* < <../../index.htm> Main Page <../../index.htm>* * Chapter 8* Approaching the Second Millenium Stone settings can be of a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from the over-one thousand stones arranged in ten rows at Kermario near Carnac in Brittany, through the great ring at Avebury to single standing stones, some enormous like the Grand Menhir Brisé, also in Brittany, 21 metres in height before its fall. The commonest plans, apart from multiple rows, circles and monoliths, are an oval, a cove, where three stones are placed close together in a horseshoe, and a single line. Stone settings can be understood in the same way as the wooden settings described in the previous chapter as marking the site of a special spot used for ritual, observation or ceremony but it may also be that particular types of stone arrangements each had a specific function. If this was so, it could mean, for example, in the case of sites serving religious purposes, similar settings could represent a particular brand of belief like the different chapels, churches, mosques and temples that we see around us today. It may be, of course, that they were used for wholly secular purposes but this is not a view much expressed today, although it is just as valid. Stonehenge (Chippindale), of all the stone setting sites, has received the most attention for, uniquely, it was built of two different types of stones and betrays its technological heritage in the way that the great stones, the sarsens, are fitted together using woodworking techniques of tenon and mortice. It is usually assumed that the earliest stones used on the site of Stonehenge came from the Prescelli Hills in south-western Wales and that they were brought by water into the estuary of the Severn, then up the Bristol Avon, across to the headwaters of the Wylye, down that river to its junction with the Hampshire Avon at Salisbury then up the Avon to a point 3.2 kilometres from Stonehenge. Thence they would have been dragged overland. These are the stones known as the /bluestones/. On average each stone would have weighed around four tons and the transport of eighty-two of these stones some 320 kilometres was a considerable achievement. Sarsens, the larger stones, did not come nearly as far. They were brought from the area of chalk downs between Marlborough and Newbury in north Wiltshire and are the remains of a stratum of silicified sandstone that in remote geological time lay on top of the chalk. Seventy-five of these enormous stones weighing up to forty tons were located and shaped with hammerstones. Placed on sledges and moved on a wooden railway perhaps, they were transported some twenty to 40 kilometres to the site of Stonehenge. There they were set up in holes by being slid down inclines and, after being left to settle, the tops were cut to an even height and the tenons shaped onto which the mortices in the lintel stones would be fitted. Each stone was dressed and the parallax corrected so that from the ground the uprights and the lintels look as though they are the same width at the top as at the bottom. Grooves cut into the ends of the lintels that topped the circles allowed them to be fitted together into a continuous circle. These sophisticated additions to the monument are what distinguishes it from all other standing stone settings that, like the great stone setting at Avebury, used undressed stones. The various constructions at Stonehenge have been grouped into three main phases with accompanying dates and a pottery style that has been identified as being characteristic of the construction period. Phase 1. Around 3000calBCE (see above). Middle of the Neolithic period. Built as a henge with a circle of postholes (Aubrey Holes) inside the bank that was placed inside the ditch. The posts may have had a lintelled top for they were of a fair size, the postholes being on average 0.76 metres in depth and over a metre in diameter, stout enough to support a continuous lintel. The pottery of the period was the Peterborough type. Phase 2. Between 2900calBCE and 2550calBCE. The posts had gone by this time, the ditch backfilled, and some of the Aubrey Holes and other holes contain cremations, the earliest dating from 2900BCE. Postholes were dug in the entrance and outside it and a large number of postholes appear inside the henge arranged in no sort of identifiable pattern. Pottery type: Grooved Ware. Phase 3. Around 2550calBCE. The bluestones were erected in a circle that may or may not have been completed. They apparently came from the Preselli Mountain area in Wales, some 400 kilometres, as the crow flies, from the site. An oxygen isotope analysis examination of the teeth of four male skeletons found in a pit at Boscombe Down close to Stonehenge has found that they contain a high proportion of strontium isotope which is associated with high radioactivity and suggests that these people originated in places in the west of Britain which include the Lake District and Wales. As the remains date from around 2,300BCE it has been suggested that these people and two children also in the pit accompanied the bluestones to Stonehenge. Datewise, on the face of it, it does not seem very likely but what is significant about the discovery is that people were ready to travel around the country at that time and were