Stone Circles

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

From Cornwall to Orkney, stone circles are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles. Their history stretches more than 2 millennia, varying from the earlier huge stone circles such as Castlerigg, Avebury and the Ring of Brodgar to the smaller and more regional circles that emerged after c.2,000 BC. Their remains continue to attract great amounts of visitors right up to the present day.

To learn more about these extraordinary prehistoric structures, I'm chatting with Timothy Darvill OBE, a professor from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University and the author of Prehistoric Britain.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Ancients. A new podcast dedicated to all things, well, ancient.
0:07.0	I'm Tristan Hughes, and in each episode I'll be chatting with a world-leading historian
0:12.6	or archaeologist about our distant past. The art, the architecture, the battles, the larger
0:19.7	than life personalities, events that have helped shape the world we live in today. From
0:24.6	Neolithic Britain to the full of Rome, from the Assyrians to Alexander the Great.
0:31.6	Today we are going way back. Forget ancient Rome, forget ancient Greece, forget the Mediterranean.
0:39.6	We are going to Neolithic Britain. And in particular we're going to be talking about stone circles.
0:45.6	And for this chat I thought who better to get on the show than a leading authority in stone circles
0:51.6	in Neolithic Britain, in prehistoric Britain Timothy Darville. He has written a book called
0:57.6	Prehistoric Britain. He has appeared on numerous television shows and radio shows. He is excavated
1:03.6	at Stonehenge and he is a fantastic communicator. This was a lot of fun. Enjoy.
1:09.6	Tim, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure.
1:13.6	Now stone circles, this is a fascinating topic as these amazing prehistoric monuments,
1:19.6	seem to stretch the whole length and breadth of the British Isles.
1:23.6	They certainly do. We find them from Orkney all the way down here to Dorset. We find them in Ireland,
1:28.6	of course, and all the way across into the east of England too. They are extraordinary things. And of course,
1:33.6	people are very familiar with them. And people go and visit them and in a sense they're probably more popular now
1:38.6	than they ever were in prehistory. But the extraordinary thing is they are quite a British phenomenon.
1:43.6	There are a few in Northern France, in Western France, in Britain, in that sort of area.
1:47.6	There are a few perhaps up in Scandinavia too, but you can count on one hand.
1:52.6	The majority of them, and there's about a thousand, also altogether, are scattered through the British Isles for not one or more.
1:58.6	Does this suggest that the communities in prehistoric Britain had these cultural links,
	...

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