Balbirnie Stone Circle
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Balbirnie Stone Circle
Balbirnie Stone Circle is an archaeological site, a stone circle on the north-eastern edge of Glenrothes, in Fife, Scotland. The site was in use from the late Neolithic period to the late second millennium BC. The prehistoric ceremonial complex of Balfarg is nearby; the scheduling for Balfarg states that "the Balfarg complex, together with the nearby stone circle at Balbirnie and other sites in their vicinity, form one of the most important groups of monuments of Neolithic and Bronze Age date in eastern Scotland.""Balfarg Farmhouse, henge & standing stones"
Historic Environment Scotland. Retrieved 17 February 2022.


Description

The stone circle was originally at . The site was excavated in 1970–1971 by Graham Ritchie, before planned widening of the

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Glenrothes
Glenrothes (; , ; sco, Glenrothes; gd, Gleann Rathais) is a town situated in the heart of Fife, in east-central Scotland. It is about north of Edinburgh and south of Dundee. The town had a population of 39,277 in the 2011 census, making it the third largest settlement in Fife and the 18th most populous settlement in Scotland. The name Glenrothes comes from its historical link with the Earl of Rothes, who owned much of the land on which the new town has been built; ''Glen'' (Scottish for valley) was added to the name to avoid confusion with Rothes in Moray and in recognition that the town lies in a river valley. The motto of Glenrothes is , meaning "From the earth strength", which dates back to the founding of the town. Planned in the late 1940s as one of Scotland's first post-second world war new towns, its original purpose was to house miners who were to work at a newly established coal mine, the Rothes Colliery. After the mine closed, the town developed as an importa ...
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Stone Circle
A stone circle is a ring of standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being built from 3000 BC. The best known examples include those at the henge monument at Avebury, the Rollright Stones, and elements within the ring of standing stones at Stonehenge. Scattered examples exist from other parts of Europe. Later, during the Iron Age, stone circles were built in southern Scandinavia. Stone circles are usually grouped in terms of the shape and size of the stones, the span of their radius, and their population within the local area. Although many theories have been advanced to explain their use, usually related to providing a setting for ceremony or ritual, no consensus exists among archaeologists regarding their intended function. Their construction often involved considerable communal effort, including specialist tasks such as planning, quar ...
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Neolithic British Isles
The Neolithic British Isles refers to the period of British, Irish and Manx history that spanned 4000 to 2,500 BCE. The final part of the Stone Age in the British Isles, it was a part of the greater Neolithic, or "New Stone Age", across Europe. It was preceded by the Mesolithic and followed by the Bronze Age. During the Mesolithic period, the inhabitants of the British Isles had been hunter-gatherers. Around 4000 BCE, migrants began arriving from Central Europe. Although the earliest indisputably-acknowledged languages spoken in the British Isles belonged to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family, it is not known what language the early farming people spoke. These migrants brought new ideas, leading to a radical transformation of society and landscape that has been called the Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic period in the British Isles was characterised by the adoption of agriculture and sedentary living. To make room for the new farmland, the early agricultural ...
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Bronze Age Britain
Bronze Age Britain is an era of British history that spanned from until . Lasting for approximately 1,700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and was in turn followed by the period of Iron Age Britain. Being categorised as the Bronze Age, it was marked by the use of copper and then bronze by the prehistoric Britons, who used such metals to fashion tools. Great Britain in the Bronze Age also saw the widespread adoption of agriculture. During the British Bronze Age, large megalithic monuments similar to those from the Late Neolithic continued to be constructed or modified, including such sites as Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and Must Farm. That has been described as a time "when elaborate ceremonial practices emerged among some communities of subsistence agriculturalists of western Europe". History Early Bronze Age (EBA), c. 2500–1500 BC There is no clear consensus on the date for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Some sou ...
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Stone Circle
A stone circle is a ring of standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being built from 3000 BC. The best known examples include those at the henge monument at Avebury, the Rollright Stones, and elements within the ring of standing stones at Stonehenge. Scattered examples exist from other parts of Europe. Later, during the Iron Age, stone circles were built in southern Scandinavia. Stone circles are usually grouped in terms of the shape and size of the stones, the span of their radius, and their population within the local area. Although many theories have been advanced to explain their use, usually related to providing a setting for ceremony or ritual, no consensus exists among archaeologists regarding their intended function. Their construction often involved considerable communal effort, including specialist tasks such as planning, quar ...
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Fife
Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i.e. the historic counties of Perthshire and Kinross-shire) and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as ''Fib'', and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. A person from Fife is known as a ''Fifer''. In older documents the county was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire. Fife is Scotland's third largest local authority area by population. It has a resident population of just under 367,000, over a third of whom live in the three principal towns, Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes. The historic town of St Andrews is located on the northeast coast of Fife. It is well known for the University of St Andrews, the most ancient univers ...
