NEWSLETTER 136 October 2014 Registered Charity No
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Registered Charity No. 105565 NEWSLETTER 136 October 2014 Registered Charity No. 1055654 Carwynnen Quoit complete again. Alan Endacott captured the sunset after its re-erection on the Summer Solstice 2014. The quoit fell in 1842 and was restored by workers on the Pendarves estate. It fell again in 1966 and remained under a shabby stonepile until The Sustainable Trust bought the field in 2009 with finance from Heritage Lottery Fund, Cornwall Heritage Trust, CAS and other donors. A survey of the stone pile identified the 3 supporters and the capstone. Test pits in July 2012 contributed to plans by the archaeologists, Jacky Nowakowski and James Gossip of CAU, for the “Big Dig” in September 2012. They located the sockets for the uprights. In October 2013 one upright was erected and joined by the others in May 2014. Over 500 people witnessed the capstone being lowered onto the fingers of its three supporters. They celebrated with music and dancing, a camp and a barbecue. The field is open to the public; it is best to park by Treslothan Church and walk over footpaths to the field. (TR14 9LR SW6501437213) Once the site of a Gorsedh Kernow and the emblem of Camborne Rugby Club, it is proving to be a great draw for local walkers and people seeking peace and quiet. The Sustainable Trust, under the direction of Pip Richards, has held exhibitions and open days, created educational packs and commissioned poetry and music. A full record of the excavations and community events can be seen on the website www.giantsquoit.org Diggers will congregate again on 28th Sept to lay a pavement of fist sized stones around the quoit to imitate the one buried below. This was an apparently unique feature of the site, but few quoits have been excavated so carefully. SOLAR AND LUNAR ALIGNMENTS AT megalithic builders may well have incorporated this in their CORNISH PREHISTORIC SITES monuments. by Cheryl Straffon Part 2 – The Lunar Cycle Part 1 of this article in the previous Newsletter looked at the solar cycle as observed by the megalithic builders, and incorporated into the design of their monuments, most notably at the winter and summer solstices and the autumn and spring equinoxes. However, it seems that it was not only the earth’s orbit around the sun that interested them, but also the cycle of the moon as seen from the earth. This is a lot more complicated than the orbit of the earth around the sun, but it appears that the megalithic builders were not only aware of it but could also calculate it (presumably by observation spread over several decades). Firstly, the slightly technical stuff! The moon takes about 27 In the 1st century BC, Diodorus Siculus, a Greek days (27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and 11.6 seconds to be historian, wrote about a “spherical temple” in Britain where “the exact) to orbit the earth as an ellipse and return to its original moon dances continuously the night through from the vernal position. However, while it is doing this, the earth is also equinox to the rising of the Pleiades”. It is thought that he was moving around the sun, so in fact in takes about 29.5 days (29 referring to the Callanish stone circle on the Isle of Lewis in the days, 12 hours, 43 minutes and 11.6 seconds) to complete a Hebrides, and if so, his description was remarkably accurate. full lunar month, measured as the time that it takes to pass The stone avenue at the site was directed towards the moonset through a complete cycle of its phases (i.e from new moon to at its southerly extreme; the western row was oriented on the new moon). And just as the sun rises and sets in a slightly equinoxical sunset; and the eastern row could have been different place day by day (rising from NE in the summer to SE aligned on the Pleiades around 1550 BC. So at this site, there in the winter, and setting from NW in the summer to SW in the are sun, moon and stellar alignments. Diodorus Siculus also winter) so the moon does the same, though it takes a lunar said: “They say that the Moon, as viewed from this month to do what the sun does in a solar year. So day by day it island, appears to be but a little distance from the rises and sets in a slightly different position (and at a slightly Earth and to have upon it prominences like those of different time) until it completes a lunar month. However, there the Earth, which are visible to the eye. The account is a greater cycle than this, during which, lunar-month on lunar- is also given that the God visits the island every month, the moon rises and sets at an ever-increasing northerly nineteen years, the