A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons.
The best known tradition of stone circle construction occurred across the British Isles and Brittany in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with over 1000 examples still surviving to this day, including famous examples like Avebury, the Rollright Stones and Stonehenge. Another prehistoric stone circle tradition occurred in southern Scandinavia during the Iron Age, where they were built to be mortuary monuments to the dead.
Outside of Europe, stone circles have also been erected, such as the Bronze Age examples from Hong Kong.
The size and number of the stones varies from example to example, and the circle shape can be an ellipse.
Read more about Stone Circle: Dates and Archaeology of European Megalithic Stone Circles, Distribution, Post-Megalithic and Other, Further Reading
Other articles related to "stones, stone circle, circle, stone, stone circles":
... themselves on a cold, windy, snow-covered cliff top with a ring of standing stones ... Colonel Levin gets a message that a body (in very bad condition) has been found in the stone circle ... She is helped up, and then Jack supports her out of the woods and back to the circle ...
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... Sheldon Stone Circle is a prehistoric stone circle, located at grid reference NJ822249, to the south-east of Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland ...
... Another stone circle was discovered at Fan Lau, on Lantau Island in 1980 ... This stone circle is a Declared monument in Hong Kong ... The use of the stone circle is unknown, it was possibly used for rituals ...
... Joanne Parker (editor), Written On Stone The Cultural Reception of British Prehistoric Monuments (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009) ... "Henges and stone circles, ritual and archaeoastronomy archaeological research in Ireland and Great Britain." 1981 ...
Famous quotes containing the words circle and/or stone:
“Every few years something new breaks into the circle of my thoughts.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)