Prehistoric Rock Art

Kings Park carries one of the oldest human marks in Stirling: prehistoric rock art, pecked into a low outcrop on the higher ground of the park.

Cup and ring markings are among the earliest artwork in Scotland. A shallow hollow, or cup, is worked into the rock face and ringed by one or more concentric circles. They are found from Galloway to Argyll and up the east coast, and are generally attributed to the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age — somewhere between four and five thousand years old. What they were for is genuinely unknown. Boundary markers, route markers, ritual sites and astronomical alignments have all been proposed, and none has been demonstrated.

The Kings Park carving is a scheduled monument, protected by law. It is now very faint and continuing to weather.

We have not marked its exact position on this walk. Carvings like these survive best where footfall is not concentrated on them, and a site that has lasted four thousand years deserves that consideration. If you would like to know more, the site is fully recorded in Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland's national database.