merry maidens and stone rings.
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these stone rings seem closely related to the round houses which are contemporary with them. the tradition of circular monuments is long standing, from henges to stone circles, round barrows to round houses and that they share the same ground plans suggest an overarching cosmology. ‘the geometric form of the circle provided a template for understanding the world’ (bradley 1998). that on ‘bodmin moor and in west penwith and elsewhere we find circles within circles within circles, in the form of rings of cairns on the hills, stone circles, circular houses, and circular post rings within these houses. (bradley 1998). here again, form and content are intimately related and provide a further interdependence between the house as a practical entity and its symbolic value, its importance in the material provision of life and in which daily ritual becomes imbedded.
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