ABSTRACT

Virtually all the ceremonial monuments constructed in Britain and Ireland between 3000 and 1500 BC were circles of one kind or another. There are many separate types, and yet their edges are blurred. I discussed the wider significance of some of these structures in Chapters 7 and 8, and two points seemed important then. First, I suggested that the change from tombs to enclosures was a gradual process and that in the north it was set in motion by changes in the audience attracted to such sites. It played on a wealth of circular imagery that extended into the very fabric of those monuments. My second observation concerned the relationship between henges and stone circles. Most archaeologists had played down the differences between these various enclosures and considered that they all shared the same significance. They argued that any distinction between the two classes of monument was due to the materials out of which they were built.