Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge

by Graham Phillips

  So on the Orkney Isles we have the Grooved Ware culture, with its new types of passage tombs and dwellings developing from the simpler, earlier structures of the Unstan Ware culture. Around 3100 BCE there were unique artistic innovations in the form of pottery, the mysterious petrospheres, and the spiral designs carved into stone. And at the same time the islanders erected the Stones of Stenness. All the evidence suggests that what was to become the unique Megalithic culture of the British Isles began there. The same grooved ware ceramics, petrospheres, and spiral carving are found at subsequent sites throughout the British Isles, some of these sites also having circular passage tombs. And at all these locations we find the local people building their own stone circles. For whatever purpose they were erected, they must have been of immense importance to those who created them. Over a period of around a hundred years separate peoples, spread far and wide over 130,000 square miles, suddenly, and for some unknown reason, started to adopt the ways of the enigmatic Grooved Ware culture, and the Megalithic age was born.

  5

  Progression

  The Discovery of Stone Circles throughout the British Isles

  AS NORTHEASTERN SCOTLAND IS THE CLOSEST region to the Orkney Isles, we might expect this to be where the influence of the Grooved Ware culture first spread. Many stone circles were built in this part of Scotland, of which well over a hundred survive. The oldest of them, however, date from around 2700 BCE, four centuries after the Stones of Stenness (see chapter 6). The culture’s earliest appearance in Scotland, other than in the Orkneys, was on its northwestern islands, the Hebrides, probably because the inhabitants shared a similar, island-dwelling way of life, making their livelihood from the sea.

  On the west coast of Lewis, the largest and most northerly of the Hebrides islands, is the Callanish Stone Circle, often described as Scotland’s Stonehenge. Although it may be the best preserved of the larger stone circles in the country, it does not have the arrangement of lintel arches unique to the real Stonehenge. The circle, consisting of thirteen standing stones, ranging from 8 to 13 feet high, is about 37 feet in diameter. The megaliths have a similar, elongated, tablet-like appearance to the Stones of Stenness but are made of a local rock called Lewisian gneiss, giving them a rough, craggy appearance. Rows of standing stones radiate from the ring in a cruciform pattern, but these are thought to have been added later, possibly at the same time that avenues were incorporated into other megalithic complexes, around 2600 BCE (see chapter 1). There is also a collapsed chambered tomb within the circle that includes a further standing stone; there, fragments of so-called Beaker ware pottery have been excavated, ceramics that did not occur in the British Isles until after 2500 BCE (see chapter 9). Dating the Callanish Stone Circle has been something of a problem, as less in the way of datable organic material has been found beneath the stones than at Stenness. However, as well as the Beaker ware, fragments of grooved ware pottery have been excavated from the Callanish Stone Circle, which modern rehydroxylation methods (see chapter 4) have dated to as early as 3050 BCE. At present, the Callanish monument is thought to be the second oldest stone circle after the Stones of Stenness.1

  The Callanish Stone Circle is somewhat smaller than the Stones of Stenness and originally had thirteen rather than twelve stones. It’s difficult to tell whether there was a king stone standing outside the main circle, as ground-penetrating radar suggests that many of the later, outlying stones were moved on various occasions during the Neolithic period, leaving telltale signs of various holes that now add confusion to surveys. Some experts believe that the large stone that forms part of the collapsed tomb, which stands almost 16 feet high, might once have been set some distance outside the main circle to mark the midwinter sunrise. So far, no passage tombs of the Unstan or Maeshowe type have been found in the Hebrides, but neither have any settlements of the period when the Callanish Stone Circle was erected. The latest thinking is that the remains of tombs and villages of the early Neolithic era on the islands have been lost to rising sea levels. Whatever future discoveries might reveal, five thousand years ago the inhabitants of the Isle of Lewis were clearly influenced by the culture of the Orkneys, 130 miles to the northwest: within a century of the building of the Stones of Stenness, they had adopted the distinctive type of grooved ware pottery and erected their own stone circle.2

  The remains of many stone circles are found on the Hebrides islands, but few have been excavated. The Lochbuie Stone Circle on the island of Mull, south of Lewis, is one. Dating from around 3000 BCE, it measures approximately 40 feet in diameter and consists of nine stones up to 6 feet high. They are much smaller than the stones of Callanish and Stenness, probably due to the difficulty in cutting and shaping the hard local granite from which they are fashioned, making them much thicker than the taller slabs of the Orkney and Lewis monuments. Some 130 feet to the southwest of the circle, there stands a 9-foot-tall monolith aligned with the midwinter sunset.

