<< Books/Products >> Megalithic Portal Winter Solstice Competiton: Recumbent Stone Circles ebook
Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 14 December 2017 Page Views: 2676
Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: Scotland County: Aberdeenshire Type: Stone CircleInternal Links:
Competition to win the Great Crowns of Stone ebook plus other great prizes. This exemplary book on Aberdeenshire's Recumbent Stone Circles has been converted and re-released as an Apple ebook so to win a copy Adam Welfare from Historic Environment Scotland has kindly set 25 cryptic competition questions to set you puzzling, thinking and researching over the Christmas break.
The Recumbent Stone Circles found mainly in Aberdeenshire are a fascinating type of site and all these questions relate to recumbent stone circles (RSC).
Megalithic Portal RSC Competition Questions:
Q1. Who was the first to refer in print to the monuments we now know as recumbent stone circles?Q2. What fellowship, commemorating Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee and administered by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, supported Frederick Coles’ during his research on the stone circles in North-East Scotland?
Q3. To which recumbent stone circle did the description a ‘great crown of stone’ initially refer?
Q4. Can you name the wife of a famous English occultist (and writer of popular books on sexology), who participated in the first season of excavation at Old Keig, under the direction of V. Gordon Childe, in 1932?
Q5. The Master of Sempill (William Forbes-Sempill, 19th Lord Sempill) can lay claim to having taken the first aerial photographs specifically of an RSC during the second season of V. Gordon Childe’s excavations at Old Keig. For what is Sempill now infamous?
Q6. Who was the well-known English archaeologist who established the sequence of construction at the recumbent stone circle of Tomnaverie?
Q7. What is the connection between RSCs and Diana, Princess of Wales’?
Q8. ‘Great Crowns of Stone’ was published by RCAHMS in 2011, which was subsequently folded into a new organisation. What is the name of this new organisation?
Q9. What two stratified deposits pertaining to its origins are commonly found at the heart of an RSC when excavated?
Q10. How did Christian Maclagan, a formidable late Victorian Lady Archaeologist from Stirling, interpret RSCs?
Q11. Alexander Thom, Aubrey Burl, and Clive Ruggles all believe RSCs to have been oriented towards which celestial object?
Q12. What mineral, with symbolic associations, is a common inclusion in the recumbent setting – the term used to describe the recumbent stone and the two flankers either side?
Q13. On what album do Julian Cope’s tracks, ‘Sunhoney’ and ‘Tyrebagger’ appear?
Q14. John Aubrey, the author of ‘Brief Lives’, believed stone circles to be of pre-Roman origin, but in order to substantiate this notion he required a correspondent to confirm that they existed in the north of Scotland – well beyond Roman rule. Who was this correspondent?
Q15. Only one RSC seems to have weathered the centuries with all its ring-stones upstanding. Which is this?
Q16. Where is there an outlying pillar of solid white quartz 3.2m high, calling attention to the place where a recumbent stone circle is situated?
Q17. What was the term that the local inhabitants used for centuries when referring to the recumbent stone?
Q18. The architecture of RSCs is highly symbolic. What did their builders envisage the recumbent stone to represent?
Q19. What is the name of the mountain that dominates central Aberdeenshire, but towards which not a single RSC is orientated?
Q20. What was the name of the archaeologist (later associated with the excavation and restoration of Avebury), who spent his early adulthood examining RSCs and was angry at what he took to be the state’s negligence?
Q21. How old was the Right Reverend George Forrest Browne, Anglican Bishop of Stepney, when his work describing many recumbent stone circles was published?
Q22. Which Scottish author of a trilogy - the first volume of which was published in 1932 and was once voted ‘the best Scottish book of all time’ – was bought up amongst the recumbent stone circles of the Mearns and whose fictional stone circle on the hill above Blawearie recalled both them and stability?
Q23. Who sought the help of the charity Earthwatch when studying RSCs?
Q24. Where is there a recumbent stone that has been split into two halves by natural agencies?
Q25. Where in the British Isles, outside North East Scotland, were large numbers of recumbent stone circles once identified?
Some of the above questions are deliberately cryptic so you do not have to answer all of them, and don't be afraid to have a guess as you will not be penalised for wrong answers.
Please email your answers to andy@megalithic.co.uk Subject: Recumbent Stone Circles Competition
Closing Date 26th December 2017
1st Prize: Two prizes of £15 iTunes gift cards to download the Great Crowns of Stone ebook (with thanks to Adam Welfare)
2nd: Megalithic Portal T shirt
3rd: Books from our shop to the value of £15 (plus post - UK only)
Entry is open to all as only Adam and Andy have the answers and we're not letting on!
The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into
Judges: Adam Welfare and Andy Burnham
More about the Great Crowns of Stone ebook
The iBook/eBook costs £9.99, but as you can't get a £10 token we have got a £15 token so you'll be able to get some extra bits as well.The iBook combines the printed volume with the second part which was issued as a pdf into a 608 page whole [Phew! - MegP Ed]. So this is closer to how the work was originally conceived before the problem of affordability was addressed, which led to the printed book having to be reduced in size. So it's nice to have it in a reunited form and it proved more challenging than anticipated to convert it to an ebook.
Well worth it of course as there are some positive advantages to the digital format: firstly, it allowed me to address some minor errors - so it represents a 'corrected' edition; and the second benefit is that you are now able to search the contents via the hotlinks provided, or indeed, by any word you enter into the search box.
If a hotlink in the text is clicked/touched on, you are taken immediately to the site's detailed entry in the gazetteer or appendix; and once there, if the heading in bold is clicked, you are sent over to the Canmore web resource, where more pics and further info may be found.
Some of this is new stuff: there is, for instance, a more complete plan of Loanhead of Daviot, in as much as this now shows all the kerbstones that were introduced to the north side of the cairn when the site was restored for display. At the time of the original survey, I had no real means of distinguishing these from the originals excavated by Kilbride-Jones so I had to leave them out.
Once mastered, the iBook is fun to use and its great to be able to bounce about the book, as well as in and out of Canmore.
The original printed volume is out of print and very expensive, so the digital version makes the work available again to the enthusiast, student, or indeed anyone else possessing an Apple device, at a fraction of the original cost; and that can only be good.
Available on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac.
Print Length: 600 Pages
Requirements: To view this book, you must have an iOS device with iBooks 1.2 or later and iOS 4.2 or later, or a Mac with iBooks 1.0 or later and OS X 10.9 or later.
Download link to Great Crowns of Stone ebook available only on iTunes.
Read my review of the printed book here Order a copy from Amazon.co.uk (not cheap!)
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