Ring cairns, henges and stone circles

Many ceremonial monuments were constructed during the later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Varied in scale and character, these places held an equally varied significance for the people who participated in acts of construction and observance.

Once again, the evidence is regionally diverse. Although barrows are widely distributed, there is a strong contrast between the limestone and the eastern gritstone uplands.

On the limestone, our evidence takes the form of two massive henge monuments; Arbor Low near Monyash and the Bull Ring at Dove Holes. Both were probably founded during the later Neolithic as places for communal ceremonies, rites of passage and exchange, and it is likely that they continued to be important during the early Bronze Age.

Whether these massive sites reflect the emergence of social hierarchies in the area remains the subject of debate. The simple act of coming together and participating in the building and rebuilding of a henge may have stressed the common links between people drawn from different kin groups. However, as arenas associated with important calendrical and celestial events, as well as with other forms of ritual, henges may well have been powerful instruments for the creation of authority.

Control over the rites and other events that were conducted within henges may have sometimes been an object of competition and an important medium through which some might come to exert a measure of influence over others.

The situation is rather different on the gritstones of the eastern uplands. Here there are no immediate equivalents for the henges and it is more common to find smaller stone circles and ring cairns like the example to the south of Gardom's Edge (D on the Main plan). The patterned relationship of these smaller monuments to cairn field systems throughout the eastern moors suggests that they were built and used by specific communities, probably in the centuries around 2000BC.

Although details vary from one site to another, nearly all comprise a ring of small upright stones set on the inner edge of a roughly circular bank.