Note 895 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

See Journ. Anthr. Inst., xi, 1882, pp. 3-7, 117-22; xv, 1886, pp. 471-81; xx, 1891, p. 285; xxx, 1900, p. 70; Archaeol. Journal, xlix, 1892, pp. 139, 146; Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornwall, xiii, 1895, pp. 111-2; and Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxiv, 1900, p. 196. Mr. A. L. Lewis, the principal advocate of the solar temple theory, seems to be satisfied with almost any kind of orientation. Thus he tells us that of twenty-one circles which he observed in Southern Britain nineteen ‘had a special reference to the north-east’, that is to the midsummer sunrise: but he maintains that a ‘line due east through the Stannon and Fernacre circles to Brown Willy evidently was meant to indicate the equinoctial sunrise’; and in another case he insists that the object pointed at was the pole star.

Mr. G. F. Tregelles (Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall, i, 404-5), after making careful investigations with his compass in Cornwall, has arrived at results ‘mainly negative’, and concludes that ‘there is not apparently such evidence of orientation as would satisfy a critical observer’.

Mr. W. C. Lukis, on the other hand (Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit. Isles,—Cornwall, p. vi), remarking that circles sometimes occur in groups, asks, ‘if they were temples ... why should the worshippers have been divided into so many different congregations?’ As it is not contended that all circles were solar temples, this argument would obviously apply only to those particular instances; and even with this limitation it is inconclusive. Each circle was probably erected in honour of some one chieftain; and it remains possible that sun-worship may have been practised by his clan. We can hardly suppose that the erection of circles was supervised by a central hierarchy who aimed at economizing labour! See p. 479, infra.