Stone Circles

Stone Circles are unhewn standing menhirs, disposed in a ring. For a long time these prehistoric monuments were erroneously associated with Druidical worship, and in many instances they still figure in local guide-books as "Druidical remains." It is now certain that, in most cases at any rate, their chief purpose was the enclosure of a piece of ground in which interments took place. This conclusion has been arrived at from the result of excavations; and these show that the ground enclosed by many of the stone circles of Scotland was, in prehistoric times, a burial-place; and from the relics found in the tombs uncovered it appears that they belong to the Bronze Age. When the body was cremated, as was usually the case, the ashes were put into a hole in the ground and covered with an inverted funeral urn, though sometimes this protection was not afforded. The bodies that were buried without cremation were deposited in stone cysts. Hence it appears that these stone circles answered precisely the same purpose as the walls of the burial-places of the present day, At any rate, this was their chief purpose, And since the chambered cairn of New Grange, in Ireland, was surrounded by a stone circle, and as the stone circles of Scandinavia have also been shown by excavation to enclose burial-places, it seems probable that the circle at Avebury is of the same character, though some hold that it was erected to mark the spot on which the last Arthurian battle was fought. The same conclusion may be, in all probability, applied to the smaller, but more famous, circle at Stonehenge. At the same time something is to be said for the view that connects these megalithic monuments with the religion of vanished races, especially when it is remembered that in India at the present day menhirs are objects of veneration.