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Tomnaverie

Hills an' that

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Yes it is astronomical.

There is clearly going to be more than one view or emphasis on precisely what this astronomy is. This is my (dodgey) understanding of the views of Bradley, Burl and Ruggles.

Clava cairns have more of a SW orientation and are concerned with the midwinter sunset. The two passage graves at Balnuaran of Clava have very precise alignments on the sunset and, at one of them, Bradley in his investigations covered one of them in tarpaulin and witnessed the sunset as it might have originally happened.

RSCs have a much wider spread of orientations with an emphasis on the S - SSW arc. As Burl elegantly puts it: "Over 75% [of RSC alignments are] in those Styx-like regions where the sun and moon neither rose nor set"

The moon is seen as the focus of RSC alignments but not (at least in the general case) rising at one end of the recumbent, rolling along the top and setting at the other end.

Rather, the recumbent and flankers create a window on the horizon through which the moon, in its risen state, shines in on the observers.

Burl again: "An observer would have an arc of vision over 10 degrees wide. It would take the moon about an hour to pass across such an arc and this may have been what the users of the ring wanted in their ceremonies"

There are enough similarities between Clava cairns and RSCs to suggest a link but it looks as if the astronomical emphasis changed in the millennium or so between Clava cairns and RSCs.

Ruggles looked at the RSC alignments in much more detail but reached the same conclusions about the clear but general alignment on the moon.

To extend the discussion a bit, the Irish have axial stone circles (ASCs) such as Drombeg which have many similarities (and many differences) with RSC. ASCs are also, I think, much more recent than RSCs.

Despite the solsticial alignment at Drombeg, Ruggles conclusion on ASCs was that they "bear no consistent relationship with any specific astronomical body or event"

>Rather, the recumbent and flankers create a window on the horizon through which the moon, in its >risen state, shines in on the observers.

I vaguely recall some mention of that in a little touristy panel at Archaeoquest near Aberdeen.
And an even vaguer recollection of some talk of cup-marks on RSCs being somehow moon related.

RSCs are still a bit of a sore point in our house. The exhaust fell off the car that day, we saw nowt but garages. Pleh!

>> Despite the solsticial alignment at Drombeg, Ruggles conclusion on ASCs was that they
>> "bear no consistent relationship with any specific astronomical body or event"

Was he looking at the same thing that I've been looking at? Axials almost all align to the SW, which says to me "winter solstice sunset"!!!!

ASCs are thought to be more recent than RSCs, although there was a circle in Fermanagh (I forget the townland) which Burl described as being a perfect Aberdeenshire RSC. Unfortunately, the gov't gave a land improvement grant to the farmer who proceded to remove said circle from his field!

One of the Cong stone circles is also a very close relation to the RSCs, but it has the recumbent in the NE quadrant (diametrically opposite the norm).