(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 22. One of the inner stone circles at Avebury. Such additional stone circles may have been added to compensate for the apparent change in the positions of the stars with which the monoliths at such megalithic complexes were intended to align.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 23. The Cove at Avebury, an arrangement of huge monoliths weighing up to 100 tons each, which may be the oldest part of the megalithic complex.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 24. The Callanish Stone Circle on Scotland’s Isle of Lewis was in use for over three thousand years, during which time many of its monoliths were moved and new stones added, perhaps to accommodate for the gradual shift in the Earth’s axis of rotation.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 25. The Iron Age burial chamber inside the Callanish Stone Circle. Such tombs—built inside stone circles for up to one thousand years after 500 BCE—reveal that the Celts venerated stone circles as passionately as did their forebears.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 26. The two 10-foot-tall monoliths at the Bridestones in Cheshire once formed part of a stone circle that stood just behind their present position. It may have been Britain’s last stone circle, built about 450 CE, some 3,500 years after the first stone circle was built at Stenness in the Orkney Islands.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
Plate 27. The Bridestones box cairn. These unusual burial chambers, once covered by mounds, were the tombs of the Druids. This one may have been the final resting place of the last of the ancient Druids.
(Photography by Deborah Cartwright)
From around 3000 BCE the practice of building stone circles continued to spread. It became so prevalent in the British Isles that it is no longer accurate to refer to the stone circle builders after this time as the Grooved Ware culture. For a start, some of those who adopted the practice continued to use other types of pottery. The idea might have started on the Orkney Isles and spread to the Hebrides, southwestern Scotland, North West England, eastern Ireland, and into Wales, but by the time it reached Stonehenge it had taken on a life of its own. From this point onward, we should refer to those who built stone circles as the Megalithic culture.
6
The Phases of Megalithic Construction
BEFORE MOVING ON, we should assess what we know so far. The first people to build stone circles in the British Isles also adopted grooved ware pottery, most likely because it was a far more practical design than anything already in use, with its flat rather than curved bases. You might be wondering why no one had thought of that before. They probably had, but coming up with the idea and implementing it are very different matters. The skill set necessary to make straight-sided, flat-bottomed pots that didn’t fall apart upon firing probably had taken years to master. Apart from anything else, it required hotter and more efficient kilns,1 and these were something that the people of the Orkneys had managed to create in their villages, such as Skara Brae. They likely developed them over time, by trial and error, while seeking more effective ways of heating the stone-built homes (see chapter 4). Pottery has so many applications: drinking, eating, cooking, storage, carrying, and use as ceremonial vessels. Flat-bottomed ceramics are taken for granted today, but imagine how much easier life would suddenly become if you had never had such items before. The Grooved Ware culture probably spread so rapidly and so widely because its ceramic innovations were so beneficial.
Crucially, there must also have been something just as important as improved pottery about their stone circles, as they too were replicated with equal enthusiasm. Are the stone circles perhaps evidence of some compelling new religion? Had the Neolithic people in various parts of the British Isles been motivated to adopt the cultic practices that began with the Grooved Ware culture on the Orkney Isles? If so, then we would expect to see evidence of widespread changes in various other conventions, such as burial practices and artistic expression. But apart from a few early examples, these are just not found.
Long barrows and portal tombs (dolmens) were no longer being built in Britain by 3000 BCE; instead bones or cremated remains were, for the most part, being buried in simple pits. This didn’t change, apart from the passage tombs that were only adopted for a while in a small part of Ireland and on Anglesey.2 (There is one kind of rare, anomalous burial monument, known as a box tomb, that continued to be built throughout the Megalithic era, but we shall be examining that in chapter 12.) Ancient religions are usually identified by specific funerary practices; the fact that the majority of those people who built the early stone circles throughout the British Isles didn’t change their burial traditions in any way suggests that their basic religion remained the same. Neither did the majority of the early stone circle builders inscribe their stones with spiral or concentric circle designs, such as those found on the Westray Stone, which presumably held some sacred significance. Examples are found in Cumbria, Ireland, and Anglesey, but not in the Hebrides, Dumfries and Galloway, Pembrokeshire, or at Stonehenge. And then there’s the pottery. The Grooved Ware style of straight-sided, flat-bottomed vessels may have been copied in many areas, but their engravings—which presumably held religious or cultural meaning—invariably remained unchanged.3 We can’t know for sure, but it would certainly appear that whatever enigmatic function the stone circles served, it was something other than just religious. As with the grooved ware pottery, the people may have copied the practice of erecting stone circles for some practical purpose. What this might have been, we shall be considering later, once we have a fuller picture of the Megalithic culture, its creations, its extent, and its development. Nevertheless, we already have some interesting clues to ponder.
