Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders

Next in importance to Stonehenge comes the huge but now almost destroyed circle of Avebury (Fig. 2). Its area is five times as great as that of St. Peter's in Rome, and a quarter of a million people could stand within it. It consists in the first place of a rampart of earth roughly circular in form and with a diameter of about 1200 feet. Within this is a ditch, and close on the inner edge of this was a circle of about a hundred upright stones. Within this circle were two pairs of concentric circles with their centres slightly east of the north-and-south diameter of the great circle. The diameters of the outer circles of these two pairs are 350 and 325 feet respectively. In the centre of the northern pair was a cover-slab supported by three uprights, and in the centre of the southern a single menhir. All the stones used are sarsens, such as are strewn everywhere over the district.

An avenue flanked by two rows of stones ran in a south-easterly direction from the rampart towards the village of Kennet for a distance of about 1430 yards in a straight line.

At a distance of 1200 yards due south from Avebury Circle stands the famous artificial mound called Silbury Hill. It is 552 feet in diameter, 130 in height, and has a flat top 102 feet across. A pit was driven down into its centre in 1777, and in 1849 a trench was cut into it from the south side to the centre, but neither gave any result. It is quite possible that there are burials in the mound, whether in megalithic chambers or not.

South-west of Avebury is Hakpen Hill, where there once stood two concentric ellipses of stones. A straight avenue is said to have run from these in a north-westerly direction. Whether these three monuments near Avebury have any connection with one another and, if so, what this connection is, is unknown.

There are many other circles in England, but we have only space to mention briefly some of the more important. At Rollright, in Oxfordshire, there is a circle 100 feet in diameter with a tall menhir 50 yards to the north-east. Derbyshire possesses a famous monument, that of Arbor Low, where a circle is surrounded by a rampart and ditch, while that of Stanton Drew in Somerset consists of a great circle A and two smaller circles B and C. The line joining the centres of B and A passes through a menhir called Hauptville's Quoit away to the north-east, while that which joins the centres of C and A cuts a group of three menhirs called The Cove, lying to the south-west.

In Cumberland there are several circles. One of these, 330 feet in diameter with an outstanding menhir, is known as "Long Meg and her Daughters." Another, the Mayborough Circle, is of much the same size, but consists of a tall monolith in the centre of a rampart formed entirely of rather small water-worn stones. A similar circle not far from this is known as King Arthur's Round Table; here, however, there is no monolith. Near Keswick there is a finely preserved circle, and at Shap there seems to have existed a large circle with an avenue of stones running for over a mile to the north.

Cornwall possesses a number of fine monuments. The most celebrated is the Dance Maen Circle, which is 76 feet in diameter and has two monoliths to the north-east, out of sight of the circle, but stated to be in a straight line with its centre. Local tradition calls the circle "The Merry Maidens," and has it that the stones are girls turned into stones for dancing on Sunday: the two monoliths are called the Pipers. The three circles known as the Hurlers lie close together with their centres nearly in a straight line in the direction N.N.E. by S.S.W. At Boscawen-un, near Penzance, is a circle called the Nine Maidens, and two circles near Tregeseal have the same name. Another well-known circle in Cornwall is called the Stripple Stones: the circle stands on a platform of earth surrounded by a ditch, outside which is a rampart. In the centre is a menhir 12 feet in height.

At Merivale, in Somersetshire, there are the remains of a small circle, to the north of which lie two almost parallel double lines of menhirs, running about E.N.E. by W.S.W., the more southerly of the two lines overlapping the other at both extremities.

With what purpose were these great circles erected? We have already mentioned the curious belief of Geoffrey of Monmouth with regard to Stonehenge, and we may pass on to more modern theories. James I was once taken to see Stonehenge when on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton. He was so interested that he ordered his architect Inigo Jones to enquire into its date and purpose. The architect's conclusion was that it was a Roman temple "dedicated to the god Caelus and built after the Tuscan order."

