Furness Neolithic Rock Art, Naas, Co. Kildare

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Unearthed 200 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 (Shee).

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 the carving of ‘quintessential’ rock art motifs - possibly beginning 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). The long narrow gouges on the lower section are ploughshare scoring.