The dating game.

suave harv Jan 7, 2006 10:38:07

I was at Cairnwell Stone Circle last year, in Aberdeenshire. It's behind a house and to call it 'ruined' would be an understatement.
The guy who owned the house and the land behind said it was the last stone circle to be given 'official' status, in the seventies. I think I checked my Burl book and it was 1976, I've looked again whilst typing this post and can't find the bugger!
He said his wife found it, and some official bods came and registered it. He showed me the plans and was very helpful.
Some questions. .
Have there been any stone circles discovered since 1976?
And with regards to dating circles, I've read here -
http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/rug/AR210/circles/project/chro.htm
"Only with the introduction of absolute and relative dating can 'educated' estimates be made of their true age. The introduction of radio-carbon dating and dendrochronology have both played key roles in this new attempt to place the circles in their correct time period"
So, what is 'dendrochronology'. And when they 'carbon date' a circle, how do they do it?
Basically, what I'm asking is, is there a 'litmus paper' test to determine if a stone circle is in fact Neolithic, and not just a, say, Roman folly (yes, I know they wouldn't, but y'know).
I feel a bit thick asking this, but there's part of me that thinks "the stone and the soil are the only things left, and they were both there before the circle was built, so what do they test when they do the carbon dating or dendycrony thing".
I suppose the answer to my question lies in the 'educated estimates' bit of the above quote.

StoneLifter Jan 7, 2006 10:46:34

Replying to suave harv

There's a type of stone circle known as the Four-Poster which is in the class description, but I think is actually a rectangle, do you want to include those in the 'have any stone circles been found since 1976' question. Here's a link to the best stone circle that's been found since 1976. http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/7525 . It's huge but all the stones are flat and mainly under turf.

moss Jan 7, 2006 11:15:26

Replying to suave harv

And when they 'carbon date' a circle, how do they do it?

They don't do the circle, its what they find either within the circle, or the burials that provide the evidence of dating; radio carbon dating is a technique for determining the age of of carbon bearing materials (radioactive decay) which include wood and plants. So most reports will include rc dating with a plus and minus figure of a couple of hundred years. Dendochronolgy is tree ring dating, but also has problems with exact dating due to climate change having an effect on the trees.. Pottery is also used as a dating method, but its correlated with other sites.. Therefore its what you find in the construction of the circle that determines its date, and its affinity with other sites in the area.
Should get B+ for that :)

FourWinds Jan 7, 2006 12:14:02

Replying to suave harv

>> Have there been any stone circles discovered since 1976?

A few in Ireland. There was one on the slopes of Church Mountain discovered a few years ago. It's only a little 5-stoner and the tips of the stones just poke out of the peat. I'm hoping to get to it sometime in the next couple of months - I know roughly where it is ...

Then, a while back, I visited this:

http://www.megalithomania.com/show/site/1400

Previously recorded as a hut circle, but reclassified as a stone circle soon.

A group of buried circles similar to Beaghmore was discovered recently on top of a (fairly) nearby hill:

http://irishmegaliths.megalithomania.com/zCopney.htm

Hob Jan 7, 2006 12:31:53

Replying to suave harv

Is there not some method involving the last time a soil surface was exposed to sunlight? Sounds rather arcane, but no more so than radiocarbon dating.

There are a couple of 'newly discovered' circles in Northumberland:
http://www.megalithics.com/england/crawbery/crawmain.htm
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/6502

Chris Collyer Jan 7, 2006 12:46:40

Replying to suave harv

>Have there been any stone circles discovered since 1976?

I've got a feeling that one of the Derbyshire circles was only discovered in the 70's, but which one it was escapes me at the moment. I'm sure there's tons of stuff out there that is either waiting to be uncovered or recognised (the amount of rock art coming to light is a prime example). That's part of what makes this obsesion so interesting - any one of us could make a major discovery!

-Chris