Many years later Dr. Stukeley started a theory which has not entirely been abandoned at the present day. For him Stonehenge and other stone circles were temples of the druids. This was in itself by no means a ridiculous theory, but Stukeley went further than this. Relying on a quaint story in Pliny wherein the druids of Gaul are said to use as a charm a certain magic egg manufactured by snakes, he imagined that the druids were serpent-worshippers, and essayed to see serpents even in the forms of their temples. Thus in the Avebury group the circle on Hakpen Hill was for him the head of a snake and its avenue part of the body. The Avebury circles were coils in the body, which was completed by the addition of imaginary stones and avenues. He also attempted with even less success to see the form of a serpent in other British circle groups.

The druids, as we gather from the rather scanty references in Cæsar and other Roman authors, were priests of the Celts in Gaul. Suetonius further speaks of druids in Anglesey, and tradition has it that in Wales and Ireland there were druids in pre-Christian times. But that druids ever existed in England or in a tithe of the places in which megalithic circles and other monuments occur is unlikely. At the same time, it is not impossible that some of the circles of Ireland, Wales, and France were afterwards used by the druids as suitable places for meeting and preaching.

Fergusson in his great work Rude Stone Monuments held a remarkable view as to the purpose of the British stone circles. He believed that they were partly Roman in date, and that some of them at least marked the scene of battles fought by King Arthur against the Saxons. Thus, for example, he says with regard to Avebury, "I feel it will come eventually to be acknowledged that those who fell in Arthur's twelfth and greatest battle were buried in the ring at Avebury, and that those who survived raised these stones and the mound of Silbury in the vain hope that they would convey to their latest posterity the memory of their prowess." It is hardly necessary to take this view seriously nowadays. Stonehenge, which Fergusson attributes to the same late era, has been proved by excavation to be prehistoric in origin, and with it naturally go the rest of the megalithic circles of England, except where there is any certain proof to the contrary.

The most probable theory is that the circles are religious monuments of some kind. What the nature of the worship carried on in them was it is quite impossible to determine. It may be that some at least were built near the graves of deified heroes to whose worship they were consecrated. On the other hand, it is possible that they were temples dedicated to the sun or to others of the heavenly bodies. Whether they served for the taking of astronomical observations or not is a question which cannot be decided with certainty, though the frequency with which menhirs occur in directions roughly north-east of the circles is considered by some as a sign of connection with the watching of solar phenomena.

Dolmens of simple type are not common in England, though they occur with comparative frequency in Wales, where the best known are the so-called Arthur's Quoit near Swansea, the dolmen of Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire, and that of Plas Newydd on the Menai Strait: in Anglesey they are quite common. In England we have numerous examples in Cornwall, especially west of Falmouth, among which are Chun Quoit and Lanyon Quoit. There are dolmens at Chagford and Drewsteignton in Devonshire, and there is one near the Rollright Circle in Oxfordshire.

Many of the so-called cromlechs of England are not true dolmens, but the remains of tombs of more complicated types. Thus the famous Kit's Coty House in Kent was certainly not a dolmen, though it is now impossible to say what its form was. Wayland the Smith's Cave was probably a three-chambered corridor-tomb covered with a mound. The famous Men-an-tol in Cornwall may well be all that is left of a chamber-tomb of some kind. It is a slab about 3½ feet square, in which is a hole 1½ feet in diameter. There are other stones standing or lying around it. It is known to the peasants as the Crickstone, for it was said to cure sufferers from rickets or crick in the back if they passed nine times through the hole in a direction against the sun. The Isle of Man possesses a fine sepulchral monument on Meayll Hill. It consist of six T-shaped chamber-tombs arranged in a circle with entrances to the north and south. There is also a corridor-tomb, known as King Orry's Grave, at Laxey, and another with a semicircular façade at Maughold.

Among the megalithic monuments of our islands the chambered barrows hold an important place. It is well known that in the neolithic period the dead in certain parts of England were buried under mounds of not circular but elongated shape. These graves are commonest in Wiltshire and the surrounding counties of Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, and Gloucestershire. A few exist in other counties. Some contain no chamber, while others contain a structure of the megalithic type. It is with these latter that we have here to deal. Chambered long barrows are most frequent in Wiltshire, though they do occur in other counties, as, for example, Buckinghamshire, where the famous Cave of Wayland the Smith is certainly the remains of a barrow of this kind. In Derbyshire and Staffordshire a type of chambered mound does occur, but it seems uncertain from the description given whether it is round or elongated.