not rooted to one spot. Like the Amesbury Archer, buried not far away, they were not afraid to wander. Stones were placed close to the bank on opposite sides of the monument, the distance between the stones of the pairs being about thirty metres. These four stones are known as the Station Stones. The Heelstone is set up outside the entrance. Cremation burials continue to be made in the interior. The characteristic pottery continued to be Grooved Ware. Around 2455calBCE the sarsen circle and trilithons horseshoe appear, the sarsen circle being completed by 2210BCE. Ditches encircle the Heelstone and one of the Station Stones on each side of the circle. The characteristic pottery continued to be Grooved Ware. Between 2200calBCE and 2100calBCE the bluestones reappear as an oval built inside the sarsen horseshoe. A bank and ditch avenue is built from the entrance to the monument running north-eastwards. The Heelstone is at the beginning of this avenue. The characteristic pottery continued to be Grooved Ware but the first Beaker pottery appeared alongside a body in a burial in the ditch. Around 1900calBCE the bluestone oval was rearranged into a horseshoe which opened like the sarsen horseshoe towards the entrance to the monument. A circle of bluestones was placed between the sarsen horseshoe and the sarsen circle. Pottery was now in the Beaker style. Between 1700 and 1600calBCE two concentric circles of holes were dug outside the stone settings and between them and the encircling bank of the monument. These are called the Y and Z holes and were accompanied by pottery of the Wessex I (Early Bronze Age) type. Such a very elaborate sequence of phases is not repeated elsewhere on the same scale in any other stone setting sites, at least, as far as we are aware and is another characteristic of Stonehenge that puts it into a different category from its contemporaries. There is still no general agreement about the function of the monument although links with the neighbouring site of Durrington Walls are now being taken seriously. A large occupation site there, perhaps the largest of its type in contemporary Europe, has been suggested as accommodation for workers erecting the stones and/or pilgrims. Deposits of bones at both Durrington Walls and Stonehenge suggest regular feasts that could support either or both hypotheses. Examination of strontium isotopes in the cattle teeth from these deposits show that they are the remains of animals that came from a variety of places, some, 40-50 miles away, and some even from highland areas like Wales. The isotopes are related to the type of land on which these animals were bred. So does this latest evidence demonstrate far-reaching pilgrimage to a sacred site or are we contemplating a widespread trade in cattle? Either way, it suggests that people were far more mobile in the past than we have previously thought. latest thinking links the monument with Brittany. The geometry and arrangement of the Four Station Stones have many parallels there but few in Britain. This is true also of the trilithon horseshoe and the grading in height of its stones towards the midwinter sunset and of the anthropomorphs, axes, dagger and crook carved on the sarsen inner horsehoe and circle. Although it is common knowledge that the midsummer sun rises over the Heelstone, it is likely that the direction of the Avenue and the monument?s orientation towards the midwinter sunset which shines through the gap between the uprights of the largest trilithon is a better clue to the preoccupation of the stone builders for it is being found on Neolithic sites of the period that most pigs were being slaughtered in the early winter which fits in with the idea that a celebration was being planned for the winter solstice. In the summer, in contrast, there was no such peak of slaughter. At Maes Howe in Orkney and at Clava cairn the entrance passages of the passage graves also face the setting midwinter sun which implies an early ancestry for the celebration of this time of the year. The stone phases stretch from before c2500BCE through to 1600BCE, a period of around nine hundred years which provides some sort of chronological parameters to a period during which the most obvious ritual preoccupation was with stone settings. Like Stonehenge, Avebury was a henge which also has elaborate stone structures associated with it though how much later they were added is not altogether clear. A mosaic of simpler ?stone-henges? is found from north to south in Britain (Burl) from Balfarg in the north to the Stripple Stones in Cornwall and include the Devil?s Quoits in Oxon, the Bull Ring and Arbor Low in Derbyshire and Cairnpapple. Unfortunately a great many of the stones that made up these monuments have disappeared. In the north of Scotland stone rows in Caithness and stone circles around the Clava Cairns are some of the better-known examples of stone settings but in Aberdeenshire recumbent stone circles (RSC) are the most spectacular constructions. They consist of a circle of stones graded in height, the two tallest in the south-western quadrant flanking a prostrate block, the recumbent. Inside the circle may be a ring-cairn in whose central space cremated human bone was deposited. Examples of these monuments are at Loanhead of Daviot and Berrybrae in Aberdeenshire. North-east