Doll Tor
Doll Tor
Main page
1702031

Doll Tor

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Doll Tor

Doll Tor is a stone circle just west of Stanton Moor, near the village of Birchover, Derbyshire in the English East Midlands. Doll Tor is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circles' builders.

With a diameter of 7 metres (23 ft), Doll Tor consists of six upright main stones arranged in a circle. Drystone walling consisting of smaller, flat stones was packed between these orthostats. A stone cairn had been added to the east of the circle, perhaps in a second phase of construction. Excavation has revealed that the cremated human remains of several adults and children were buried both within the circle and around the cairn. These remains were often though not always placed in ceramic urns, and were sometimes deposited alongside other material such as flint tools, small pieces of bronze, and faience beads.

The antiquarian Thomas Bateman excavated at the site in 1852, and J. P. Heathcote conducted a second excavation between 1931 and 1933. By the early 21st century, the site was being used for ritual activity by modern Pagans. Unknown persons damaged the site in 1993 and 2020 by moving various stones around; they were subsequently returned to their original locations.

Doll Tor stands on the western flank of Stanton Moor, half a mile north of the village of Birchover in Derbyshire. It is near a range of other prehistoric remains, including features associated with both agricultural and ritual activity. The archaeologist Aubrey Burl described the area of Stanton Moor as "a prehistoric necropolis of cairns, ring-cairns, standing stones and stone circles". Doll Tor is for instance 230 metres (250 yd) south-west of the Andle Stone and overlooks the Harthill Moor Stone Circle. In 2005, Burl noted that the site was comparatively easy to visit, although as of 2020 it was not open to the public. The stone circle is a Scheduled Monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

While the transition from the Early Neolithic to the Late Neolithic in the fourth and third millennia BCE saw much economic and technological continuity, there was a considerable change in the style of monuments erected, particularly in what is now southern and eastern England. By 3000 BCE, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses that had predominated in the Early Neolithic were no longer built, and had been replaced by circular monuments of various kinds. These include earthen henges, timber circles, and stone circles. Stone circles exist in most areas of Britain where stone is available, with the exception of the island's south-eastern corner. They are most densely concentrated in south-western Britain and on the north-eastern horn of Scotland, near Aberdeen. The tradition of their construction may have lasted 2,400 years, from 3300 to 900 BCE, the major phase of building taking place between 3000 and 1300 BCE.

These stone circles typically show very little evidence of human visitation during the period immediately following their creation. The historian Ronald Hutton noted that this suggests that they were not sites used for rituals that left archaeologically visible evidence, but may have been deliberately left as "silent and empty monuments". The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson argues that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead, and wood with the living. Other archaeologists have proposed that the stone might not represent ancestors, but rather other supernatural entities, such as deities.

Across eastern Britain—including the East Midlands—stone circles are far less common than in the west of the island, possibly because of the general scarcity of naturally occurring stone here. There is much evidence for timber circles and earthen henges in the east, suggesting that these might have been more common than their stone counterparts. In the area of modern Derbyshire, there are five or six known stone circles although the remains of many ring-cairns, a different style of prehistoric monument, are also common and can look much like the stone rings. Stylistically, those found in this county are similar to those found in Yorkshire. Within the Peak District, nine was frequently favoured as the number of stones used in a circle. The only large stone circles in the Peak are Arbor Low and The Bull Ring, both monuments which combine a stone circle with an earthen henge and which are located on the sandstone layers. There are also a few smaller stone circles, such as Doll Tor and the Nine Stones Close, that are close to the limestone edge.

The date of Doll Tor's construction remains unknown, although archaeologists have referred to it as Bronze Age. At least two phases of construction have been identified.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.