Turning first to the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire group of barrows we find that they are usually from 120 to 200 feet in length and from 30 to 60 in breadth. In some cases there is a wall of dry stone-masonry around the foot of the mound and outside this a ditch. The megalithic chambers within the mound are of three types. In the first there is a central gallery entering the mound at its thicker end and leading to a chamber or series of chambers (Fig. 3, a and c). Where this gallery enters the mound there is a cusp-shaped break in the outline of the mound as marked by the dry walling, and the entrance is closed by a stone block. The chambers are formed of large slabs set up on edge. Occasionally there are spaces between successive slabs, and these are filled up with dry masonry. The roof is made either by laying large slabs across the tops of the sides or by corbelling with smaller slabs as at Stoney Littleton.

In the second type of chambered barrow there is no central corridor, but chambers are built in opposite pairs on the outside edge of the mound and opening outwards (Fig. 3, b). The two best known examples of this are the tumuli of Avening and of Rodmarton.

In the third type of barrow there is no chamber connected with the outside, but its place is taken by several dolmens—so small as to be mere cists—within the mound.

The burials in these barrows seem to have been without exception inhumations. The body was placed in the crouched position, either sitting up or reclining. In an untouched chamber at Rodmarton were found as many as thirteen bodies, and in the eastern chamber at Charlton's Abbott there were twelve. With the bodies lay pottery, vases, and implements of flint and bone.

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CHAPTER III

The first type occurs in the southern counties, in the islands of the west and north coasts, and also extends into Argyll and Perthshire. The most famous example is the Callernish Circle in the Isle of Lewis. The circle is formed by thirteen stones from 12 to 15 feet high, and its centre is marked by an upright 17 feet high. From the circle extends a line of four stones to the east and another to the west. To the south runs a line of five uprights and several fallen stones, and to the N.N.E. runs a double line, forming as it were an avenue with nine stones on one side and ten on the other, but having no entrance to the circle. Inside the circle, between the central stone and the east side of the ring, is what is described as a cruciform grave with three cells under a low tumulus. In this tomb were found fragments of human bone apparently burnt. It has been suggested that the tomb is not part of the original structure, but was added later.

The native tradition about this circle as repeated by Martin in 1700 was that it was a druidical place of worship, and that the chief druid stood near the central stone to address the assembled people. This tradition seems to have now disappeared.

In the island of Arran, between Brodick and Lamlash, is a damaged circle 21 feet in diameter. At a distance of 60 feet from its circumference in a direction 35° east of south is a stone 4 feet high. In the centre of the circle was found a cist cut in the underlying rock containing bluish earth and pieces of bone. Above were an implement and some fragments of flint.

On the other side of the island there were still in 1860 remains of eight circles, five of sandstone and three of granite, quite close to one another. The diameter of the largest was 63 feet, and the highest stone reached 18 feet. One of them was a double ring. In four of them were found cists containing pottery, flint arrow-heads, a piece of a bronze pin, and some fragments of bone. Others appear to contain no cists.

In the other islands of the west coast few circles seem to remain; there are, however, one at Kirkabrost in Skye, and another at Kingarth in Bute.

At Stromness in Orkney is the famous circle called the Ring of Brogar. It originally consisted of sixty stones forming a circle 340 feet in diameter, outside which was a ditch 29 feet wide. In a direction 60° east of south from the centre, and at a distance of 63 chains, is a standing stone called the Watchstone, 18 feet high, and 42 or 43 chains further on in the same line is a second stone, the Barnstone, 15 feet high. To the left of this line are two stones apparently placed at random, and to the right are the few remaining blocks of the Ring of Stenness, somewhere to the north of which was the celebrated pierced block called the "Stone of Odin," destroyed early in the last century. At a distance of 42 or 43 chains to the north-east of the Barnstone lies the tumulus of Maeshowe. This tumulus conceals a long gallery leading into a rectangular chamber. The walls of this latter are built of horizontal courses of stones, except at the corners, where there are tall, vertically-placed slabs. The chamber has three niches or recesses, one on each of its closed sides. The roof is formed by corbelling the walls and finishing off with slabs laid across. If one sits within the chamber and looks in a direct line along the passage one sees the Barnstone.

