Calanais Standing Stones
The Calanais Standing Stones on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides are among the most important Neolithic monuments in Britain, a complex of standing stones arranged in a cruciform pattern with a central stone circle that dates from approximately 2900 to 2600 BC and represents one of the most ambitious ritual monument projects undertaken in prehistoric Scotland. The site predates Stonehenge in its principal phase of construction and is comparable to the Avebury complex in its ambition if not in its scale, and the quality of its preservation in a remote island setting gives it an atmosphere unlike any other prehistoric monument in Britain.
The main stone circle at Calanais consists of thirteen standing stones arranged around a central monolith of exceptional height, from which four avenues of stones radiate outward to create the cruciform plan visible from above. The stones are of Lewisian gneiss, some of the oldest rock on earth at approximately three billion years old, giving the monument a geological antiquity that adds to its already considerable age as a Neolithic structure. The weathered forms of the gneiss stones, their surfaces etched and patterned by millennia of exposure to the Atlantic weather of the Outer Hebrides, have an organic quality quite different from the smoother dressed sarsens of Stonehenge.
The astronomical alignments of the stones have been studied extensively, and the monument appears to have been laid out with awareness of lunar cycle events, particularly the significant lunar standstill that occurs approximately every eighteen years when the full moon appears to skim along the horizon in this latitude. The relationship between the monument's orientation and the sacred landscape of the Lewis coastline, including the hill across the loch that appears from certain viewpoints to resemble a sleeping figure known as the Cailleach, has been interpreted as evidence of a cosmological landscape design of considerable sophistication.
The Calanais Visitor Centre nearby provides excellent contextual information about the monument and the archaeology of Lewis.