For whatever reason the stone circles were created, the monoliths were equally spaced around the rings, but the number of stones, their sizes and shapes, and the diameters of the rings varied considerably. Here are the approximate dimensions of the stone circles we have examined so far.
As we can clearly see, the erecting of standing stones in a circle, regardless of size or number, seems to have been the critical factor. However, something that many of the early stone circles, built between about 3100 and 3000 BCE, do have in common is solar alignments. So also do the contemporary passage tombs. As discussed, some scholars believe that the Maeshowe-style tombs may not have been used only for burials but also as shrines or places of ceremonial activity (see chapter 4). As such, an important ceremony might have been performed inside them at a specific time of the year, when the direct rays of the sun illuminated the central chamber. On the Orkneys, at Maeshowe, this occurs on the midwinter solstice, around December 21. Of the dozen Maeshowe-style tombs so far identified on the Orkney Isles, some have their passage aligned to the midwinter sunrise, rather than sunset, such as the South Cairn on the Isle of Papa Westray and Quoyness on Sanday Island. Others, such as Cuween Hill and Quanterness on Mainland Island, have passages aligned eastward, possibly to face the sunrise on the equinoxes, around March 21 and September 21, when day and night are of equal length. On the Orkney Isles these solar alignments appear to have been a new innovation accompanying the beginning of the Grooved Ware culture, as the earlier Unstan-type tombs (see chapter 4), built between 3600 and 3100 BCE, don’t seem to have favored any such orientations.4 We find the same in Ireland. The earlier Neolithic graves, dating between 3600 and 3100 BCE, are sometimes confusingly referred to as passage tombs. Although they do have entry passages, these are much shorter than those in the Maeshowe-style tombs, and their inner chambers are smaller and much less elaborate. They are, in fact, far more similar to the contemporary long barrows and dolmen tombs found across the Irish Sea in Britain.5 Although various solar orientations have been proposed for some of these earlier monuments, for the most part their passages lie in various, seemingly random directions. Conversely, as on the Orkney Isles, most of Ireland’s Maeshowe-style tombs, built from ar
ound 3100 BCE, do have what appear to have been deliberate solar alignments. Ireland’s passage tomb of Dowth in County Meath has its passage aligned to the midsummer sunset, while at the nearby tomb of Newgrange it aligns with the midwinter sunrise. At Knowth, another of the passage tombs in County Meath, the passage faces in an easterly direction, possibly to align with the sunrise on the equinoxes, perhaps the spring equinox, which many ancient cultures regarded as the start of summer. And in Wales, on the Isle of Anglesey, where the only Maeshowe-style tombs are known to have been built other than on the Orkneys and in Ireland, we find similar alignments. Although at Barclodiad y Gawres (see chapter 5) the passage is aligned almost due north, meaning it was not aligned to the sun at any time of the year, at the contemporary tomb of Bryn Celli Ddu, on the island’s southeast side, the passage is aligned to the sunrise on the summer solstice, around June 21.6 Regarding the early stone circles, most of them had a freestanding monolith, the so-called king stone (see chapter 1), erected some distance outside the circle and aligned to the midwinter sunrise or sunset as seen from the center of the ring. At Stenness, Callanish, Swinside, and Ballynoe, this appears to have been the sunrise, while at Lochbuie, the Twelve Apostles, and Castlerigg, it was the sunset.