A series of measurements and alignments have been taken to connect the Maeshowe tumulus with the Ring of Brogar. Thus we have already seen that the distance from the Barnstone to the Watchstone is the same as from the Barnstone to the tumulus. Moreover, the Watchstone is equidistant from the ring and from the tumulus. Again, a line from the Barnstone to the tumulus passes through the point of the midsummer sunrise and also, on the other horizon, through the point of the setting sun ten days before the winter solstice; the line from the Watchstone to the Brogar Ring marks the setting of the sun at the Beltane festival in May and its rising ten days before the winter solstice, while the line from Maeshowe to the Watchstone is in the line of the equinoctial rising and setting. These alignments are the work of Mr. Magnus Spence; readers must choose what importance they will assign to them.

The Inverness type of circle is entirely different from that of which we have been speaking. The finest examples were at Clava, seven miles from Inverness, where fifty years ago there were eight still in existence. One of these is still partly preserved. It consists of a circle 100 feet in diameter consisting of twelve stones. Within this is a cairn of stones with a circular retaining wall of stone blocks 2 or 3 feet high. The cairn originally covered a circular stone chamber 12½ feet in diameter entered by a straight passage on its south-west side. In other words, the Inverness monuments are simply chamber-tombs covered with a cairn and surrounded by a circle.

Around Aberdeen we find the third type of circle. It consists of a cist-tomb covered by a low mound, often with a retaining wall of small blocks, but there is no entrance passage leading into the cist. Outside the whole is a circle of large upright blocks with this peculiarity, that between the two highest—generally to the south or slightly east of south—lies a long block on its side, occupying the whole interval between them. The uprights nearest this 'recumbent' block are the tallest in the circle, and the size of the rest decreases towards the north. Of thirty circles known near Aberdeen twenty-six still possess the 'recumbent' stone, and in others it may originally have existed.

Passing now to monuments of more definitely sepulchral type we find that the dolmen is not frequent in Scotland, though several are known in the lowlands and in part of Argyllshire.

To the long barrows of England answer in part at least the chambered cairns of Caithness and the Orkneys. The best known type is a long rectangular horned cairn (Fig. 4), of which there are two fine examples near Yarhouse. The largest is 240 feet in length. The chamber is circular, and roofed partly by corbelling and partly by a large slab. In the cairn of Get we have a shorter and wider example of the horned type. Another type is circular or elliptical. In a cairn of this sort at Canister an iron knife was found. On the Holm of Papa-Westra in the Orkneys there is an elliptical cairn of this kind containing a long rectangular chamber running along its major axis with seven small circular niches opening off it. The entrance passage lies on the minor axis of the barrow.

The megalithic monuments of Ireland are extremely numerous, and are found in almost every part of the country. They offer a particular interest from the fact that though they are of few different types they display all the stages by which the more complex were developed from the more simple. It must be remembered that most if not all the monuments we shall describe were originally covered by mounds of earth, though in most cases these have disappeared.

The simple dolmen is found in almost all parts of the country. Its single cover-slab is supported by a varying number of uprights, sometimes as few as three, oftener four or more. It is of great importance to notice the fact that here in Ireland, as elsewhere in the megalithic area, e.g. Sardinia, we have the round and rectangular dolmens in juxtaposition (Fig. 5, a and c).

