The Use and Reuse of Stone Circles
Fieldwork at Five Scottish Monuments and its Implications
Edited by
Richard Bradley and Courtney Nimura
Croftmoraig stone circle viewed from the northeast (Aaron Watson).
For Aubrey Burl
il miglior fabbro
Published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
OXBOW BOOKS
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© Oxbow Books and the individual authors 2016
Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-243-3
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-244-0
Mobi Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-245-7
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bradley, Richard, 1946- | Nimura, Courtney.
Title: The use and reuse of stone circles : fieldwork at five Scottish monuments and its implications / edited by Richard Bradley and Courtney Nimura.
Description: Oxford ; Philadelphia : Oxbow Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013175 (print) | LCCN 2016014062 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785702433 (paperback) | ISBN 9781785702440 (digital) | ISBN 9781785702440 (epub) | ISBN 9781785702457 (mobi) | ISBN 9781785702464 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Stone circles--Scotland. | Excavations (Archaeology)--Scotland. | Archaeology--Fieldwork--Scotland. | Scotland--Antiquities.
Classification: LCC GN805 .U87 2016 (print) | LCC GN805 (ebook) | DDC 936.1/1--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016013175
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Front cover: The Croftmoraig stone circle viewed from the southeast with the summit of Schiehallion in the background (Aaron Watson).
Contents
Preface. The Contents of the Volume
Richard Bradley
Summary
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Part One Excavations at Five Scottish Monuments
1 The Development of the Project
Richard Bradley
2 Excavations at Hillhead, Tarland, Aberdeenshire: a recumbent stone circle and its history
Richard Bradley and Amanda Clarke
3 Excavations at Waulkmill, Tarland, Aberdeenshire: a Neolithic pit, Roman Iron Age burials and an earlier prehistoric stone circle
Richard Bradley, Amanda Clarke and Fraser Hunter
4 Croftmoraig Stone Circle, Perth and Kinross: a reinterpretation in the light of fresh excavation
Richard Bradley
5 The Hill of Tuach, Kintore, Aberdeenshire: the excavation of a small stone circle and henge
Richard Bradley and Amanda Clarke
6 Laikenbuie, Auldearn, Inverness-shire: excavation of an Early Iron Age ring cairn and other features
Ronnie Scott and Annette Jack
Part Two The Excavated Monuments in their Wider Contexts
7 After the Great Stone Circles
Richard Bradley
8 Histories of Reuse
Richard Bradley
9 The Extent of Variation: four stone circles in Cromar in the light of recent fieldwork
Richard Bradley
10 Croftmoraig: the anatomy of a stone circle
Richard Bradley
References
PREFACE
The Contents of the Volume
Richard Bradley
The study of stone circles has played a major role in British and Irish archaeology, but the results of this work have seldom been drawn together in book form, although these evocative structures have featured in photographic essays about megalithic architecture intended for the general reader. The last systematic accounts of these sites were by John Barnatt in 1989 and Aubrey Burl in 2000. The most recent investigation is by Colin Richards (2013) and is limited to the large monuments of Orkney and the Western Isles. It is the only one of these books which reflects the current state of knowledge and in a sense The Use and Reuse of Stone Circles is both a companion volume and its sequel.
Colin Richards’s book focuses on large monuments which are likely to be of early date and represents a new development in studies of these monuments. Another is the recognition that smaller settings of monoliths had an extended history and were still being built for some time after the period considered in the pioneering accounts of Burl and Barnatt. A further development is the realisation that many of the structures in Northern Britain were reused during the later Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the early medieval period. It happened at a time when comparable monuments had gone out of use in lowland Britain (Bradley 2011, 169–74).
This development is most apparent from fieldwork undertaken over the last two decades in Scotland; there may have been a similar sequence in Wales, northern England and Ireland, but the question has still to be explored systematically. The Scottish evidence was originally investigated through three campaigns of survey and excavation concerned with Clava Cairns, recumbent stone circles and henge monuments respectively. The results of these projects were published as monographs in 2000, 2005 and 2011 (Bradley 2000; 2005; 2011).
Taken together, this work raised a series of problems that demanded further investigation. When were the last stone circles built? How did they differ from earlier constructions? How were they related to henge monuments, especially those of Bronze Age date? How frequently were these places reused, and did this secondary activity change the character of those sites? How much variation existed between monuments supposedly of the same types? Why were certain stone circles selected as the sites for later Bronze Age and Early Iron Age roundhouses? How were the last stone monuments related to the settlements of the same periods? Why were a few of them associated with Roman Iron Age burials, when they were located so far outside the northern frontier of Britannia? And what was the relationship between these sites and Pictish symbol stones? These were the main questions investigated by excavation in Inverness-shire, Aberdeenshire and Perthshire.
