Tomnaverie stone circle
The identifying feature is that the largest stone (the recumbent) is always laid horizontally, with its long axis generally aligned with the perimeter of the ring between the south and southwest.
[7] This recumbent stone circle is situated at the top of a small hill about 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) south of Tarland in Aberdeenshire.
The area, called the Howe of Cromar,[n 1] is surrounded by hills and mountains, most notably Lochnagar about 30 kilometres (19 mi) to the southwest, and Morven and Clachnaben.
In the southwest, rather than continuing as a rough circle, the kerb turns outwards so as to meet the sides of the recumbent setting.
In 1792 the First Statistical Account of Scotland reported: About a mile and a half west of the manor is to be seen the remains of a Druidical temple.
The place is called Tamnaverie which signifies the Hill of Worship; but there is nothing to be seen but a few large stones, some of them standing upright, others fallen down, without any appearance of figures or inscription.In 1852 John Stuart wrote of "two circles of large erect stones", which puzzled Frederick Coles in 1905 who was not sure whether this meant two separate circles or one monument of two concentric rings.
Coles discovered the circle smothered in broom shrubbery and with a quarry encroaching to within a metre (3 feet) of one of the standing stones.
The excavation showed that the hilltop had first been used for pyres and eventually this created a mound of burnt residues, including cremated human bones.
[33] In the area of the central cairn the stones Coles thought were an inner kerb turned out to be merely incidental rocks cleared from the fields.
[34] The cairn was indeed in the shape of a hollow ring with a central court left clear of stones but no inner kerb had been needed because the slope to the top of the hill held the boulders in place.
Where the ground was sloping steeply down to the southwest, terraces of turf and soil had been created, supported by boulders, to allow the cairn, faced on its perimeter with the kerb, to extend outwards in this direction in preparation for positioning the recumbent setting.
Also, fragments of late Bronze Age plain pottery and worked stones, including six flint blades, were unearthed.
The recumbent had been laid in a shallow hollow, supported with chock stones, and the orthostats had been lowered into sockets dug into the platform.
[37] After the construction of the platform, cairn and stone circle, little seems to have happened until around 1000 BC from when there is again evidence of cremated bone fragments.
[15][38] The sockets of four of the missing uprights were found by the excavation – at the southeast (5),[n 10] east-northeast (8), north-northwest (12), and under a fallen slab at the northeast (9).
[42] When viewed from across the circle the recumbent, now restored to its original position, confirms Burl and Ruggles’ observation that the alignment points to the mountain Lochnagar.
[19] It is also the position where the full moon sets at midsummer at a time of minor lunar standstill though by 2013 Bradley was doubting the significance of this.
Because it had previously been thought the central cairns had been built after, maybe long after, the circle there would have been a space inside for people to congregate.
Following Bradley's discovery that in this case, and others, the cairn predated the circle, it is now according to Ruggles "difficult, if not impossible, to observe the moon in the way we have described".
[50] There remains the idea that the alignment with Lochnagar on the far horizon was intentional but Henty remarks that the recumbent gets in the way of a view of the mountain from the opposite side of the circle.
