Goska interprets Boscawen's 'axe heads' as 45 cm carved feet

October 30, 2026EnglandArtShare

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Key facts

• In 1986, local artist and author Ian McNeil Cooke recorded two parallel carvings at the base of the northeast face of Boscawen's leaning stone and read them as two axe heads side by side.
• In 2015, freelance archaeologist Tom Goska, a 3D-scanning and photogrammetry specialist, scanned the stone and built a detailed 3D model.
• Goska interprets the modelled axe-head shapes as a pair of carved feet, soles outward, with toes still visible, each about 45 cm long.
• Goska also noted small circular carvings roughly halfway to two-thirds up the stone and interprets them as breasts.
• The video reports Goska's interpretation that the stone is an older decorated tomb element reused in the later monument; the presenters say its shape would be wrong for a capstone, although reuse as an upright is possible.
• The cited parallels are Neolithic chambered tombs on Brittany's south coast, the dispersed remains of a Liverpool passage tomb with spiral, cup-mark, cup-and-ring and foot carvings, and a stone near Glasgow carved with four-toed feet. The speakers also mention Scandinavian examples said to be early rather than Viking in date.
• The speakers caution that the carvings' date cannot be established from typology or from the dating of the monument itself.

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