Occasionally one of the end-blocks of the dolmen instead of just closing up the space between the two nearest side-blocks is pushed back between them so as to form with them a small three-sided portico outside the chamber, but still under the shelter of the cover-slab (Fig. 5, b). A good example of this exists at Gaulstown, Waterford, where a table-stone weighing 6 tons rests on six uprights, three of which form the little portico just described. The famous dolmen of Carrickglass, Sligo, is a still more developed example of this type. Here the chamber is an accurate rectangle, and the portico is formed by adding two side-slabs outside one of the end-slabs, but still under the cover. This last is a remarkable block of limestone weighing about 70 tons. This form of tomb is without doubt a link between the simple dolmen and the corridor-tomb. The portico was at first built under the slab by pushing an end-stone inwards. Then external side-stones formed the portico, though still under the slab. The next move was to construct the portico outside the slab. The portico then needed a roof, and the addition of a second cover to provide it completed the transition to the simpler corridor-tomb. In many cases the Irish simple dolmens were surrounded by a circle of upright stones. At Carrowmore, Sligo, there seems to have been a veritable cemetery of dolmen-tombs, each of which has one or more circles around it, the outermost being 120 feet in diameter. The tombs in these Carrowmore circles were not always simple dolmens, but often corridor-tombs of more or less complicated types. Their excavation has not given very definite results. In many cases human bones have been found in considerable quantities, sometimes in a calcined condition; but there is no real evidence to show that cremation was the burial rite practised. The calcination of human bones may well have been caused by the lighting of fires in the tomb, either at some funeral ceremony, or in even later days, when the place was used as a shelter for peasants. A few poor flints were found and a little pottery, together with many bones of animals and some pins and borers of bone. The most important find made, however, was a small conical button made of bone with two holes pierced in its flat side and meeting in the middle. It is a type which occurs in Europe only at the period of transition from the age of stone to that of bronze, and usually in connection with megalithic monuments.

We pass on now to consider the simplest form of corridor-tomb, that in which there are several cover-slabs, but no separate chamber (Fig. 6). These tombs occur in most parts of Ireland. At Carrick-a-Dhirra, County Waterford, there is a perfect example of the most simple type. The tomb is exactly rectangular and lies east and west, with a length of 19 feet and a breadth of 7½. At each end is a single upright, and each long side consists of seven. The chamber thus formed is roofed by five slabs. The whole was surrounded by a circle of about twenty-six stones, and no doubt the chamber was originally covered by a mound. In a somewhat similar example at Coolback, Fermanagh, the remains of the elliptical cairn are still visible.

But in most cases the plan of the corridor-tomb is complicated by a kind of outer lining of blocks which was added to it. Most of the monuments are so damaged that it is difficult to see what the exact form of this lining was. Whether it merely consisted of a line of upright blocks close around the sides of the chamber or whether these supported some further structure which covered up the whole chamber it is difficult to say. In some cases the roof-slab actually covers the outer line of blocks, and here it seems certain that this outer line served simply to reinforce the chamber walls, the space between being filled with earth or rubble. However, at Labbamologa, County Cork, is a tomb called Leaba Callighe, in which this was certainly not the case. The length of the whole monument is about 42 feet. The slabs cover the inner walls of the chamber, but not the outer lining: this last forms a kind of outer shell to the whole monument. It is shaped roughly like a ship, and runs to a point at the east end, thus representing the bow. The west end is damaged, but may have been pointed like the east. The whole reminds one very forcibly of the naus of the Balearic Isles and the Giants' Graves of Sardinia. Occasionally the corridor-tomb has a kind of portico at its west end.

In Munster the corridor-tomb takes a peculiar form (Fig. 7). It lies roughly east and west, and its two long sides are placed at a slight angle to one another in such a way that the west end is broader than the east. In a good example of this at Keamcorravooly, County Cork, there are two large capstones and the walls consist of double rows of slabs, the outer being still beneath the cover-slabs. On the upper surface of the covers are several small cup-shaped hollows, some of which at least have been produced artificially.

These wedge-shaped structures are of remarkable interest, for exactly the same broadening of the west end is found in Scandinavia, in the Hünenbetter of Holland, in the corridor-tombs of Portugal, and in the dolmens of the Deccan in India.