There can be little doubt that the sun held important significance to the Grooved Ware culture people who built the Maeshowe-style tombs and the first stone circles, but whether this involved sunrise or sunset varied from site to site. In most cases the time of year concerned is the midwinter solstice, around December 21, while a few involved the equinoxes. However, once the culture reached Wales the custom involved mainly midsummer. Not only was the passage of Anglesey’s Bryn Celli Ddu aligned to the sunrise on the summer solstice, so was the king stone of the Gors Fawr Stone Circle in Pembrokeshire. The first bluestone circle at Stonehenge may also have had a king stone marking the sunrise on the midsummer solstice. The later ring of sarsen stones included the outlying Heel Stone (see chapter 1), which was aligned to the midsummer sunrise; an original bluestone could well have stood in its location.
Theories as to why these solar alignments were created abound. Some may have been to mark important dates associated with agriculture. The spring equinox occurs around the beginning of the growing season, and the fall equinox occurs around the time of the harvest. But the majority of these alignments involve the solstices: the middle of winter and summer. Some scholars who believe that the monuments were primarily religious shrines have proposed that a solar deity needed to be thanked at the height of summer or appeased in the heart of winter. Others have suggested a more elaborate interpretation to account for the sun-aligned passages of the Maeshowe-style tombs. The structures, they suggest, represented the womb of an earth goddess; the rays of light that penetrated the passage symbolized the power of the sun god annually fertilizing Mother Earth. A similar theory has been proposed for stone circles: the king stone represented the phallus of the sun god, and the stone circle the womb of the earth goddess. At sunset, it is suggested, the shadow of the king stone would grow longer and penetrate the circle, emulating sexual union. The notion concerning the passage graves would make sense, but not the majority of stone circles, in which the king stone is aligned to the sunrise, when the shadow would grow shorter, not longer. Moreover, although it is easy to see how a passage tomb might resemble a womb, the same cannot be said of a stone circle.
One way or another, the passage tombs ceased to be built after the early Megalithic period, and they never were built outside the Orkneys, Anglesey, and parts of Ireland. The Megalithic culture that ultimately spread throughout the British Isles is typified by its stone circles, and it is the mystery of these we hope to solve. At this stage in our investigation it is too early to make any meaningful conjecture concerning what purpose the stone circles may have served, be it religious, practical, or a combination of the two. Next we need to examine how the practice of building stone circles spread, following its beginnings with the Grooved Ware culture between around 3100 and 3000 BCE.
Archaeologists have estimated that as many as 5,000 stone circles may have ultimately been erected in the British Isles. Only around 1,300 survive in various states of preservation: the official figures are just over 500 in Scotland and its islands, almost 400 in Ireland, approximately 300 in England, and some 80 in Wales. If these numbers are right, then it seems that around three-quarters of them have been lost over time. Some were broken up for readily available building materials, and others were destroyed by religious fanatics, but for the most part they have been obliterated by the building of towns, cities, roads, and a myriad of other forms of infrastructure, and more recently to make way for modern farming techniques. Those that remain are mainly in sparsely inhabited districts, such as hills, mountains, and moorlands. Consequently the majority have survived in the uplands of England and Ireland and the highlands of Scotland and Wales. Almost none can now be identified in heavily populated regions such as central and southeastern England. Fortunately in the locations where they still exist we have enough evidence to determine the chronological expansion and development of the Megalithic culture.
The early Megalithic period can be divided into two stages. The first, from its beginnings on the Orkney Isles to the building of the original stone circle at Stonehenge, we have already examined. The second is from approximately 3000 to 2600 BCE. Strangely in some of the first areas where grooved ware pottery was adopted, stone circle building never occurred during this period. For example, in the north of mainland Scotland, where the new ceramic style was embraced fairly early on, no stone circles are known to have been built for the next four hundred years.7 In some areas where early stone circles were built, the practice seems to have been abandoned. In Ireland, despite the building of elaborate Maeshowe-style tombs such as Newgrange, which was even bigger than anything on the Orkney Isles, and the creation of Ballynoe, one of the largest of the early stone circles in the British Isles, the Megalithic culture seems to have stalled completely soon after it began. No more stone circles appear to have been built for almost a thousand years, until the practice was reembraced around 2000 BCE. The same seems to have happened throughout Wales, but for only a few hundred years, despite the construction of passage tombs in Anglesey and the enormous undertaking of moving bluestones all the way from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge. Even on the Orkney Isles, where the whole thing began, no new stone circles appear to have been erected during this second Megalithic phase. Other than the Stones of Stenness, only one other stone circle is known on the Orkney Isles, and that dates from around 2600 BCE. However, in this case it might be explained by the single monument adequately serving the islands’ limited population. During this period, the main areas in which the Megalithic culture did flourish were four separate regions: the Hebrides and the Isle of Arran, Dumfries and Galloway, the adjacent Cumbria, and southern and South West England.