of the Tay in Perthshire at Croft Moraig is an example of a site where a timber setting was replaced by a stone one as at Stonehenge or at the Sanctuary in Wiltshire. At Croft Moraig a horseshoe of fourteen posts inside a shallow ditch was replaced by a stone horseshoe surrounded by a stony bank. The third phase there consisted of a 12.2m diameter of large, ungraded stones set up within the bank around the horseshoe with two outliers towards the ESE. We shall see that the Sanctuary had outliers in its final phase that were the beginning of the West Kennet Avenue and one wonders whether the same sort of situation could have been planned at Croft Moraig. On the Orkney mainland there are the standing stones of Stenness which are the remains of a 31.1m diameter circle inside a bank. The Ring of Brodgar is a 103.6m diameter circle inside a rock-cut ditch. In the Western Isles and in the North, burial deposits are common in stone circles and the most impressive monument perhaps is Callanish on the Isle of Lewis. Its ring is composed of thin stone pillars with four avenues leading to it. Inside the ring there are the remains of a Camster chambered cairn. Cumbria has one of the finest collections of stone circles in Britain and would be a good place to begin a study of them. One of the finest is Castlerigg that must have been one of the major engineering achievements of the period. The heaviest stone in the circle weighs at least 15 tons and the average weight of the rest is about 2.5 tons but they did not have to be carried very far. Flanking the entrance to the circle are two larger stones 4m apart and outside the circle there are traces of a bank. Ireland has a good number of standing stones. In the south-west there are some recumbent stone circles. An example at Dromberg in Co. Cork has a level surface of gravel in the interior under which two burial pits were uncovered that contained cremations. In the West of Ireland the most spectacular site is at Grange in Co Limerick where there are three stone circles like the arrangement at Stanton Drew in Somerset. Largest of the circles is the Lios, mentioned above, where the megaliths are set side by side with their backs against an encircling bank. These stones were brought a distance of about a mile to the site, a very considerable task since the largest stone weighs some 60 tons. A single narrow passage leads across the ditch and through the bank into the interior where excavations produced English-type Beaker pottery and some of the Grooved Ware and Ebbsfleet types which are common in the Wessex henges and have also been discovered at Stenness in Orkney. A site similar to the Lios is at Castleruddery in Co. Wicklow. In eastern Ireland there are rings like the 35 stones placed around the great passage grave at Newgrange. Further north in Ulster there are circles and rows of stones. The most elaborate complex is the group of standing stones at Beaghmore in Co. Tyrone that consist of circles, cairns and rows of standing stones. Strangely, in view of its geology, Wales has only 5% of British stone circles within its borders. One of the most interesting is the embanked stone circle at Druid?s Circle in Gwynnedd. In the centre was a stone cist holding the cremation burial of a child inside a food vessel. Close by this primary burial was another enclosed inside a food vessel type pot and not far away a third cremation. ?Open circles? are defined as stone circles that enclose areas free from mounds, pits, graves and other earthwork features. There are some 900 of them lying mainly along the west coast of Britain or in north Wiltshire or Oxfordshire alongside the prehistoric tracks of the Ridgeway and the eastern Cotswold-Wessex pathway. Ten of them are amongst the largest megalithic constructions in the country and include Winterbourne Bassett in Wiltshire, the Devil?s Quoits in Oxon, Stanton Drew in Wiltshire and, along the north-west coasts, the Ring of Brodgar, Broubster in Caithness, the Twelve Apostles in Dumfriesshire and Long Meg and Her Daughters in Cumberland. They all have diameters of over 60 metres. Avebury in Wiltshire has its outer ring inside the internal ditch with a diameter of 165m. Inside there are two smaller circles and part of what may have been a third circle which may not have been completed. If it existed then there would have been a line of three stone circles on the site like the arrangement at Stanton Drew. Inside the central circle which originally contained 30 stones but of which only four survive, was a large cove (three stones set in a ?U-pattern), the largest known, of which two stones still stand. There was a cove also at Stanton Drew and another at Arbor Low. The south circle is slightly larger and contained 32 stones. At the centre was a huge upright that was originally 6.4m tall. This has now disappeared. Also inside this circle was an arrangement of smaller stones, known as the Z stones. To the south of the south circle are several other stones that may have formed part of another destroyed feature, possibly a fourth circle. These internal features are associated with a number of cremation burials Snaking away from the southern entrance the double line of stones of the West Kennet Avenue traces a sinuous path of over a mile to Overton Hill on which stands the