In some Irish tombs the corridor leads to a well-defined chamber. In a curious tomb at Carrickard, Sligo, the chamber was rectangular and lay across the end of the corridor in such a way as to form a T. The whole seems to have been covered with an oval mound. In another at Highwood in the same county a long corridor joins two small circular chambers, the total length being 44 feet. The corridor was once divided into four sections by cross-slabs. The cairn which covered this tomb was triangular in form.

In the county of Meath, in the parish of Lough Crew, is a remarkable series of stone cairns extending for three miles along the Slieve-na-Callighe Hills. These cairns conceal chamber-tombs. The cairns themselves are roughly circular, and the largest have a circle of upright blocks round the base. The chambers are built of upright slabs and are roofed by corbelling. Cairn H covered a corridor leading to a chamber and opening off on each side into a side-chamber, the whole group thus being cruciform. In these chambers were found human remains and objects of flint, bone, earthenware, amber, glass, bronze, and iron. Cairn L had a central corridor from which opened off seven chambers in a very irregular fashion. Cairn T consisted of a corridor leading to a fine octagonal chamber with small chambers off it on three sides.

The chief interest of these tombs lies in the remarkable designs engraved on some of the stones of the passages and chambers. They are fairly deeply cut with a rather sharp implement, probably a metal chisel. They are arranged in the most arbitrary way on the stones and are often crowded together in masses. There is no attempt to depict scenes of any kind, nor is there, indeed, any example of animal life. In fact, the designs seem to be purely ornamental. The most frequent elements of design are cup-shaped hollows, concentric circles or ovals, star-shaped figures, circles with emanating rays, spirals, chevrons, reticulated figures, parallel straight or curved lines. There seems to be no clue as to the meaning of these designs. They may have been merely ornamental, though this is hardly likely.

At New Grange, near Drogheda, there is a similar series of tumuli, one of which has become famous (Fig. 8). It consists of a huge mound of stones 280 feet in diameter surrounded by a circle of upright blocks. Access to the corridor is gained

from the south-east side. This corridor leads to a chamber with three divisions, so that corridor and chambers together form a cross with a long shaft. The walls are formed of rough slabs set upright. In the passage the roof is of slabs laid right across, but the roof of the chamber is formed by corbelling. On the floor of each division of the chamber was found a stone basin.

Around the edge of the mound runs an enclosure wall of stones lying on the ground edge to edge. A few of these are sculptured. The finest is a great stone which lies in front of the entrance and shows a well-arranged design of spirals and lozenges. There are also engravings on one of the stones of the chambers. These designs are in general more skilful than those of Lough Crew. They consist mainly of chevrons, lozenges, spirals, and triangles.

The monuments we have so far described are all tombs. Ireland also possesses several stone circles. The largest are situated round Lough Gur, 10 or 12 miles south of Limerick. There was at one time a fine circle west of Lough Gur at Rockbarton, but it is now destroyed. On the eastern edge of the lough is a double concentric ring of stones, the diameter of the inner circle being about 100 feet. The rings are 6 feet apart, and the space between them is filled up with earth. In 1869 an excavation was made within the circle and revealed some human remains, mostly those of children from six to eight years old.

Further north is a remarkable group of monuments known as the Carrigalla circles. The first is a plain circle (L) 33 or 34 feet in diameter, composed of twenty-eight stones. The space within them is filled up with earth to form a raised platform. At a distance of 75 feet are two concentric circles, diameters 155 and 184 feet respectively, made of stones 5 or 6 feet high. The space between the two circles is filled with earth. Within these is a third concentric circle about 48 feet in diameter made of stones of the same size. This group of three concentric circles we will call M. The line joining the centres of L and M runs in a direction of 29° or 30° west of north and passes through a stone (N) 8 feet high standing on the top of a ridge 2500 feet away. There are two other stones more to the west (O and P) in such a position that the line joining them (41° west of north) passes through the centre of M, from which they are distant 860 and 1450 feet respectively. Further, a line through the centre of L and a great standing stone (Q) 2480 feet from it in a direction 10° east of south passes through the highest point in the district, 1615 feet away and 492 feet in height.

