A handful of stone slabs inscribed with Vinča bull symbols have been found in the UK in the vicinity of, or within, Neolithic and Bronze age sites. At least two of these bear Vinča-style chequerboard designs, and two others have bull-roundel 'eyes' that are indistinguishable from their counterparts on Vinča clay representations of cattle skulls. It seems possible, based upon their shape, that even some round barrows may have been intended to mimic a bull-roundel design. Examples of the slabs can be seen below:
Figure 138 From a Neolithic causewayed enclosure in Cornwall, UK, 2012.
(Image: Cornwall Council)
Figure 139 Neolithic stone from Fylingdale Moors, Yorkshire.
(http://rockartuk.wordpress.com/category/yorkshire/page/2/)
The stone slab in Figure 138 bearing a chequerboard design was found in a Neolithic causewayed enclosure in Cornwall, UK (2). The Neolithic stone beside it from Fylingdale Moors, Yorkshire, is decorated with double and single-chevrons isolated in a panel, surrounded by lozenges and dotted lozenges. Interestingly the item below from Romania
and dated to c. 11000 BC is inscribed with quite a similar design to that in Figure 139.
Figure 140 Carved horse bone with chevrons and lozenge designs from Cuina Turcului, Iron
Gates of Danube, W Romania, 11000 BC. (http://library.thinkquest.org/C006353/cucuteni.html)
Approximately four of these stones come from Salisbury Plain, with others from Yorkshire, Cornwall and Scotland. The 'Brodgar Eye' (Skara Brae, Scotland) and the Winterborne stone in Figure 174, found near Stonehenge, are both inscribed with a single bull-roundel design. Two examples were found in King Barrow Ridge: one inscribed with a Greek Key design with a 'tram-line frame', the other chequerboard within a similar frame, were mentioned by Harding (1988), carbon dating of other items in the pits dated the plaques to the early third millennium BC. ((Harding, P, 1988, 'The chalk plaque
pit, Amesbury. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society', 54, 320-27)
Another stone with a chequerboard design was found during excavations at the Ness of Brodgar site on Orkey in 2010. (The Orkney Jar – Orkney Archaeological News:
Thursday, August 26, 2010.)
Good examples too of 'bullseye-roundels' dating to the same period have been found, one in 2009 at the Brodgar Ness site in Orkney.
Figure 141 Winterborne Carne 18b carving, one of two inscribed with bull-roundels from the same pit. Figure 142 The "Brodgar Eye" from structure 10 at the Ness of Brodgar site, Orkney.
--- Notes:
The Poulton Stone: '...A sub-rectangular fragment of limestone was recovered from a section cut
through Ring-ditch II. The section was cut through the butt-end of the south-east entranceway, on its western edge. It was within the primary fill (L053), deliberately deposited on the base of the ditch. Several fragments of human cremated bone were closely associated with the stone....'
'...The smaller of the two has marked similarities to that found at Poulton. However, such designs are both rare and difficult to parallel. They are found on rock art, as at Skara Brae (Orkney), but in plaque form are singularly rare. Cross-hatching is resonant of designs found on 'Grooved Ware' pottery, which is unique to Britain and Ireland. However, this pottery is almost absent from the archaeological record in Cheshire. One rare example was recovered from Eddisbury Hill (1851), a Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age hill-fort 25km from Poulton. The grooved ware pot was associated with several large fragments of' human cremated bone. It has been dated to 2700-2200 BC. The Eddisbury urn had horizontal lines of impressed whipped cord and zigzag lines...' http://www.poultonproject.org/plaque.htm
The Poulton Research Project - http://www.poultonproject.org/index.shtml
Cornwall : “....Among some of the remarkably well preserved finds are large sherds of Late Neolithic
Grooved Ware pottery (a type of pottery that is first produced in Orkney at the opposite end of the UK) and an unusual slate disc which is engraved on both sides. One side has a distinctive chequerboard pattern while the other has lozenges with arrowhead decoration. It is apparent that this artefact has been deliberately placed within a pit, but it is too early to posit a firm theory about it’s function or deposition....”
Past Horizons, October 2012
Winterborne Carne carving: “...On January 27, 1848, the great Dorsetshire antiquarian Charles Warne
sent a letter to the British Archaeological Association about a series of three large tumuli he had explored south of Dorchester in Dorset:
“About the centre, at a depth of some three feet from the surface, was found lying flat a rough unhewn stone, with a series of concentric circles incised; this, on being removed, was seen to have covered a mass of flints from six to seven feet in thickness, which being also removed we came to another unhewn irregular stone, with similar circles inscribed, and as in the preceding case, covering another cairn of flints, in quantity about the same as beneath the first stone...”
(Photo and text, Megalithix.wordpress.com: http://megalithix.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/came-down- carving/)
“...In 1882 a burial mound, located near Maiden Castle, Dorchester area, was excavated by Edward Cunnington and an assortment of valuable artefacts were found. These included a gold lozenge, very similar to the Bush Barrow Lozenge (which had been found 74 years earlier and only about 40 miles away at a mound grave near Stonehenge)....The similarity in style between the Bush Barrow Lozenge and the Clandon Barrow Lozenge, coupled with the relatively short distance between the archaeological sites where each artefact was found, has caused some archaeologists to comment that both lozenges were probably fabricated by the same artisan (See The Wessex culture: a minimal view, by John Coles and Joan Taylor, Antiquity, XLV, 1971, pages 6-13).
http://www.celticnz.co.nz/Clandonwebsitefiles/Clandon1a.htm