Sanctuary, a small monument that combined both stone and timber circles. Another avenue of which only two stones remain led towards the west. This is known as the Beckhampton Avenue. Although a good deal of excavation was carried out on the ditch and the West Kennet Avenue in the earlier part of the twentieth century, not very much information was obtained about its builders or its use although it is clear that the planning of the circle and the interior settings would have been a complicated business. The main pottery found there is Mortlake Ware and there is also a fair amount of Beaker pottery associated with cremations. On the basis of material used to pack around the basis of the standing stones, which is of two kinds - clay and small boulders from the banks of the nearby River Kennet and hard chalk from the bottom of the great ditch - two periods of construction have been suggested although not universally accepted by all authorities who have studied the monument: Avebury 1 may have consisted of the Central and Southern Circles and perhaps the unfinished northern one together with the main part of the West Kennet Avenue that stopped short of the circles and did not point directly at them. Avebury 2 was perhaps a reconstruction in which the northern circle (if it existed) was demolished and the other two surrounded by the bank and ditch with the Great (outer) Circle on its inner edge. At the same time the Z stones were erected and the former end of the West Kennet Avenue joined to the southern entrance by additional stones forming a sharp bend. In the west of England on Dartmoor there are a number of rings but the most striking sites are stone rows like those at Merrivale. The stones are very small compared with stones elsewhere but they are found alongside stone rings and occasional single standing stones. Further east is the complex of stone settings at Stanton Drew just to the south of Bath. There are three circles, the middle one some 113m in diameter with the remains of an avenue leading off it in the direction of the River Chew that lies to the east. To the north-east is an oval and another lying to the south-west of the middle circle. To the west is a cove and to the north-east two outliers on the other side of the River Chew. The Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire complete our brief survey of the standing stone of the British Isles. They lie beside an ancient ridge road. The main feature is a circle of about seventy stones known as the King?s Men. None are very big stones but a few metres to the east is the King Stone which is 2.4m high. The Whispering Knights stand about 0.8km east of the Rollright Stones. These are four stones varying in height between 1.5m and 2.4 m that are the remains of a chamber of a megalithic barrow. There is no sign of the mound. What are we to make of this multiplicity of designs throughout the country jostling each other for elbow-room? Like the variety of megalithic barrows, it emphasises the essential individuality of the groups that made up the British prehistoric population despite the superficial appearance of homogeneity given by the pottery and flintwork. This characteristic was to endure for millennia and only perhaps begins to disappear with the advent of mass-production and national newspapers at the end of the nineteenth century. Regular systems of rectangular fields can be demonstrated in southern Britain by the earlier part of the second millennium BCE. At Winterbourne Abbas in Dorset, for example, the Poor Lot barrow cemetery contains a triple bell barrow that is overlying a corner of a small rectangular field, part of the system covering the adjacent area. This field system must date from the time before the barrow was built. These fields are known as celtic fields, a misnomer that it is now impossible to correct. At Ogbourne Maizey Down in Wiltshire, a later settlement enclosure sits on top of an earlier system of celtic fields. Celtic fields were formed by the agricultural practice of the time which involved ploughing fields with a scratch plough or ard which had no mould board and so could not turn over the soil. What it did do was to scratch a furrow and this made it necessary for the ploughman to go over the ground twice so as thoroughly to churn up the topsoil. He did this by ploughing the second time at right-angles to his original furrows. It is called cross-ploughing. This practice resulted in the formation of small rectangular fields. On hill slopes where the evidence for them is usually found (they have been ploughed out elsewhere), lynchets form. A positive lynchet is a bank of earth that accumulates on the downhill side as the soil disturbed in ploughing gradually moves down the slope under the action of gravity. The denudation at the top edge creates a negative lynchet. Excavation has shown that celtic fields were normally surrounded by ditches like modern fields and this is the reason why they appear on aerial photographs. However, others appear to have been bounded by stony banks that may have accumulated from field-clearance during ploughing. **** ** <../../Templates/onlinetexts-index.htm>************ * Conspicuous Construction ** <../cap.htm>* * * * main page <../onlinetexts-start.htm>* ** <../onlinetexts-start.htm>** * Round Barrows * * * *** ** *