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When is a standing stone not a​…

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goffik G
goffik Apr 7, 2006 07:51:43

I wonder if anyone can shed any light on this for me (and hopefully others - please tell me I'm not alone here!)

We spent the day on Dartmoor last Sunday (Drizzlecombe, to be precise) and as we were wandering around, we noticed that, among the scattered rocks/boulders/stones, one could pick out any number of unmarked hut circles/cairn circles/stone circles/megaliths/and so on...

What I'm saying, is that there are, in certain parts of the UK, a huge amount of seemingly random scatterings of great big rocks that could EASILY have been placed there by human intervention, but are not marked anywhere. Stones standing upright, for example, seem to catch the eye.

And in the case of large amounts of rocks strewn about the place, it's easy to let the imagination lead you to believe that there are regular shapes among them.

Is there an easy way for the likes of me to make a distinction between a stone that is naturally in an upright position, and one that has been placed there? Without the use of any gadgetry or a trowel, naturally...

Cheers!
G x

S StoneLifter
StoneLifter Apr 7, 2006 08:42:26
Replying to goffik

The odds against a stone being naturally upright are very slender indeed and the problem with upright stones is in determining when they were actually placed upright. There are huge areas of undiscovered prehistoric remains that have been unresearched because of any number of chance events. Bringing unknown monuments to light is a dangerous occupation - there is no assistance from anywhere and nobody is at all interested in what you've found - unless it's oil, gold reserves or deceased poultry.

W wideford
wideford Apr 7, 2006 09:08:39
Replying to goffik

"And in the case of large amounts of rocks strewn about the place, it's easy to let the imagination lead you to believe that there are regular shapes among them" even easier with too few, as the last broadcast *ime *eam shows

C cropredy
cropredy Apr 7, 2006 09:53:59
Replying to goffik

Goffik, I believe jacksprat raised a similer question a few weeks ago about the thunder stone, in cumbria.
I would have thought it more unlikely in Dartmoor that glaciers were depositing rocks as they melted ?
Good chanse that they did that in Cumbria, and upwards ?
I know what I do to check the position of stones , bet you can guess ?
If you can sense something about the stones, as most on here I suspect can do ?
Then imagine mankind thousands of years ago, living on their senses, on the edge all the time, if they found a stone that they could sense something about, would it matter if they placed it exactly in that spot, or if it was naturally there ?
If they then found that they could intensify this effect by encircling that stone, or by making it part of a circle of stones, and the force that was present at these stones was one that they both worshipped and feared.
You can speedily fast forward to York minster.
Kevin

T tiompan
tiompan Apr 7, 2006 10:08:36
Replying to goffik

The existence of packing stones tells that somebody had put it there , but the problem is that people have done it for millenia .The provenance is difficult ,unless there is something in association with the stone .Just because it's a "standing stone" doesn't make it pre Iron Age .

G goffik
goffik Apr 7, 2006 11:34:55
Replying to goffik

The last few visits to Studland Heath (near the Agglestone) have made me wonder about the regular mounds of earth in the vicinity that are marked simply "mounds" on OS maps.

The reason they are marked at all suggests to me that they are something other than just mounds... if you see what I mean!

I was wondering if there was a possibility that they are actually tumuli, as they are about the size you'd expect yer tumulus to be, but can't be named as such because they haven't been excavated.

Can anyone shed any light?

Cheers! Again!
G x

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