Stone circles and the Pole Star on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall

ABSTRACT

The wide distribution of later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age stone circles in Britain and Ireland suggests cultural commonality. However, on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, most circles share an intriguing local attribute, being positioned so that the most visually dominant hill, usually tor-topped or cairn-topped, is to their north. It is suggested that this was done to ensure that the Pole Star (then Thuban) appeared constantly above the northern tor. At The Hurlers, three circles may have been built over a period of several hundred years to accommodate slight shifts in Thuban’s position. The Pole Star’s constancy may not have impressed the prehistoric mind so much as the perception that the whole cosmos rotated around the star above their own local tor, with the revolving stars, including the Milky Way galaxy, appearing to enter one side of the tor only to reappear a little later on the other. Given the possible role of tors in excarnation, people may have regarded the re-emerging stars as human souls leaving the place of the dead. It is suggested that builders of stone circles determined the location of their religious experience by reference to the Pole Star.

KEYWORDS:

• Stone circles
• The Hurlers
• Pole Star
• precessional cycle
• Cornwall

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to John Barnatt and Carolyn Kennett for reading and making helpfully critical comments on a draft of this paper.

The astronomy planetarium software CyberSky 5.1.2 was used to model the positions of Thuban from The Hurlers stone circles as discussed throughout the text (http://www.cybersky.com/ © 1995–2021 Stephen Michael Schimpf. All rights reserved).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.