Mr. Lewis compares this group of monuments with that of Stanton Drew in Somersetshire. In both a line joining the centre of two circles passes through a single stone in a northerly direction, and there is in both a fixed line from the centre of the larger circle. Captain Boyle Somerville, R.N., finds that the line 29° or 30° west of north would mark the setting of Capella in B.C. 1600, or Arcturus 500 B.C.; he adds that the direction 41° west of north would suit Capella in 2500 B.C. or Castor in 2000 B.C.

On the west side of Lough Gur is another group of monuments. There is in the first place a circle 55 feet in diameter. On a line 35° east of north from this is a stone 10 feet high, and the same line produced strikes a prominent hill-top. Somewhere to the south-west of this circle, perhaps with its centre in the line just described, lay a second circle between 150 and 170 feet in diameter, destroyed in 1870. Three other stones mentioned by early writers as being near the circles have now disappeared. The direction 35° east of north is the same as that of the King-stone with regard to the Rollright Circle in Oxfordshire. This line, allowing a height of 3° for the horizon, would, according to Sir Norman Lockyer, have struck the rising points of Capella in 1700 B.C. and Arcturus in 500 B.C.

To the south of the destroyed circle is another about 150 to 155 feet in diameter, with stones of over 5 feet in height set close together. Earth is piled up outside them to form a bank 30 feet wide. There is an entrance 3 feet wide in a direction 59° east of north from the centre of the circle. There is said to have been at one time a cromlech 100 feet wide due south of the circle and connected with it by a paved way. Sir Norman Lockyer thinks that the position of the doorway is connected with observation of the sun's rising in May. Moreover, the tallest stone of the circle, 9 feet high, is 30° east of north from the centre, a direction which according to him points to the rising of Capella in 1950 B.C. and Arcturus in 280 B.C.

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CHAPTER IV

In Scandinavia megalithic monuments abound. They have been studied with unusual care from quite an early date in the history of archæology, and classified in the order of their development. The earliest type appears to be the simple dolmen with either four or five sides and a very rough cover-slab. This and the upper part of the sides remained uncovered by the mound of earth which was always heaped round the tomb. In later times the dolmen became more regularly rectangular in shape, and only its roof-block appeared above the mound. Contemporary with this later form of dolmen were several other types of tomb. One was simply the earlier dolmen with one side open and in front of it a sort of portico or elementary corridor formed by two upright slabs with no roofing (cf. the Irish type, Fig. 5, b). This quickly developed into the true corridor-tomb, which had at first a small round chamber with one or two cover-slabs, a short corridor, and a round or rectangular mound. Later types have an oval chamber (Fig. 9) with from one to four cover-slabs or a rectangular chamber with a long corridor and a circular mound. Finally we reach a type where thin slabs are used in the construction, and the mound completely covers the cap-stones: here the corridor leads out from one of the short ends of the rectangular chamber.

The earliest of these types in point of view of development, the true dolmen, is common both in Denmark and in South Sweden; only one example exists in Norway. In Sweden it is never found far from the sea-coast.

The corridor-tomb is also frequent in Denmark and Sweden, though it is unknown in Norway. In Sweden it is, like all megalithic monuments, confined to the south of the country. Of the early transition type with elementary corridor there are fine examples at Herrestrup in Denmark and Torebo in Sweden. A tomb at Sjöbol in Sweden where the corridor, consisting of only two uprights, is covered in with two roof-slabs instead of being left open, shows very clearly the transition to the corridor-tomb proper, in which the entrance passage consists of at least four uprights, two on each side. Of this there are numerous fine examples. A tomb of this type at Broholm in Denmark has a roughly circular chamber separated from the corridor by a kind of threshold-stone. Another at Tyfta in Sweden is remarkable for its curious construction, the uprights being set rather apart from one another and the spaces between filled up with dry masonry of small stones. Possibly there were not sufficient large blocks at hand to construct a tomb of the required size.

