Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T20:42:23.878Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ritual and Landscape on the West Coast of Scotland: an Investigation of the Stone Rows of Northern Mull

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

R.D. Martlew  and
C.L.N. Ruggles
R.D. Martlew
Affiliation:
Centre for Archaeological Studies, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT
C.L.N. Ruggles
Affiliation:
School of Archaeological Studies, The University of Leicester LE1 7RH
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In view of the theories of the astronomical significance of standing stones proposed by Alexander Thom, extensive fieldwork was undertaken during the 1970s and early 1980s in the west of Scotland to reassess the field evidence. Two groups of sites were identified from this work that seemed to support an astronomical interpretation, but the poor condition of many of the sites made identification of their original orientation problematical. Excavations were carried out at two damaged sites in one of the groups, in northern Mull, in order to identify the original positions of the stones. Radiocarbon dates from one of the sites, the first for a Scottish stone row, suggest construction in the Late Bronze Age. The alignment of the excavated rows, and the results of detailed theodolite surveys at and around the north Mull sites, suggest a more complex relationship between site locations, astronomical events, and the landscape than has hitherto been appreciated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 62 , 1996 , pp. 117 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, M. 1990. Brean Down Excavations 1983–1987. London: Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England Archaeological Report 15.Google Scholar
Benson, D.G., Evans, J.G., Williams, G.H., Darvill, T. & David, A. 1990. Excavations at Stackpole Warren, Dyfed. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 56, 179–245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Britton, D. & Longworth, I. 1968. Late Bronze Age finds from the Heathery Burn cave, Durham. Inventaria Archaeologica GB.55. London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Burl, H.A.W. 1976. The Stone Circles of the British Isles. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Burl, H.A.W. 1980. Science or symbolism: problems of archaeoastronomy. Antiquity 54, 191–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burl, H.A.W. 1993. From Carnac to Callanish: the prehistoric stone rows and avenues of Britain, Ireland and Brittany. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Childe, V.G. 1942. Unpublished notebook in the National Monuments Record of Scotland, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Duns, J. 1883. Notes on North Mull. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 17, 83.Google Scholar
Hannan, T. 1926. The Beautiful Isle of Mull. Edinburgh: Robert Grant & Son.Google Scholar
Heggie, D.C. 1981. Megalithic Science: ancient mathematics and astronomy in north-west Europe. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Le Roux, C.-T., Lecerf, Y. & Gautier, M. 1989. Les Megalithes de Saint-Just (Ille-et-Vilaine) et la fouille des alignements du Moulin de Cojou. Revue archéologiques de l'Ouest 6, 5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longley, D. 1980. Runnymede Bridge 1976: excavations on the site of a Late Bronze Age Settlement. Guildford: Surrey Archaeological Society Research Volume 6.Google Scholar
Lynch, A. 1981. Man and Environment in South West Ireland. Oxford: British Archaeological Report 85.Google Scholar
Martlew, R.D. & Ruggles, C.L.N. 1993. The North Mull Project (4): excavations at Ardnacross 1989–91. Archaeoastronomy 18, S55–S64.Google Scholar
Mitchell, A. 1884. On white pebbles in connection with pagan and Christian burials, a seeming survival of an ancient burial custom. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 18, 286–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, K. 1986. Plas Gogerddan. Archaeology in Wales 26, 29–31.Google Scholar
Needham, S. 1990. The Penard-Wilburton succession: new metalwork finds from Croxton (Norfolk) and Thirsk (Yorkshire). Antiquaries Journal 70(2), 253–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, J.N.G. 1971. Excavation of a cairn at Strontoiller, Lorn, Argyll. Glasgow Archaeological Journal 2, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, G., Thornber, I., Lynch, F. & Marshall, D. 1974–1975. Small cairns in Argyll: some recent work. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 106, 15–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roese, H.E. 1980. Some aspects of topographical locations of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in Wales: I Menhirs. Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 28(4), 645–55.Google Scholar
Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. 1980. Argyll: An inventory of the ancient monuments, iii: Mull, Tiree, Coll and northern Argyll. Edinburgh: HMSO.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. 1984a. Megalithic Astronomy: a new archaeological and statistical study of 300 western Scottish sites. Oxford: British Archaeological Report 123.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. 1984b. A new study of the Aberdeenshire Recumbent Stone Circles, 1: Site data. Archaeoastronomy 6, S55–S79.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. 1988. The stone alignments of Argyll and Mull: a perspective on the statistical approach in archaeoastronomy. In Ruggles, C.L.N. (ed.), Records in Stone: papers in memory of Alexander Thom, 232–46. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. & Burl, H.A.W. 1985. A new study of the Aberdeenshire Recumbent Stone Circles, 2: interpretation, Archaeoastronomy 8, S25–S60.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. & Martlew, R.D. 1989. The North Mull Project (1): excavations at Glengorm 1987–88. Archaeoastronomy 14, S137–S149.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. & Martlew, R.D. 1992. The North Mull Project (3): Prominent hill summits and their astronomical potential. Archaeoastronomy 17, S1–S13.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. and Martlew, R.D. 1993. An integrated approach to the investigation of astronomical evidence in the prehistoric record: the North Mull Project. In Ruggles, C.L.N. (ed.), Archaeoastronomy in the 1990s, 185–197. Loughborough: Group D Publications.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N., Martlew, R. & Hinge, P. 1991. The North Mull Project (2): The wider astronomical potential of the sites. Archaeoastronomy 16, S51–S75.Google Scholar
Ruggles, C.L.N. & Whittle, A.W.R. 1981. Astronomy and Society in Britain During the Period 4000–1500 BC. Oxford: British Archaeological Report 88.Google Scholar
Simpson, D.D.A. 1967. Excavations at Kintraw, Argyll. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 99, 54–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thom, A. 1967. Megalithic Sites in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, H.A.W. 1990. Stone Rows and Standing Stones. Oxford: British Archaeological Report S560.Google Scholar
Walker, M.J.C. & Lowe, J.J. 1985. Flandrian environmental history of the Isle of Mull, Scotland. New Phytologist 99, 587–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, A., Lacaille, A.D. & Zeuner, F.E. 1943. Report on standing stones and other remains, near Fowlis Wester, Perthshire. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 77, 174–84.Google Scholar