Re: First time in Aberdeenshire. . soon! | Forum

Aberdeenshire 30

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First time in Aberdeenshire. . soon!

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suave harv Jun 18, 2005 08:37:46

Replying to greywether

greywether's spreadsheet is excellent. All the info you could want at a glance -

Especially good for me as I have all the books that are referenced on the spreadsheet. Good work! And a very valuable resource whilst there I'll wager!

So, these 59 on the list are the recognisable 'Recumbent circles'. I see Burl has 67 listed as 'destroyed or unrecognisable' and 11 or 'dubious' origin.

My 'hit list' must therefore be based on this 59. The '59 Stone Circles In Aberdeenshire' of Chapter 8 of TMA.

Bring it on! (and other such youthful phrases someone of 38 shouldn't say)

suave harv Jun 18, 2005 09:30:18

Replying to suave harv

The spreadsheets give three figure refrences to the recumbent in terms of Horizon Declination. With ones in bold meaning 'moon not visible'. Okay . .

So in 2500BC, all but 8 of the 59 recognisable RSCs would have had the moon setting between the flankers? That's a pretty strong argument for these circles being lunar based.
Now, my Astronomy's a bit rusty, (my scope has a Dobsonian mount, so Alt & azimuth never mattered to me!), but the moon doesn't set in the same spot each month does it? there's a variation. It moves along the horizon slightly. I've looked in Patrick Moore's 'Book Of The Moon' but can't find an answer.
So just how approximate is the -30 decl figure for 2500BC?
I'm often not persuaded by astro-archeology.

I don't know what's more amazing, the fact that they built so many circles the same way, or the fact they got so many wrong!

greywether Jun 18, 2005 13:18:41

Replying to suave harv

> The '59 Stone Circles In Aberdeenshire' of Chapter 8 of TMA

Yes, I remember, when planning my RSC trip, being rather frustrated by this reference in the book without any clear indication as to what the 59 sites were. There is also a reference to visiting destroyed circles but it's not clear if these are included in the 59.

So I started looking at other sources such as Burl and Ruggles which do list the sites. But even here there were references to destroyed sites which were not my main interest at this stage.

In the end, I set my own criteria which were
(1) the recumbent must still be there (with or without any flankers) or
(2) if it's not, BOTH flankers must be there.
So sites with just one flanker remaining were excluded even if there was historical evidence for a recumbent or another flanker.

I ended up with 60. But after the visit I took out Old Boroughtreebush because I wasn't convinced about its RSC credentials. And I only got to 34 of them so at least one other trip is going to be necessary.

So I suppose my list of 59 must be very close to Julian's 59 but I'd be surprised if they were exactly the same!