In the Hebrides at least eight other stone circles were erected on the Isle of Lewis at regular intervals between 3000 and 2600 BCE, and on the Isle of Arran it was around eleven, while a number of other stone circles were built close to the shores on the nearby mainland. The remains of around sixty-four stone circles survive in the district of Dumfries and Galloway, of which eleven are still in a reasonable state of preservation; around half of them appear to date from 3000 to 2600 BCE, the earliest being the Twelve Apostles (see chapter 5). A typical circle built in this district shortly after the Twelve Apostles is the Torhouse Stones, about 38 miles to the southwest. It consists of nineteen stones between 2 and 5 feet high, in a ring measuring 70 feet in diameter. A further stone, about 6 feet tall, stands approximately 130 feet to the southeast of the circle in the direction of the midwinter sunrise. Some thirty stone circles have been identified in Cumbria, of which fifteen are in a reasonable state of preservation. As we have seen, what is believed to be the oldest stone circle in England, Castlerigg, is among them. Once again, around half of them were built between 3000 and 2600 BCE, typical being the Blakeley R
aise Stone Circle in the district of Kinniside; it consists of eleven stones, up to 4 feet high, in a ring some 60 feet in diameter.
It was in the South of England that there occurred what has been the most studied development of the second phase of Megalithic culture. After the creation of the first ring at Stonehenge, ring building quickly spread through southern Britain. Evidence of megalithic monuments has been largely eradicated in the heavily built-up and industrial areas to the south and east of Stonehenge, but to the southwest it thankfully survives. In the county of Dorset, to the immediate west of Wilshire, where Stonehenge is situated, around half a dozen stone circles survive from the period between 3000 and 2600 BCE. For example, in the hilly Dorset Downs, on the western edge of the village of Winterbourne Abbas, there stands the Nine Stones Circle. As its name suggests, nine of its stones survive, but it is thought that it originally consisted of ten, up to 7 feet high, the largest weighing approximately 8 tons, in a ring about 27 feet in diameter. During the eighteenth century, a coach road was built across the northwest side of the circle, making it impossible to tell if a king stone once stood in the direction of the midsummer sunset. West of Dorset is the county of Devonshire (Devon for short), where some sixteen stone circles survive, and in the extreme southwest of England is the county of Cornwall, where a further seventeen stone circles can still be found. Approximately half of the circles in these two counties appear to date from before 2600 BCE. For example, the Scorhill Stone Circle, near the village of Gidleigh in the bleak Devonshire uplands of Dartmoor, consists of thirty-eight stones, up to 7 feet tall, in a ring approximately 90 feet in diameter. It does not seem to have had a king stone, but the tallest monolith has a distinctive jagged point, above which the midsummer sun sets as viewed from the center of the ring. A Cornish example, on the windswept slopes of Bodmin Moor, is Fernacre Stone Circle, just over a mile northeast of the village of St. Breward. It was originally composed of over eighty stones, of which sixty-nine survive, thirty-eight still standing in a ring about 150 feet in diameter. The monoliths are badly weathered, none above 4 feet high, but a fallen stone, 7 feet long, lies to the southeast of the circle and may have marked the midwinter sunrise. And on the rugged Penwith Peninsula, just 5 miles from Land’s End, the most westerly point of England, is the Merry Maidens Stone Circle. Thought to be complete, it is about 80 feet in diameter and consists of nineteen standing stones, ranging between 3.5 and 4.5 feet tall. About 1,000 feet outside the circle stand two much taller stones. Over 10 feet high, they both align to the northeast of the Merry Maidens in the direction of the midwinter sunrise.
Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge Page 10