The still later type consisting of a rectangular chamber with a long corridor leading out of one of its long sides often attains to very imposing dimensions. In Westgothland, a province of Sweden, there are fine examples with walls of limestone and often roofs of granite visible above the surface of the mound. The largest of these tombs is that of Karleby near Falköping. In another at Axevalla Heath were found nineteen bodies seated round the wall of the chamber, each in a separate small cist of stone slabs. The position of the bodies in the Scandinavian graves is rather variable, both the outstretched and the contracted posture being used. It is usual to find many bodies in the same tomb, often as many as twenty or thirty: in that of Borreby on the island of Seeland were found seventy skeletons, all of children of from two to eighteen years of age.

In Denmark these rectangular tombs occasionally have one or more small round niches. In 1837 a large tomb was excavated at Lundhöj on Jütland, which had a circular niche opposite to the entrance. The niche had a threshold-stone, and the two uprights of the main chamber which lay on either side of this had been crudely engraved with designs, among which were a man, an animal, and a circle with a pair of diameters marked. Little was found in the chamber, and only some bones and a pot in the niche.

In Denmark often occur mounds which contain two or more tombs, usually of the same form, each with its separate entrance passage. At the entrance of the chamber there is sometimes a well-worked framework into which fitted a door of stone or wood.

The late type in which the corridor leads out of one of the narrow ends of the chamber is represented in both Sweden and Denmark. From this may be derived the rather unusual types in which the corridor has become indistinguishable from the chamber or forms a sort of antechamber to it. An example of the former type at Knyttkärr in Sweden is wider at one end than at the other, and has an outer coating of stone slabs. It resembles very closely the wedge-shaped tombs of Munster (cf. Fig. 7):

In Germany megalithic monuments are not infrequent, but they are practically confined to the northern part of the country. They extend as far east as Königsberg and as far west as the borders of Holland. They are very frequent in Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Hanover. There are even examples in Prussian Saxony, but in South Germany they cease entirely. Keller in one edition of his Lake Dwellings figures two supposed dolmens north of Lake Pfäffikon in Switzerland, but we have no details with regard to them.

The true dolmen is extremely rare in Germany, and only occurs in small groups in particular localities. The corridor-tomb with a distinct chamber is also very exceptional, especially east of the Elbe. The most usual type of megalithic tomb is that known as the Hünenbett or Riesenbett. The latter name means Giants' Bed, and it seems probable that the former should be similarly translated, despite the suggested connection with the Huns, for a word Hünen has been in use in North Germany for several centuries with the meaning of giants. A Hünenbett consists of a rectangular (rarely oval or round) hill of earth covering a megalithic tomb. This is a simple elongated rectangle in shape, made of upright blocks and roofed with two or more cover-slabs. The great Hünenbett or Grewismühlen in Mecklenburg has a mound measuring 150 feet by 36 with a height of 5 feet. On the edge of the mound are arranged forty-eight tall upright blocks of stone.

The Hünenbetter of the Altmark are among the best known and explored. Here the corridors are usually about 20 feet long, though in rare cases they reach a length of 40 feet. Each is filled with clean sand up to two-thirds of its height, and on this lie the bodies and their funeral deposit. The bodies must have been laid flat, though not necessarily in an extended position, as there was not room above the sand for them to have been seated upright. Various implements of flint have been found in the tombs together with stone hammers and vases of pottery. There is no certain instance of the finding of metal.

A book printed by John Picardt at Amsterdam in 1660 contains quaint pictures of giants and dwarfs engaged in the building of a megalithic monument which is clearly a Hünenbett. According to tradition the giants, after employing the labour of the dwarfs, proceeded to devour them. Hünenbetter similar to those shown in Picardt's illustrations are still to be seen in Holland, but only in the north, where over fifty are known. They are of elongated rectangular form, built of upright blocks, and roofed with from two to ten cover-slabs. They all widen slightly towards the west end. The most perfect example still remaining is that of Tinaarloo, and the largest is that of Borger, which contains forty-five blocks, of which ten are cap-stones. Several Hünenbetter have been excavated. In them are found pottery vases, flint celts, axes and hammers of grey granite, basalt, and jade.

Belgium possesses several true dolmens, of which the best known is that called La Pierre du Diable on the right bank of the Meuse. Near Lüttich are two simple corridor-tombs, each with a round hole in one of the end-slabs and a small portico outside it.

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