ABSTRACT
In 2003 Mark Lake and Woodman provided a detailed account of the various forms that geographical information systems (GIS)-based visibility analysis had taken up to that time. The prehistoric stone circles found across many parts of Great Britain and northern France were constructed between the Middle Neolithic and the Late Bronze Age, although the form remerges in Scandinavia and north east Europe from the Late Iron Age. The humanistic turn in archaeology produced a number of visibility studies that frequently share the cognitive-processual interest in ideology and cognition but that often place greater emphasis on the non discursive knowledge of past people. Monte Carlo simulation allows addressing the question of whether the observed numerical and/or spatial distributions of view shed area imply intentional choices by those who built stone circles. Lake and Woodman in computing for each stone circle the distance to, elevation of, and inclination of land on the far horizon at aziumuths from 1 degree through to 360 degrees.
