Stone Circles – Mostly Just Ritual Space?
Submitted by Robert Bast on September 30, 2009 – 2:45 amOne Comment
I was just watching a documentary (Standing With Stones) on the stone circles and burial chambers of Ireland, and they started off with Carrowmore in County Sligo. It seems that the very first standing stones and burial chambers in Ireland were “dolmen circles”, and the ones in Carrowmore date to between 4300 and 3500 BC, and possibly even as far back as 5400 BC.
These dolmen circles consist of a dolmen with 5 orthostats and 1 capstone creating a burial chamber in the shape of a pentagon. Enclosing each dolmen is one or two circles of 30-40 boulders.
As the documentary shows, the final dolmen at Carrowmore became fully enclosed, establishing a trend towards bigger & bigger burial mounds and eventually massive passage tombs like Newgrange.
What interests me the most is that these boulder circles are quite likely the first ever stone circles, and that means they originally were used to demarcate burial zones. With time, although plenty of monuments were still enclosed by circles (standing stones, boulders, pits, ditches), most dolmens were not, and most standing circles had nothing within them.
I suggest that originally people used dolmens to bury their dead, and the boulder circle separated the sacred space from the world – and within this space they conducted rituals of burial and/or remembrance. At some point the need arose for a ritual space that was not where ancestors were buried, for purposes other than burying or remembering ancestors. Perhaps this is where fully-fleshed pagan religions began – with a multi-purpose ritual circle?
Modern pagans still revere the pentagon / pentacle. And witches still sweep clear and “cast” a circle for conducting rituals within. Could these be remnants from as long ago as 5400 BC?
After years of looking for more esoteric explanations, I now figure that the primary purpose of stone circles was to mark a ritual space. Their locations, which I also hoped might have significance, could also be explained by something as simple as “it has a nice view”, or “it was a flat spot near where we lived”.
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Describing any of these stone structures as ‘graves’, ‘tombs’, ‘burial sites’ etc,etc, is grossly misleading. This usage has not been verified definitively. While some bones, burial goods, have been found at some sites, there are many more where no trace whatsoever have been noted. Many of the finds have not been dated and, in many cases have later been shown to have been inserted hundreds of years after the original structures had been abandoned.
The reason I point this out is that by leading our selves down this necropilis trail we are causing the real purpose of these marvels of civil engineering to be ignored and
misunderstood. I have visited hundreds of these over the past decades and if you had proceeded inland and upland to the Carrowkeel mountain grouping of 13 or more of these wonderful structures you will find not a trace of a bone, ash, or any indication that these were used for the dead. By the time you get to the groupings of Lough Carew and Newgrange, which were built a more than a thousand years later, and still minimal bone finds, you should finally begin to accept that there was a much more essential purpose to all these centuries of monumental contructions.
One more point, these had nothing to do with Pagans, or the Celts for that matter. They were in existence 1,000′s of years before the new young Christian religion thought up that term to describe those that did not follow their beliefs.
There is a fascinating true story behind the origin of these megalithic monuments and the reason why a relatively small population would expend so much time and phenomenal energy to construct them. It was a matter of life and death. The perpetuation of one and the prevention of the other.
Hope you enjoy the book when, hopefully, it sees the light of day.