PREHISTORIC ASTRONOMY AND RITUAL (SHIRE)

Stonehenge was not an observatory used by druidical astronomer-priests, but a monument in which the moon and the sun and the dead were joined together. Aubrey Burl explains how people in the British Isles, four thousand or more years ago, identified life and death with the cycle of midwinter and midsummer and with the risings and settings of the sun and moon, explaining why so many megalithic monuments have astronomical sightlines built into them. He describes how astronomical customs developed in the British Isles and unlike other works about 'megalithic astronomy', technical explanations are kept to their simplest, with the emphasis upon the people who built them. Scottish sites include Callanish, Ballochroy and Balquhain.