New Approaches towards Measuring Cupule Volume for Empirical Analysis:An Experimental Study from Brahmagiri, Southern India

Cupules (cup marks) are found across the world ranging in age from Palaeolithic to recent in different archaeological contexts. Cupules sites at Brahmagiri, Southern India are rock shelter, mortuary and settlement in context of Iron Age (1200–300 BCE) and Early History (300 BCE–500 CE) evidences. The emphasis of this research is on developing an advanced approach for measuring cupule volume from one of the sites at Brahmagiri through V = π x d x (R² + r² + R x r)/3. In order to test the accuracy of the volume values obtained from this formula, a simple experiment was conducted by filling premeasured water into cupules through 5 and 60 ml volume matrix glass and this showed close results validating the above formula with a minimal error margin.