Berrybrae

Recumbent Stone Circle - Aberdeenshire

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ What's New ] [ England ] [ Ireland ] [ Wales ] [ Europe ] [ Methods ] [ Us ]

		Photo Gallery
		Panoramas
		Infrared

Berrybrae is a circle that has been sorely used in the past. Carbon dating reveals that around 1760BC the circle stones were toppled and some of them smashed, the internal ring-cairn was ripped up, and the stones used to form a crude wall around the circle circumference, burying the smaller fallen circle stones. This wall is still visible in the foreground of the photo above. Thousands of years later the circle was damaged again, this time by modern treasure seekers digging pits into its interior. 
The circle was built on a site leveled by the formation of a platform, it is estimated that there were originally nine height graded circle stones plus the recumbent. Today, the recumbent, the western flanker, and three other stones stand, but it seems likely that two of these were re-erected during Aubrey Burl’s excavation of the site in 1975-8. The basalt recumbent has an unusual "hammerhead" shape with a central hump which is aligned on the minor southern moonset, it stands on the short axis of the 14.6 x 12.6m ellipse with a cobbled area containing quartz fragments built in front of it.