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The stone circles of northeast Scotland in the light of excavation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Richard Bradley ,
Chris Ball ,
Sharon Croft  and
Tim Phillips
Richard Bradley
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, PO Box 227, Reading RG6 6AB, England. [email protected]
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Extract

The stone circles of northeast Scotland (Figure 1) take a most distinctive form. On one level, they are made up of structural elements that are widely distributed in Britain: they are built from raw materials that had been selected for their colour and texture; the monoliths are graded in height towards the southwest and may have been aligned on the moon (Burl 2000). On another level, they have a character all of their own. They are known as ‘recumbent’ stone circles because their most massive component is a large flat block which is bracketed by two tall pillars or ‘flankers’ (Burl 2000: 215–33).

Type
Special section: Scotland 2002
Information
Antiquity , Volume 76 , Issue 293 , September 2002 , pp. 840 - 848
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2002

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References

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