Abstractions Based on Circles (Archaeopress 2022): 99–108 When a small stone bearing opposing cup marks was found during excavations at Harehaugh Iron Age hillfort in Coquetdale in 2002 (Carlton 2012), Stan Beckensall was called over from another trench to give his expert opinion. His view, that this was an incipient mace-head derived from an earlier episode of occupation, was one of a range of ritual and secular interpretations suggested for the object. The fact that a range of hypotheses was possible and that most of them were plausible, reflects the current state of knowledge and understanding in the branch of rock art studies concerned with such portable cup-marked stones. Whilst most commonly found in Bronze Age cairns and interpreted as ceremonial or symbolic, it is important to acknowledge that cup-marked stones have also been found in Iron Age and medieval contexts where they are more likely to be assigned utilitarian functions such as mortars and door or window sockets. That said, by far the greatest concentrations of such finds in the northern uplands have been made in Bronze Age funerary or other presumed ritual-ceremonial contexts, a phenomenon Stan Beckensall himself was one of the first to explore in his investigations at Fowberry Moor, Northumberland. These investigations, along with his wider descriptive and interpretive work on rock art in general, provide inspiration for the following descriptions and discussion which focus on cup-marked stones found in the context of a Bronze Age cairn in Redesdale, undertaken as part of the Revitalising Redesdale landscape partnership scheme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and hosted by the Northumberland National Park Authority. Fawdon Hill: survey The origins of the fieldwork findings discussed here lie in the early 1960s when R.H. Walton included in his analytical account of the Battle of Otterburn (delivered to the Berwickshire Naturalists Club) a note on some possible medieval burial mounds found on Fawdon Hill. 8 Cup-marked stones in Bronze Age cairns� Excavations on Fawdon Hill (Redesdale) and other sites in north-east England Richard Carlton Figure 1. Aerial view over Fawdon Hill, from the south-east, with excavations in progress towards the bottom-left corner of the image.