When a particular form of art is found across an extensive area we can gain insight into relationships people had with large tracts of land landscapes, territories and sometimes regions. These important questions, underlying many archaeological investigations into ancient landscapes, seldom are addressed directly. Drawing on this regional, as well as international, archaeological research, we begin to address questions relating to human perceptions, constructions and markings of landscapes. They promise both information and insight into the country's ancient cultures. These pecked and pounded circular depressions are not to be confused with the grinding hollows, often larger and on horizontal surfaces, that resulted from food or ochre processing.
Cupules are much more circular, uniform in shape, larger, deeper and numerous.
They appear to have been made with a more rounded pounding tool, although evidence of such tools is rare. Cupules were not used to define shaped subjects, such as pictures of animals or humans. Rarely a symmetrical geometric shape is defined with an orderly arrangement of a dozen or more cupules. For the most part, the cupule arrangements seem abstract in appearance and enigmatic in meaning. Although accepting their arguments, we do not wish to make such fine discriminations until we better understand the context of cupule production, the structure of cupule sites and landscapes and the specific nature of cupule patterning.