  Another excavated stone circle in the Hebrides, dating from around the same time, is Cultoon Stone Circle on the Isle of Islay at the southern end of the archipelago, which now consists of three standing megaliths and a further twelve lying flat on the ground. The tallest of the still-standing monoliths is about 6 feet tall, and the fallen stones measure up to 9 feet long. Considering that around a third of such megaliths needed to be planted in the ground to keep them upright, it follows that the original circle consisted of fifteen approximately 6-foot-high stones and seems to have been about 15 feet in diameter.

  Just to the south of the Hebrides proper is the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. There are six stone circles; the oldest, which archaeologists refer to as Machrie Moor 2, dates from around 3000 BCE. It originally consisted of a 45-foot-diameter circle of eight stones, of which three survive, the tallest being almost 15 feet high. Shaped from a type of hard sandstone, the monoliths have a similar appearance to the Stones of Stenness. Because later stones were erected in the area, it is now unclear whether there was an outlying king stone. So far, no passage tombs or villages similar to Skara Brae have been found on the Hebrides or the Isle of Arran, which might be explained by their loss to rising sea levels. Nonetheless, the islanders certainly embraced significant aspects of the Grooved Ware culture within around a century of the creation of the Stones of Stenness.3

  The Grooved Ware culture and its practice of stone circle building spread quickly on the mainland to southwestern Scotland, where no fewer than sixty-one stone circles survive in the district of Dumfries and Galloway. The earliest, dating from around 3000 BCE, is known as the Twelve Apostles. Standing just outside the market town of Dumfries, it measures some 280 feet in diameter, making it the largest stone circle on the Scottish mainland. As its name suggests, it was originally composed of twelve stones, each about 6 feet tall, of which eleven remain. Geophysics has revealed that a further stone that aligned with the midwinter sunset stood about 200 feet to the southwest of the circle. Although the Twelve Apostles had the same number of megaliths as the Stones of Stenness, the particularly hard local Silurian rock from which its megaliths were cut made it difficult to shape them with Stone Age tools. They are therefore wider, thicker, and more crudely shaped than the monoliths of many other stone circles. As on the Hebrides, no passage tombs have been found in this region.4

  Around 3000 BCE what is thought to be the oldest surviving stone circle in England was created. Castlerigg Stone Circle, near the town of Keswick in the district of Cumbria in the far northwest of the country, is about 100 feet in diameter and consists of thirty-eight stones up to 7 feet high, the largest weighing around 15 tons. About 300 feet southwest of the circle, a single 3-foot stone aligns with the midwinter sunset. An unusual feature of Castlerigg is a rectangle of smaller standing stones within the main circle, although this seems to have been added much later. The large number of stones at the site is thought to represent the greater population and relative wealth of the area, compared with the contemporary Hebrides and southwestern Scotland.5 The sam
e applies to the Swinside Stone Circle, some 30 miles to the south. Built around the same time, it has a diameter of 94 feet and consists of fifty-five stones up to 10 feet tall. As in Dumfries and Galloway, just to the north, many stone circles were built in Cumbria, of which some fifty still survive. Two further stones, set close together just outside of the southeastern side of the circle, are thought to have marked some kind of ceremonial entrance. As this aligns with the midwinter sunrise, it seems likely that an outlying monolith also stood in this direction. Not only has grooved ware pottery been found at the oldest of these circles, but examples of rock art identical to that on the Westray Stone from the Orkneys also still survive (see chapter 4). A 12-foot-tall monolith known as Long Meg, near the village of Langwathby, is actually decorated with a series of concentric circles and spirals, just like the Westray Stone, as are two stones from the nearby Little Meg Stone Circle. Once again, no passage tombs have yet been identified in the area.6

