Blurb:

The visual imagery of Neolithic Britain and Ireland is spectacular. While the art of Irish passage tombs is well-understood, the imagery of decorated portable artefacts is not. This paper reports on the early stages of the ‘Making a Mark’ project (2013–2018), which used cutting-edge digital imaging techniques, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and structure-from-motion-photogrammetry, to examine Neolithic decorated artefacts made from chalk, stone and antler, from southern and eastern England. For the first time, digital analysis revealed the existence of practices of erasure and reworking. This paper compares the imagery of decorated portable artefacts, and the practices used to create them, with Neolithic passage tombs and open-air rock art sites.