The purpose of such rings is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
[1] The placement of an inhumation burial near the centre stone has also been found at other monuments in the British Isles, such as at the Longstone Rath henge in County Kildare, Ireland.
[3] By 3000 BCE, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses which had predominated in the Early Neolithic were no longer built, and had been replaced by circular monuments of various kinds.
[6] These stone circles typically show very little evidence of human visitation during the period immediately following their creation.
[8] The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggests that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead, and wood with the living.