부산대학교 도서관

Type of landscape art. It is apparently unique to Britain, and the earliest hill-figures probably pre-date the Roman conquest of the 1st century bc. Hill-figures are produced by removing turf to expose the underlying rock or soil. In the majority of cases—most figures are found in southern England—this is chalk, and thus almost all the figures appear white on a green background. One notable exception was the no longer extant Red Horse of Tysoe in Warwickshire, England, where reddish clay was exposed. Two figures at Strichen in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, were filled with quartz and limestone to give a white appearance, and a small horse-figure at Woolbury Camp, Hampshire, England, was made of flint that has been whitewashed in the past. Most hill-figures feature large cut areas, with details left as uncut patches of turf. A number of the earliest figures, however, were drawn as outlines, with the edges and details marked by cutting, leaving the main body of the figure dark; the same technique was used for some 20th-century signs and badges. For some of the earlier examples, records exist of elaborate cleaning and scouring rituals, for which the participants were paid; seven years seems to have been a regular interval for the cleaning of many figures. Some English figures, such as the ...