  The earliest stone circles found in the English county of Lancashire, to the immediate south of Cumbria, date from a later period than those we have been examining, as do those on the mainland of North Wales. The next influence of the contemporary Grooved Ware culture we need to examine is actually found in Ireland. The seaside town of Portpatrick, in southwestern Dumfries and Galloway, is only 14 miles from the coast of County Down in northeastern Ireland. Intriguingly the culture may have taken root in Ireland at the same time, or possibly earlier, that it spread into Cumbria or even Dumfries and Galloway. The North Channel is less than 30 miles wide where it divides the Hebrides from Ireland, and archaeology has revealed that regular trading of various Stone Age implements across this strait was already established well before 3000 BCE, so it is possible that the Grooved Ware culture arrived directly from Islay, the most southern of the Hebrides.

  Close to two hundred stone circles still survive throughout Ireland, in various states of preservation, the oldest of which is thought to be Ballynoe Stone Circle. Standing about 2.5 miles south of Downpatrick in County Down, Northern Ireland, it is approximately 150 feet in diameter and originally consisted of over fifty stones up to 6 feet tall, most of which still survive. Dating from around 3000 BCE, it is similar in design to the contemporary Swinside Stone Circle in Cumbria. But it was not only the stone circle tradition and the manufacture of grooved ware pottery that was adopted in Ireland but also the building of passage tombs.7

  Across the border in the Irish Republic there stands the largest of all such monuments in the British Isles. Newgrange, which lies 5 miles west of the town of Drogheda in County Meath on Ireland’s eastern coast, is a mound about 250 feet across and 40 feet high, over twice the size of Maeshowe (see chapter 4). Various dates, ranging over a period of more than a century, have been estimated for the construction of Newgrange, with most tourist information providing the earliest date of 3200 BCE. If correct, this would make it older than the earliest passage tombs on the Orkney Isles. However, the dating should be treated with caution. The monument was in a severely dilapidated condition until it was restored in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Examination of organic remains from the site made before this time obtained a central date of around 3200 BCE, but it was only after Newgrange was reconstructed that a more reliable form of radiocarbon dating, incorporating a process called accelerator mass spectrometry, was achieved. The problem was that the rebuilding of the tomb meant that organic remains were contaminated, making it difficult to accurately date the structure with the more precise technique. It has therefore been left to rehydroxylation dating (see chapter 4) of pottery excavated at the site to determine its age, and this has resulted in a date of around 3100 BCE. All the same, Newgrange would still date from almost the same time as the Maeshowe-style tombs on the Orkney Isles.8

  Fig. 5.1. Early stone circles and megalithic sites.

  It seems that the Grooved Ware culture became firmly established in the Newgrange area even before it made a lasting mark in the Hebrides. The fact that Newgrange and other passage tombs have been found in Ireland but not in the western islands of Scotland or in northwestern England has resulted in speculation that the Groove Ware culture might have spread to Ireland directly from the Orkney Isles.9 Archaeology has revealed that early Neolithic sea-trading routes between Ireland and the Orkneys did exist. For instance, items such as axes and knives, made from flint found on the east coast of Ireland, have been unearthed at Skara Brae. Voyagers from Ireland may have been inspired to build such tombs after visiting the Orkney Isles; alternatively voyagers from the Orkneys may have settled in Ireland, where they built monuments like Maeshowe. Either way, the apparent absence of passage tombs at locations in between might imply that eastern Ireland was more prosperous than the Hebrides, mainland Scotland, or northern England and more able to dedicate the resources necessary to construct such mausoleums.

  Although some researchers have gone so far as to propose that Newgrange was actually built before the passage tombs of the Orkney Isles and represents a separate tradition entirely, this is almost certainly wrong. There is a clear evolution of such monuments on the Orkneys, from Unstan-style to Maeshowe-style tombs, over a five-hundred-year period, whereas no such systematic development is found in Ireland. The skills required to create Newgrange had to have been learned by trial and error; it is so well put together that it could not have been the first of its kind. However, there are no known precursors to the monument in Ireland. The expertise had to have been developed somewhere, and at present, the only place where evidence of such a Neolithic learning curve has been found is on the Orkney Isles.

