The Kingston Russell ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3,300 and 900 BCE.

The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that they were likely religious sites, with the stones perhaps having supernatural associations for those who built the circles.

A number of these circles were built in the area around modern Dorset, typically being constructed from sarsen stone and being smaller than those found elsewhere.

Positioned at the national grid reference 35770878,[1] Kingston Russell Stone Circle is located on a chalk ridge that is west of Portesham,[2] overlooking Abbotsbury and the sea.

[7] By 3000 BCE, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses which had predominated in the Early Neolithic had ceased being built, and were instead replaced by circular monuments of various kinds.

[12] The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggested that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead and wood with the living.

[12] The area of modern Dorset has only a "thin scatter" of stone circles,[14] with nine possible examples known within its boundaries.

[15] The archaeologist John Gale described these as "a small but significant group" of such monuments,[15] and all are located within five miles (eight kilometres) of the sea.

[25] It is also possible that the stone circles were linked to a number of earthen henges erected in Dorset around the same period.

Influenced by the ideas of fellow antiquarian William Stukeley, Hutchins described the Kingston Russell ring as a "druidical circle", thereby attributing its creation to the Iron Age druids.