page_title: Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Long Meg and her Daughters, Eden Valley, Cumbria
context_page_description: The stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany are a megalithic tradition of monuments consisting of standing stones arranged in rings. These were constructed from 3300 to 900 BCE in Britain, Ireland and Brittany. It has been estimated that around 4,000 of these monuments were originally constructed in this part of north-western Europe during this period. Around 1,300 of them are recorded, the others having been destroyed.
  Although stone circles have been erected throughout history by a variety of societies and for a variety of reasons, in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages, this particular tradition was limited to Britain, Ireland and the neighbouring area of continental Europe now known as Brittany. The rings were not distributed equally across this area, but were concentrated in several highland regions: north-eastern and central Scotland, the Lake District, the south-west peninsula of England, and the north and south-west of Ireland. Sparser groupings can also be found in Caithness, the Outer Hebrides, the Peak District, the Wicklow Mountains, Wales and Wessex.
  Their original purpose is not fully known, but archaeological investigation has shed some light on it.
context_section_description: The archaeologist and stone circle specialist Aubrey Burl noted that the stone circle builders would have had to undertake "careful planning" before they erected these monuments. There was much that they had to take into consideration: the choice of location, the size of the ring, the transport of the heavy stones, the laying out of the circle or ellipse, and the preparation of stone holes. They may have also had to plot astronomical alignments, making the task more difficult.
  Most stone circles were constructed upon flat ground, although some were instead built on a slope. At some sites, such as Kiltierney in County Fermanagh, the land was flattened especially for this purpose, although in other cases it is clear that the land had been flattened by earlier communities, who had used the land for settlement or agriculture.
  Aaron Watson has argued that various circles were located in a particular position to give the appearance of occupying the centre of the world, representing a microcosm of the surrounding area.
  In some instances it appears that the choice of material used was important. For instance, at the Ring of Brodgar the stones used in the circle were produced from a variety of different sources.
  Very little is known about the process of quarrying the stone and transporting it to the sites of the circles. One exception is at Vestra Fiold in Orkney, where Colin Richards led an excavation that determined that the stones used for the Orcadian stone circles were cut from a horizontal seam of bedrock that was located just below the surface. These had been eased over a large pit and supported on stone trestles, after which wooden rollers and a sled were likely positioned underneath, allowing the megalith to be moved. One of these stones, which weighed over 10 tonnes, had been left in its original position poised on stone supports, to be discovered by the archaeological excavators.
caption: Long Meg and Her Daughters, the largest example of Alexander Thom's Type B Flattened Circle
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