Discussions of contacts between Britain and Ireland usually focus on monuments and on portable artefacts such as Grooved Ware, Beakers, and metalwork. New research on insular rock art suggests that it originated in the Middle to Late Neolithic period and continued to be used and re-used into the Early Bronze Age. This paper considers its relationship with decorated passage graves and other structures. It argues that the distribution of rock art sheds further light on connections between these islands. Estuaries, bays, and landing places were important, but the siting of pecked motifs indicates other links along three overland routes between the North Sea and the Irish Sea. Certain practices were shared between megalithic tombs and recently excavated rock carvings. It is possible that they expressed similar beliefs at a time when long distance travel was important.

How can we devise appropriate ways of studying later prehistoric rock art in its wider context, and how can we relate ancient images to the deposits of artefacts found on the same sites? This paper describes the methods adopted in recording a series of carved motifs within a cave located outside the defences of a Chalcolithic hillfort on the Spanish/Portuguese border in Castilla y Leon. It features two quite different series of images, located in separate chambers and divided from one another by a kind of tunnel. Excavation on an artificial terrace outside the cave mouth established a chronological sequence which could be applied to the contents of the different parts of the site. This work suggested that the outer chamber, which features a large number of cup-marks, might have been associated with domestic occupation of a kind found elsewhere on the mountain, whilst the elaborately decorated inner chamber was used over a shorter period and may have played a much more specialised role. Its initial use could have been for burial. In a final phase the entire cave saw the deposition of large numbers of artefacts before its entrance was blocked. Its distinctive layout and the organisation of the decoration suggest that by the 2nd millennium bc it was considered as a natural passage grave

The megalithic monuments of Arles–Fontvieille appear to have been deliberately constructed such that a ray of the setting sun on and around the equinox penetrates the subterranean chamber producing a spectacular light-and-shadow hierophany. Moreover, at one of the sites there is evidence in the form of rock art that observations were also being made of heliacal rising and settings, possibly of both the Pleiades and Orion. The equinox hierophany has been documented at three of the four intact monuments of the group. This phenomenon was probably exploited for sacred ritualistic purposes related to seasonal change and timekeeping by the agricultural people who built the monuments. This evidence has significant importance for understanding these monuments in the context of European megalithism and the wider European Neolithic as well as for understanding their cosmological role within the society that built them.

Chronology remains a problematic area in prehistoric archaeology but the increasing number and precision of radiometric dates begin to suggest patterns that can be resolved down to the scale of individual lifetimes. The study of megalithic monuments has benefited from these developments but remains hampered by the indirect relationship between the materials that are dated and the structures themselves. Drawing on evidence from France, Scandinavia, and Iberia, it is nonetheless arguable that available patterns of dates suggest an event-like tempo to the construction of megalithic monuments, with large numbers being built within relatively short periods of time. This has implications for typological models and for the social context in which such monuments were designed and built.