorical power of representational absence: faceless figurines in the Balkan Neolithic. In I. Morley and C. Renfrew (eds), Image and imagination: a global prehistory of figurative representation, 117-26. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. Bailey, D. W. Forthcoming. The corporeal politics of being in the Neolithic. In J. Robb and D. Borić (eds), Past Bodies. Baudrillard, J. 1997. Objects, images and the possibilities of aesthetic illusion. In N. Zurbugg (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: art and artefact, 7-18. London: Sage Publications. Bexte, P. 2002. Créolité and Iconoclash. Contribution to the symposium Ethics and critical Aesthetics. European League of Institutes of Art, 7th Conference, Dublin Institute of Technology. Bloch, M. E. F. 1995. Questions not to ask of Malagasy carvings. In I. Hodder, M. Shanks, A. Alexandri, V. Buchli, J. Carmen, J. Last, and G. Lucus (eds), Interpreting archaeology: finding meaning in the past, 212-15. London: Routledge. Bloch, M. E. F. 1998. How we think they think: anthropological approaches to cognition, memory and literacy. Oxford: Westview Press. Bradley, R. 1989. Darkness and light in the design of megalithic tombs. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 8, 251-9.

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Wilde, W. 1849. The beauties of the Boyne and the Blackwater. Reprinted [2003]. County Galway: Kevin Duffey. Witmore, C. L. 2006. Vision, media, noise and the percolation of time: symmetrical approaches to the mediation of the material world. Journal of Material Culture 11(3), 267-92. Zeki, S. 1999. Inner vision: an exploration of art and the brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. i For a comprehensive review of the Boyne passage tomb sites, please see M. O’Kelly (1982); Eogan (1986); Cooney (2000); Stout (2002). ii Iconoclash is uncertainty. It is the performance of breakage or erasure when one does not know what will happen next – it is about the moment of hesitation – deliberation before determining whether the act is destructive or constructive (Latour 2002, 14, 18). iii I acknowledge that it is impossible to ‘sense’ a past – but assert that inclusion of sensory perception can often help evoke conceptions of a possible past. iv Russell (2007b) has further discussed how perceived destructions of heritage (e.g. the Tara ‘landscape’ in Co. Meath, Ireland) can often create new and richer possibilities. v I want to qualify that these assertions are detached theoretical considerations. If I had more time and space I would question what people in Afghanistan actually thought/think about the destruction of the Buddhas. The sale of recognisable parts was outlawed by the Taliban; reports from Peshawar, Pakistan, suggest the prohibition was mostly not observed (Centlivres 2002, 75). I would also be interested in what practicing Buddhists feel about the events, especially set within the broader context of eradications of Buddha imagery across Asia, throughout the twentieth century.

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vi Inadvertent defacement and erasure of the motifs by a visitors’ desire to touch, absorb and feel is still a concern at the Boyne Valley sites today (Cochrane 2006, 260). vii Interestingly, Claire O’Kelly’s (1982, 177) two dimensional black and white drawing does not demonstrate the pick dressing overlaying the three-spiral motifs, whereas Ken Williams’ photography (Figure 3), clearly does. The past is therefore created via our ability to (re)present it. viii Other examples of image erasure for such purposes can include defacement at the Temple of Medinet Habu, Egypt, and the destruction of the World Trade Center, New York. ix Some previous interpretations have been very textually orientated. Vallancey constructed an alphabet from motifs at Newgrange Site 1 and read the name Angus (Coffey 1912, 18). Wilde argued that the carvings were Tymboglyphics or tomb-writings (1849, 200; see also Deane 1889-91, 162). Other scholars attempted to ‘decipher the crabbed characters’ (Macalister 1921, 217), and understand the ‘vocabulary of this language’ (Herity 1974, 103) by dissecting its syntax and meaning (see also Breuil 1934; MacWhite 1946, 66; Piggott 1954, 211-13).

x For further discussions on sound in archaeology please see Mills (2005); Mithen (2005);Witmore (2006); Scarre and Lawson (2006).

Cochrane, A. In Press. Additive subtraction: addressing pick-dressing in Irish passage tombs. In J. Thomas and V. Oliveira Jorge (eds), Archaeology and the politics of vision in a post-modern context. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.