Cheers, I will give this a listen when I get the chance.
Archaeological evdience for walking direction around circles is intruiging, I can't think what that could possibly be.
I'm very wary of those kind of statements, I must admit. It's not a circle, obviously, but I remember the Gaffney suggestion about the cursus 'procession' at SH :
“It now seems likely that other ceremonial monuments in the surrounding landscape were directly articulated with rituals at Stonehenge. It is possible that processions within the Cursus moved from the eastern pit at sunrise, continuing eastwards along the Cursus and, following the path of the sun overhead, and perhaps back to the west, reaching the western pit at sunset to mark the longest day of the year. Observers of the ceremony would have been positioned at the Heel Stone, of which the two pits are aligned.”
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2011/11/25Nov-Discoveries-provide-evidence-of-a-celestial-procession-at-Stonehenge.aspx
Seems extremely unlikely to me for a number of reasons, not least for the snail-like speed it would entail.
Also when we visit a monument today we seem to have a compulsion to walk around it, regardless of what kind of site it is, be it a circle, hillfort, whatever, because, I think, we want to see it all. Or know that we've seen everything there is to see there. I wonder if walking 'around' something, in that sense, is a fairly modern idea? I don't know.
When I try to imagine the neolithic goings-on at a place like Avebury, I personally never think of people proceeding around the circle in that sense. But then again I do think of them walking the avenues.. But perhaps they are more obviously 'directional'? I think i'm in danger of getting lost in a sea of unanswerable questions and half-constrcuted thoughts! I will stop there.
Will def give the program a listen anyway.
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