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Balfarg
Balfarg is a prehistoric monument complex in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland. It is protected as a scheduled monument. With the development of Glenrothes new town in the latter half of the 20th Century an adjacent residential area was developed around the complex carrying the same name. Balfarg Henge The Balfarg henge, located at , is part of a larger prehistoric ceremonial complex. It contains the remnants of a stone circle which has been partly reconstructed. The Balfarg henge was excavated between 1977 and 1978 by Roger Mercer prior to the development of a new housing estate, work which established that the two extant standing stones were part of a circle that stood within the henge. The two surviving specimens lined the north-west oriented entrance to the henge. Within the diameter henge were found broken Neolithic pottery, burnt wood and bone which had been dumped on the site prior to the erection of a wide timber circle of 16 wooden posts. Two especially large portal timbers ...
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A92 Road
The A92 is a major road that runs through Fife, Dundee, Angus, Aberdeenshire, and Aberdeen City in Scotland. From south to north, it runs from Dunfermline to Blackdog, just north of Aberdeen. History The A92's original route in southern Fife is now numbered as the A921. It connects with the M90 junction 1 via Burntisland and Kirkcaldy and links into the Thornton bypass. Plans were drawn up in the 1960s for a new East Fife regional dual carriageway road starting at the M90 at Masterton (Junction 2), which would have mirrored what is now the A921 and B9157 to the Mossgreen area, before heading north-eastward to Chapel Level, connecting up with the Thornton By-pass. The plans were held back until the early 1970s, and were held back further due to the Oil crisis. During the 1970s the Scottish Development Department commissioned a new traffic study which concluded that the A92 should follow the more northern route to provide a better link for Cowdenbeath and Lochgelly before conn ...
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Aubrey Burl
Harry Aubrey Woodruff Burl HonFSA Scot (24 September 1926 – 8 April 2020) was a British archaeologist best known for his studies into megalithic monuments and the nature of prehistoric rituals associated with them. Before retirement he was Principal Lecturer in Archaeology, Hull College, East Riding of Yorkshire. Burl received a volume edited in his honour. He was called by ''The New York Times'', "the leading authority on British stone circles". Burl's work, while considering the astronomical roles of many megalithic monuments, was cautious of embracing the more tenuous claims of archaeoastronomy. In ''Prehistoric Avebury'' Burl proposed that Circles and Henge monuments, far from being astronomical observatories for a class of "astronomer priests" were more likely used for ritualistic practices, connected with death and fertility rites, and ancestor worship, similar to practices observed in other agricultural cultures (in particular the rituals of Native North American Tribes ...
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Cist
A cist ( or ; also kist ; from grc-gre, κίστη, Middle Welsh ''Kist'' or Germanic ''Kiste'') is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead. Examples can be found across Europe and in the Middle East. A cist may have been associated with other monuments, perhaps under a cairn or long barrow. Several cists are sometimes found close together within the same cairn or barrow. Often ornaments have been found within an excavated cist, indicating the wealth or prominence of the interred individual. This old word is preserved in the Nordic languages as "" in Swedish and "" in Danish and Norwegian, where it is the word for a funerary coffin. In English it is related to "cistern".''cistern'' Regional examples ;Sri Lanka * Bellanbedipalassa * Pothana * Ibbankatuwa Megalithic Stones * Udaranchamadama ;England * Bellever Forest, Dartmoor * Hepburn woods, Northumberland ;Estonia * Jõelähtme (Rebala) stone-cist graves, Harju County ;Gu ...
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Cup And Ring Mark
Cup and ring marks or cup marks are a form of prehistoric art found in the Atlantic seaboard of Europe (Ireland, Wales, Northern England, Scotland, France (Brittany), Portugal, and Spain ( Galicia) – and in Mediterranean Europe – Italy (in Alpine valleys and Sardinia), Azerbaijan and Greece (Thessaly and Irakleia (Cyclades)), as well as in Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) and in Switzerland (at Caschenna in Grisons). Similar forms are also found throughout the world including Australia, Gabon, Greece, Hawaii, India ( Daraki-Chattan), Israel, Mexico, Mozambique and the Americas. The oldest known forms are found from the Fertile Crescent to India. They consist of a concave depression, no more than a few centimetres across, pecked into a rock surface and often surrounded by concentric circles also etched into the stone. Sometimes a linear channel called a gutter leads out from the middle. The decoration occurs as a petroglyph on natural boulders and outcrop ...
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Food Vessel
Food vessels are an Early Bronze Age, c. 2400-1500 BC (Needham 1996), pottery type. It is not known what food vessels were used for and they only received their name as antiquarians decided they were not beakers (regarded as drinking-vessels) and so it provided a good contrast. Recently, the concept of the food vessels was questioned by many archaeologists in favour of a concept of two different traditions: the bowl tradition and the vase tradition. Vases are tall vessels with their height being greater than their largest diameter, while bowls are short vessels with their height being less than or equal to their greatest diameter (Gibson 2002, 95). Description Food vessel fabric is coarse and thick and sometimes has elaborate rims in comparison to beakers, which have fine fabrics and simple rims (Gibson & Woods 1997, 158). Food vessels generally have complex decoration, and are of a similar form to other second millennium vessels, such as collared urns and accessory vessels, sugg ...
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