I used to spend a lot of time roaming the moors of Northumbria in search of Cup & Ring marks which, like other manifestations of prehiostoric ulture, have attracted all manner of hoo-hah over the years. Who knows what they are? Who cares? For me it was always enough to savour the human presence of our Beaker Folk Ancestors who, in sharing our self-same abstract purpose, sent something vivid enough across the centuries. Closer analysis of the vocabularies does reveal a regional variation - the Northumbrian C&RMs are quite distinct from nieghbouring Yorkshire & Scottish ones - though I too conclude their function was astronomical given the landscapes inhabited by these diminutive forest-dwellers of circa 2000-1600BCE. 4000 years on I think it's folly to attempt further speulation or even put our religious conceits onto a culture that were too busy getting on with the business of living to get hung up on indulgent mysticism They were very hard times - life was short, brutish & prpobably very sweet as well - so just looking for patterns in the chaos of it all, and where there were none, they made them, which accounts as much for the simplest cup marks to the henges & sarsens of Avebury, and, ultimately, I sense similar impulses prevail in the construction of everything from Crop Circles to high-way roundabouts which I find equally wondrous.