  Although Newgrange is bigger than anything so far discovered on the Orkneys, it was constructed in a design similar to Maeshowe. The mound is entered by a 60-foot-long stone passage, averaging about 5 feet in height, which leads to a rectangular chamber with a corbeled roof, measuring 21 feet long, 17 feet wide, and 20 feet high. Like Maeshowe, it has three side chambers, one to the front and one on each side of the central chamber as viewed from the end of the passage. Also like Maeshowe, the passage is directly aligned so that the rays of the midwinter sun, on the solstice, around December 21, shine directly into the central chamber, although at Newgrange it occurs at sunrise rather than sunset.

  During reconstruction of the tomb in the 1970s, irregular-shaped white quartz rocks, most less than a foot in size, which previously had littered the area around the front of the monument, were assembled into a 20-foot-high wall curving around the façade. The result is certainly impressive, but there is now considerable doubt among archaeologists that Newgrange originally had such a feature. It seems most unlikely that such a high, vertical wall of these stones could have been built five thousand years ago; those who created it in the 1970s needed to fix the stones in place with concrete to prevent the whole thing from collapsing. When the monument was originally built, the technology simply did not exist to fasten such a high retaining wall at such a steep angle. It is now thought that these quartz rocks were actually cobblestones that lined a terrace or plaza on the ground before the entrance. This was certainly the case at the nearby passage tomb of Knowth: similar in size to Newgrange, it was built to the same design a few centuries later. Most archaeologists now believe this terrace to have been a later addition to Newgrange, constructed around the same time as the Knowth tomb. Newgrange also has the remains of a stone circle around it, but this too was erected later, around 2500 BCE.

  There can be no doubt that the Grooved Ware culture was responsible for the building of Newgrange. Not only is it a Maeshowe-style tomb, complete with grooved ware pottery, but a number of its large stones, both inside and around the entrance, are carved with the same concentric circles and spirals found on the Orkney Westray Stone and in Cumbria.10

  Shortly after Newgrange was built, the Grooved Ware culture makes its first appearance in Wales, on the Isle of Anglesey. Evidence of trading across the 70 miles of the Irish Sea separating Anglesey from the east coast of Ireland exists from early Neolithic times, an
d it seems likely that the influence of the Grooved Ware culture, and its practice of stone circle building, followed the same route to this part of northwest Wales. It’s doubtful to have first arrived from northern England, as there is no sign of grooved ware ceramics or stone circles along the northern coast of Wales or in Lancashire, immediately south of Cumbria, until some centuries later. Moreover, the practice of building passage tombs, which had been so eagerly embraced in Ireland but was absent in Cumbria, was also adopted in Anglesey. On the west coast of the island, 2 miles northwest of the village of Aberffraw, is the passage tomb of Barclodiad y Gawres. Until excavations in the 1950s it was in such a poor condition that it looked like a big pile of stones, which led to its name: in Welsh, barclodiad y gawres means “apronful of the giantess.” Local legend tells how the mound was created when a lady giant dumped a stack of stones she had been carrying in her apron. Around 90 feet in diameter, with a 20-foot entrance passage leading to a chamber with three smaller chambers to the back and sides, the tomb is basically a scaled-down version of Newgrange. Its chambers have long since collapsed, and after the 1950s excavations a concrete roof was constructed to preserve the interior.11 As at Newgrange, not only has grooved ware pottery been uncovered from the site, but five of its megaliths also are carved with the same circular designs found at the Irish tomb. Eight miles to the southeast of Barclodiad y Gawres are the standing stones of Bryn Gwyn (White Hill). Today only two remain, but at 13 feet high they are the tallest Neolithic standing stones in Wales. Archaeological excavation in 2008 and 2010 determined that they are what remains of a circle of eight stones, some 50 feet in diameter. Organic samples obtained from beneath one of the stones have been radiocarbon dated to around 3000 BCE, making the Bryn Gwyn monument Wales’s oldest stone circle.