period in which the return of the and southerly position in the sky (known as the major stars to the same place in the heavens is standstill), before returning to a smaller easterly and westerly accomplished”, which seems to show some knowledge arc (known as the minor standstill). This cycle takes 9.3 years of the low moon at the major lunar standstill, and the to move from major standstill to minor standstill and 9.3 years 18.61 years (or 19 to the nearest whole number) of the to move back from minor standstill to major standstill, thus lunar cycle. completing a lunar cycle of 18.61 years. At the extreme N-S and E-W points in that cycle, it appears to be standing still as it There are other sites too, that seem to be deliberately changes direction, which gives it the name ‘lunar standstill’ a constructed to view the moon at the major and minor term coined by Alexander Thom1; and it is that standstill that standstills. In the NE of Scotland (Aberdeenshire) there the prehistoric people may have known about and incorporated are a number of recumbent stone circles, the most in their monuments. The last major lunar standstill was in June distinctive feature of which are two tall upright stones 2006 and the next one will be in April 2025, and the next minor called flankers with a recumbent stone placed between. standstill is in October 2015. The diagram below2 illustrates the This creates a viewing frame in which the rising or principle from a central point that represents an observer on the setting moon is ‘captured’ during a standstill year. ground. Notable examples (that all have a major southern moonset except where indicated) include: Aikey Brae, In a major standstill year the moon rises at its furthest northerly Balquhain (major southern moonrise & moonset), Castle and southerly points so it will rise and set at a place only seen Fraser, Easter Aquorthies, (below) once every 18.61 years. In addition, within a lunar month in a lunar standstill year it will appear to an observer on the ground to reach an extremely high point in the sky (high moon), and two weeks later will appear to reach a very low point in the sky, just skimming the horizon (low moon). Visually, this would have been significant to an observer on the ground, and the 1 Thom, Alexander Megalithic lunar observatories [OUP, 1971] 2 (from) Wood, John Edwin Sun, moon and standing stones [OUP, 1978] Sunhoney, (minor southern moonset), Old Keig and megalithic builders in Scotland. The effects of the lunar Loanhead of Daviot. Many of the recumbent stones standstill increase the further north you go, so that at the and/or flankers in these circles are decorated with cup latitude of Scotland, the moon moves to a much greater marks (for example Arnhill, Balquhain and Sunhoney) northerly and southerly extreme, whereas the further south you which Aubrey Burl suggested1 were symbolic of their come, it is less so. However, we are only talking a matter of a orientation to the moon. However, Clive Ruggles few degrees, so it may simply be that archaeologists further subsequently argued that the Scottish recumbents were south are not trained to look for such phenonema. oriented in a more general way to frame the annual midsummer full moon.2 In Cornwall, there are no recumbent stone circles, but many circles in West Penwith have or had nineteen stones (Merry Maidens, Boscawen-ûn, Tregeseal, and probably the Mên-an- Tol circle), so it is at least possible that the builders were symbolising the lunar cycle by the number of stones chosen. They may also have been aware of the Metonic Cycle, whereby the relative positions of the sun and the moon take exactly 19 years to return to their original place in the skies. A number of major lunar standstill alignments from the Nine Maidens (Boskednan) stone circle to outlying features have also been claimed.3 (photo below) The Stripple Stones on Bodmin Moor. Nevertheless, there have been a few interesting possibilities suggested for Cornish sites. In 1993 the CAU (HES) surveyed the Mên-an-Tol5 and concluded that there was a strong possibility that the monument had originally been a stone circle and that the holed stone had originally stood at right angles to where it now stands. Moon over the Nine Maidens, Boskednan. And on Bodmin Moor a possible alignment has been suggested for the Stripple Stones [photo 3] circle, which has an upright pillar located just off centre, with some enigmatic post holes nearby. Burl makes the suggestion4, which he admits is “exotic”, that the central stone could have acted as a backsight from which an observer looking towards the sides of the three apses of the circle would have seen the major northern moonrise in the NNE.