thank you all for your encouragement.
Baza, actually I wasn't thinking of your comments at all! but now you've rattled my cage I may as well defend my standpoint.
You say you don't want to hear about the ideas of 'ignorant and superstitious people' - but surely you have to include the people of the Neolithic in this description (or were they part of some golden age, after which we got ignorant and superstitious again?). So why are you so interested in what this particular subset of i + s people got up to?
Surely the reasons behind the creation of many of the monuments in this country have to be founded in a profoundly different world view to our modern outlook today. Fair enough, some monuments do seem to be aligned on the seasons/certain stars/ the moon etc - but I think it would be stretching credibility to say they all are. You want the facts - but how are you ever going to get at the facts behind their creation really? I think you can measure all the stones you like but something will still be missing. You can look at the site's relationship to other sites, but something's still missing. You can dig up some knives and jewellery - but you can't get inside the mindset of a neolithic person. Besides, if you live in a culture you don't have to make it explicit to others of that culture what you believe, because the ideas of that culture are hegemony (?) and so you don't leave traces of them.
Erm. Also, the neolithic was a non-literate society. Telling stories would have been a very important way of passing on information about your people's history, their values, their aspirations. Ok so there may not be an undamaged chain between our stories now and theirs. But there are parallels between myths all over the world - probably because there are parallels between human experience throughout the world, and throughout time. Having modern technology doesn't change important parts of life like birth, love and death, good and evil, ideas about where we come from and how we should live.
If you look at Merrick's post in the 'milk' thread you'll see how stories about white cows are common in Britain. Maybe if cows were important in the Neolithic, maybe you would devise a story about a cow, and what this symbolised. Just maybe some memory of this got handed on. Maybe not.
But that's my take on why the extra dimension's important. Maybe you think it's arty wishy-washy nonsense, and maybe it is. It's not like you need a story to enjoy being at a site. But I don't think you should dismiss folklore as being from ignorant superstitious people, and therefore worthless.
Personally I think the wider the view you take of anything, the more holistic, the better you can understand it in its context, I'm sure you can't understand it any less.
Phew. That wasn't personal at all!!! and not aimed at you particularly. Just a few of my thoughts generally.
