Timber circle

In archaeology, timber circles are rings of upright wooden posts, built mainly by ancient peoples in the British Isles and North America.

The only excavated examples of timber circles that stood alone from other features are Seahenge and Arminghall in Norfolk and the early phases of The Sanctuary in Wiltshire.

Animal bone and domestic waste found at many timber circle sites implies some form of temporary habitation and seasonal feasting.

Timber circles have a long history among Native American societies; their use stretches back for thousands of years and continues into the present day.

[3] An early example of a timber circle witnessed by Europeans was recorded by watercolor artist John White in July 1585 when he visited the Algonquian village of Secotan in North Carolina.

White was the artist-illustrator and mapmaker for the Roanoke Colony expedition sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to begin the first attempts at British colonization of the Americas.

[4] White's works represent the sole-surviving visual record of the native inhabitants of the Americas as encountered by England's first colonizers on the Atlantic seaboard.

Harriot noted that many of the participants had come from surrounding villages and that "every man attyred in the most strange fashion they can devise havinge certayne marks on the backs to declare of what place they bee."

[10] A notable example was found by archaeologist William S. Webb during the excavations of the Mount Horeb Site 1 in Fayette County, Kentucky in 1939.

[16] In September 2005 archaeologist Frank Cowan conducted excavations at the smaller circular enclosure at the Stubbs Earthworks in Warren County, Ohio; discovering a timber circle 240 feet (73 m) in diameter and composed of 172 large posts.

[17] The existence of the series of woodhenges at Cahokia was discovered during salvage archaeology undertaken by Dr. Warren Wittry in the early 1960s in preparation for a proposed highway interchange.

[20] The Illinois State Park system oversees the Cahokia site and hosts public sunrise observations at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices.

[21][22][23] Archaeologist Marvin Fowler has speculated that the woodhenges also served as “aligners” and that there may have been as many as 3 more in other strategic locations around the city of Cahokia, built to triangulate and lay out construction projects.