[Stones] Bodmin Moor Cairns

[Andy Norfolk]

I read O'Brien's book a few years ago. His ideas about who built the 
sites are very strange indeed. His observations on alignments OTOH are 
quite interesting. I spent a while looking again at them and think that 
he was probably right about some of them. However quite a few could be 
the result of chance and it's hard to check this out. It would be 
particularly nice if the cairns on Caradon Hill really did mark 
significant astronomical events from the Hurlers Circles. However, why 
would you need 13 cairns across the top of the hill to mark just one 
date? These cairns (and the others on Bodmin Moor) were built of 
undressed stone and are now ruined and most are not obvious to the naked 
eye now from the Hurlers.

O'Brien didn't claim to have discovered new stone circles. He did look 
at their settings and noted some interesting things, such as the 
relationships of circles to tors. Current thinking in Cornwall is that 
these circles were carefully located in relation to the tors and so that 
they would appear and disappear in the view as they were approached.

Cornwall Archaeological Unit (now Historic Environment Service) carried 
out a detailed survey of the moor a few years back and if you can find a 
copy it would be useful. They are hard to find though.

Cheryl Straffon's Earth Mysteries Guide to Bodmin Moor and North 
Cornwall is a good gazetteer of the sites and gives some information on 
alignments etc. Bormin Moor and its sites have been the subject of 
various articles in her magazine, Meyn Mamvro.

John Barnatt's Prehistoric Cornwall discusses alignments to/from sites 
on Bodmin Moor (and elsewhere), but his views at the time were quite 
cautious.

BTW you should ignore anything O'Brien has to say about the meanings and 
derivations of place-names.

Cheers

Andy N



---
avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
Virus Database (VPS): 0703-2, 16/01/2007
Tested on: 17/01/2007 10:04:27
avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2007 ALWIL Software.
http://www.avast.com