"Just a question to generate discussion. What makes a stone circle or circles ceremonial? Where is the proven evidence for this?"

There is no evidence. If a reasonable assumption is stated often enough, it becomes established as fact.

I think the "ceremonial" explanation makes a lot of sense as a theory; i.e. that they are the neolithic equivalent of cathedrals, temples, chapels and so forth. And the reason that makes sense is because our knowledge of other cultures suggest that one of the first things people do when they start building things... once they've progressed beyond tombs... is to construct temples.

But if you are basing your theory on that, then you have to acknowledge that cultures also start to produce other types of structure around the same time. Maybe their temples were all made of wood and we have no evidence of them at all... but their Courts of Justice (or equivalent) just had to be circles of stone for some reason. Courts are also important enough to put a lot of effort into; and depending upon the size of the community, could be of various different sizes.

Theatres / performance spaces are also important enough to put a lot of effort into (just look at some of the Amphitheatres of old). Or maybe stone circles were a competitive sports venue... of a sport whose rules we'll never know. Or perhaps they are globstopples*

As I say; I think most of us accept we'll never really know definitively. Which means we can all hold on to our pet theories, and so long as we accept they are just that - theories - that's a perfectly fine state of affairs I imagine.

On the "what does science have to offer?" debate, I would suggest that whatever additional factual information we do manage to uncover about these ancient monuments is likely to come via scientific investigation. Simply because that which we define as constituting "factual information" can only really be accessed through rational, scientific investigation.

That said, there are plenty of arenas where rational, scientific, purpose-orientated investigation is unhelpful; even counter-productive. But if we want to know more about something built thousands of years ago, then it's really the only useful tool we have.

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* Globstopple: a word I just made up to denote a building whose purpose has no direct equivalent in our culture.

My favoured theory of the origination of 'stone circles' is that put forward by George Meaden some years back. Although to be fair I've never heard of it since, or seen the book again.

Basically the guy hypothesised that the first rings were timber demarcations of the perimeters of crop 'circles' caused by natural spiral vortexes, the farmers presumably attempting to capture the 'magic imprint' of visiting invisible earth spirits within their fields. I've seen these vortexes in action myself, sending chaff spiralling into the air, although sadly never actually flattening crop. I understand oval / egg-shaped rings formed by such vortexes are relatively common, the result of the centre of gravity shifting slightly before dissipation.... the erection of wooden 'markers' around the circumference, later replaced with stone, provides a much more plausible explanation - for me - for the existance of many non circular rings than Thom's trigonometry theory. After all a perfect circle is easy to achieve, just a stake and a rope, but an oval or egg a lot harder... unless Nature had already provided the outline to trace.

Obviously not suggesting all, or even the majority of circles were the result of vortexes; but once such enclosures became associated with the spiritual word people might have seen fit to erect their own to maybe attract spirits to their land or symbolise somewhere 'sacred', somewhere outside the realm of every day existance. Perhaps.

Hi Roy, sorry to come to this discussion late in the day. Lots of useful posts being made which I have been reading.
Just before I went up to Lewis I printed off this article http://www.soue.org.uk/souenews/issue8/thom.html
and did a bit of reading up on Alexander Thom and Megalithic Astronomy. It's an interesting article which also touches on the 'megalithic yard' - a linear measurement of 0.829m or 2.72ft.

As we have been discussing certain alignments during this thread I wondered if any of this comes into play?
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tuesdays-blue-moon-many-names-195741735.html#usNmE9m

Just a thought which no doubt has been mentioned many times before, but if a circle has a recumbent stone in it, is it more likely to 'suggest' that it was 'used' for something different to your bog standard circle without a recumbent, even if in the same area?