Archaeology - Arceòlais

Callanish, Isle of Lewis - Calanais, Eilean Leòdhais by Scott Hatton

During the last glaciation the sky sucked up the sea, whose waters fell as snow.

Scotland was covered by an ice mass. Ocean levels dropped well below those of today, revealing land which was below water.

After 13,500 BC, the offshore plains of west Lewis were deluged as the world warmed up.

Through all the time people have lived on Lewis the sea has been slowly rising. Even 3500 years ago when these Bronze Age walls were built, there was dry land with pastures, arable fields and birch, willow, rowan and hazel woods where now the tide ebbs and flows in the inlets of Loch Roag.

The first arable fields around Calanais were cultivated before 4000BC. Barley was probably the main crop. Farming on the rigs (narrow earthen ridges created for seed beds) under the Standing Stones probably started many centuries later. Ten to twenty generations before the Standing Stones were set up, the rigs were abandoned and covered by grass and heather, while birches spread over the fields in the valleys around.

Around 3000 BC, great changes were taking place throughout Britain. It was the beginning of the end of the building of chambered tombs, although paradoxically some of the finest were created around that time. As new ideas spread, earthen enclosures with massive banks and ditches were laboriously constructed, and timber and tall stone circles were set up inside them. The people lived in small settlements containing several houses. Some kind of light structure was at this time built at the eastern part of the Calanais site which was to be surrounded by the ring.

Around 2600 to 2500 BC, stock farming became more important locally. One of the mysteries of Calanais is whether the small chambered cairn inside the ring was built at the heart of a flourishing agricultural community, or on marginal pastures at a time when the focus of settlement had moved away.

The Calanais stone ring is not a true circle, and it is not certain how it was laid out. It is symmetrical, set along a line running true east-west through the centre of the huge central stone. The western half of the ring is a true semi-circle, but the eastern half is flattened, as if the ring faced the spring sunrise. The southern row runs nearly due south towards the natural outcrop called Cnoc an Tursa. However, the south row is not really straight and the stones of the ring are not precisely on any neat geometrical figure. The sense we impose on them is a modern sense, not necessarily a rediscovery of ancient meaning.

The eastern row consists of five stones. It is crooked but it points generally somewhat north of due east. The western row does seem straighter. By chance it points pretty accurately along the Ordnance Survey gridlines plotted on modern maps, which should warn us not to make too much of seemingly significant alignments.

The avenue is broader in the north, narrowing as it approaches the circle. Some stones have been lost and the traces of agricultural lazy beds north of the modern track suggest they were uprooted during agriculture. Its east side is nearly straight. The west side has a kink in it: the three stones nearest the circle form a row pointing to the central monolith, while the rest are roughly parallel to the eastern side. Perhaps the avenue was used for ceremonial approaches to the circle, but it may have had a different purpose, related to the movements of the moon.

Inside the stone ring is a small chambered tomb. Just to the east are traces of a later structure. There are 11 other satellite sites situated some kilometres from Calanais, containing more stones.