This book is divided into two sections. The first presents the reports of five excavations, most of them conducted on a modest scale (Fig. 0.1). The second treats the results of these projects together and suggests a new framework for understanding Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age stone circles as well as their subsequent reuse.
Summary
Chapter 1 sets out the background to this research. It reviews the reasons why these excavations took place and their relationship to previously published work.
Part 1 presents the results of fieldwork and is divided into five chapters. It begins with a study of the Hillhead recumbent stone circle (Chapter 2). This was a new discovery and the monument, which had been damaged by forestry, proved to be structurally complex and unexpecte
dly well-preserved. Key features included its unusual siting in the ancient landscape, its relationship to surface finds from the surrounding area, including the possible remains of a Beaker burial, and its remarkable structural history. It began as an unusually massive ring cairn with a stepped interior. It was supplemented by one of the largest but least monumental recumbent stone circles in Scotland and was aligned on a conspicuous landmark 15 km away. Charcoal from the old land surface provides rare dating evidence for a monument of this type. It was built at the end of the third millennium BC. In a secondary phase the interior of the ring cairn was filled with boulders and the perimeter wall was covered by similar material. This deposit was cut by three features dug through the exact centre of the monument. Two seem to have been fireplaces or hearths, whilst the third was an in situ cremation pyre marked by an area of burnt subsoil and a quantity of cremated bone which dated to the Late Bronze Age. After they had been sealed by a further deposit of rubble, the interior of the older ring cairn was covered with broken quartz. The reason for giving this project so much prominence is its complex sequence which includes a number of elements that have not been observed since the nineteenth century.
Figure 0.1. Locations of the five excavations published in this study
Chapter 3 concerns a stone circle which would once have been visible from Hillhead; it was demolished about 1835. Excavation at Waulkmill in 2012 showed that it had incorporated another ring cairn, with a well-defined inner court associated with pieces of worked quartz. The central area was cut by a large pit, tentatively ascribed to the later Bronze Age, but the monument came back into use as the site of an unusually complex Roman Iron Age cemetery. Further burials were found close to the site a century ago. Taken together, there is evidence for at least four inhumation graves, two or three of them associated with gaming sets or bronze personal ornaments. A couple were in cists defined by drystone walls, while a third was in an oak coffin and associated with the skull of a cow or bull. The recent excavation also found two cremations with radiocarbon dates in the Roman Iron Age. The burials investigated in 2012 were directly associated with the stone circle. Two inhumations were located beside the standing stones, and the fillings of the graves incorporated flakes taken from the monument. There was also a cremation burial in the exact centre of the circle, covered by a setting of rounded cobbles.
Chapter 4 publishes the results of re-excavation at Croftmoraig stone circle (also known as Croft Moraig), originally investigated by Stuart Piggott and Derek Simpson in 1965. The work was undertaken to test a new interpretation of the sequence and chronology of the site proposed by the writer and Alison Sheridan in 2005. The main aims of this work were to reinterpret the excavated structures in the light of the project archive and to collect samples for AMS dating. This was important as the original excavators (followed by subsequent writers) suggested that it was one of the oldest stone circles in Britain and replaced an even earlier timber circle. The new work shows that the post setting was actually a Middle Bronze Age ring ditch house, erected within an existing stone circle. In a subsequent phase the position of the wooden building was marked by an oval setting of standing stones, and between 1400 and 1300 BC the entire monument was enclosed by a stone wall. Like other monuments of its kind, Croftmoraig saw the deposition of cremated bone during a secondary phase between 1250 and 1000 BC. The wider significance of the revised sequence is considered in Chapter 10.
Chapter 5 considers the site of a small stone circle enclosed by an earthwork ‘henge’ on the Hill of Tuach at Kintore. The site is interesting as it combines the attributes of the last stone circles, as defined by Aubrey Burl, with those of the latest henge monuments in Scotland. It was additionally important in view of the large number of developer-funded excavations in the surrounding area which provided evidence of other earthworks and a series of Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements. The site at Tuach had been damaged by excavation in 1855, but it was possible to recover the plan of a slightly oval setting of six monoliths aligned towards the southwest where it faced the flank of an older long barrow. Combined with the results of the nineteenth century project, the excavation suggested that the stone setting enclosed the position of at least a dozen cremation burials associated with Collared Urns, Cordoned Urns and, most probably, three bronze artefacts. They were in two distinct zones, one against the inner edge of the upright stones and the other at the centre of the site. They are dated between 1900 and 1600 BC. The ‘henge’ that enclosed the monoliths proved to be unexpectedly massive. It shared the alignment of the stone circle and probably had a blocked entrance. Its bank was revetted on the inside by a kerb and has a terminus post quem of 1050–850 BC. The older monument was enclosed during a period when part of the surrounding area was occupied by roundhouses of the same date.
