Rock art in Emper

Situated on flat pasture land with ringfort (WM010-008----) marked on OS maps as ‘Rathduff’ containing a Man-made underground passage (WM010-008001-) decorated with a panel of rock art and Bronze Age flat cemetery (WM010-009----) in adjoining field to SE (Weir 1938, 146-7). This stone has been described by O’Reilly (2010, 79-80) as follows: ‘The stone from Rathduff, Emper, was reported by Hugh Weir in 1938. It is located in a Man-made underground passage (WM010-008001-) beneath a ringfort (WM010-008----) called Rathduff in the townland of the same name. This ringfort is on a private farm with no admittance to the public. The Man-made underground passage is accessed through an entrance on the north side of the ringfort interior. This leads to a well-constructed stone-built chamber with two passages leading away from it. Built into the Man-made underground passage wall on the right-hand side of the right passage is a long stone decorated with prehistoric rock art. The visible portion of the stone measures approximately 85 x 28cm. It is decorated with irregular linear grooves as well as a cup-mark, four cup-and-ring motifs and a concentric circle motif. The concentric circle motif measures approximately 14cm in diameter and consists of two encircling rings and traces of a third. Unusually these rings enclose not a cup-mark, but a raised circular area approximately 5cm in diameter. Radiating out from the centre and cutting through the lower part of the concentric circles is a radial groove measuring 8cm long. Another interesting feature of the Rathduff rock art is the presence of a meandering linear 'tail' that emerges from the right side terminus of the second concentric ring and runs to the lower right edge of the stone, a distance of about 20cm.’ See attached photograph of rock art taken from Emper National School website at http://emperns.ie/index.php/photo-gallery/ Compiled by: Paul Walsh Date of revised upload: 1 November 2016

The rock art in Emper is likely from the Bronze Age, given its association with a contemporary cemetery and passage. Such art may have had ritual or symbolic significance, possibly linked to funerary practices or territorial markers.