Chapter 6 concerns a small ring cairn at Laikenbuie in Inverness-shire. It was located on the edge of an extensive distribution of clearance cairns, although they remain largely undated. The ring cairn shares several structural features with the Bronze Age monuments – its alignment, the disposition of the kerbstones, and the use of coloured raw materials – but dates from the Early Iron Age. It seems to mark the end of a long-lived architectural tradition.
If Part 1 considers the local settings of these five monuments, Part 2 discusses the wider implications of these projects in relation to some broader themes. It relates the excavated sites to other structures in Britain and Ireland.
Chapter 7 brings together the results of these five projects. It puts forward a chronology for the construction and primary use of stone circles, particularly the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age examples which have received less attention in recent years. There were important changes over time as monuments became smaller and played an increasing role in the treatment of the dead. Certain features persisted over a very long period, including their association with cremation burials or pyres, the grading of the monoliths by height, their orientations, and the choice of stones according to their colours and textures.
Chapter 8 considers the reuse of stone circles long after they were built. This takes many forms, but four elements seem to have been especially significant. There are signs that many monuments were reused for the deposition of cremated bone during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. A few monuments, like Hillhead, also contained pyres. Some of these sites saw the erection of further stone settings (for instance Croftmoraig), and others were enclosed (the Hill of Tuach and Croftmoraig). A second development saw the building of roundhouses inside the older circuit at a time when the monoliths remained in place. This occurred between the Middle Bronze Age, where it is evidenced at Croftmoraig, and the Early Iron Age, when it happened at Strichen. There are other cases in which timber buildings of similar form were constructed inside, or near to, older monuments. Thirdly, the excavation at Waulkmill identified a stone circle that was reused as a cemetery during the Roman Iron Age. This was not an isolated instance and the chapter discusses other stone monuments that underwent a similar transformation. Lastly, there is a little evidence that prehistoric standing stones and related structures took on new significance during the Pictish period, and this is also discussed.
Chapter 9 considers four neighbouring stone circles in Aberdeenshire, three of which have been excavated by the same team since 1999. The unexpected discovery of a recumbent stone circle at Hillhead, where the earthwork monument had been identified as an Iron Age roundhouse, makes it possible to compare a series of monuments (within sight of one another), all of which are assigned to the same ‘type’ – the recumbent stone circle. They do share features in common, but at the level of detail that only excavation can provide they also contrast in their architecture, their use of raw materials, associated artefacts and structural sequences. The fourth site is the Blue Cairn whose surface remains are also considered. What lessons can be learned from so much variation across one small area, and what do these differences imply about the ways in which they were used?
Chapter 10 returns t
o Croftmoraig: a site which can be studied in exceptional detail in the light of two excavations, field survey, petrological analysis, and the archive from the 1965 fieldwork. It sheds important light on a series of neglected issues in the study of stone circles. The monument was built on a natural mound which had been sculpted for the purpose. In its surface was a glacial erratic which would have drawn attention to the place because of its exceptional form and colour. These features were directly in line with the midsummer sunset behind Schiehallion, one of the highest and most conspicuous mountains in the southern Highlands. That phenomenon can still be observed today. The successive stone settings were laid out around that central point, yet the existence of the erratic is hardly mentioned in the report on the first excavation. New work on the site archive also sheds light on the grading of the stones by height and the orientation of the inner setting of monoliths towards the midwinter sunset. All these features are emphasised by the selection of distinctive raw materials for use in different parts of the monument, and even by the distribution of cup marks at Croftmoraig. Thus this chapter is a study of the anatomy of a well-known stone circle, and the new interpretation of Croftmoraig draws attention to ways of thinking about these monuments which have still to fulfil their potential.
Acknowledgments
Most of the fieldwork reported here took place over a concentrated period between 2011 and 2013 and involved many of the same people. Ronnie Scott and Nigel Healy had worked at Laikenbuie between 2003 and 2006 and had taken part in earlier projects on recumbent stone circles and henge monuments. Ronnie Scott, Aaron Watson, Rosemary Stewart and Alex Brown were also involved in the investigation of rock art on the Ben Lawers estate, not far from Croftmoraig. Amanda Clarke co-directed three of the excavations – at Tuach, Waulkmill and Hillhead – with Richard Bradley.
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