Megalithic Portal Reading Room
Twenty-five years of writing sits behind our site pages. A sixteen-part study of how the great
stone circles work, a book about the abandoned uplands of North Wales published thirty articles at a
time, book reviews going back to 2001, and a long-running argument about whether the builders used a
standard unit of measurement. Most of it has not been easy to find for years without a dedicated entry point door.
Abandoned Landscapes of North Wales
The largest single piece of writing on the Portal is a book. Between March and December 2006,
thirty articles by M. M. Robinson worked across the uplands of North Wales, from the Carneddau and
the Berwyn to the Rhinogau, Snowdon, Llanberis and Cadair Idris, following the routeways people used
between them and the archaeology left along the way. There is an editorial foreword, a bibliography,
a note on advice for walkers, and chapters on chronological change from the Mesolithic onward.
Abandoned Landscapes of North Wales: Contents
- Editorial foreword and
Introduction
- The Deep Structures of the Archaeological Landscape
- Chronological change: Mesolithic onward and
16th century onward
- The Carneddau: Introduction,
Western,
Northern,
Eastern,
South East
- World's End and
A Short But Wild Road Through The Hills
- From Corwen to Llangollen
- The Berwyn: Introduction,
Llangynog along the ridge
- The Rhinogau: Introduction,
From Tal y Bont
- Snowdon and
Around the Llanberis territory
- Routeways across the hills: Introduction,
The Druid's Circle trackway,
Bangor to the Severn,
Cadair Idris and the Bronze Age trackway,
From the coast to the Tanat Valley,
The Perfect Line
- Bibliography,
Selected further reading,
Advice on walking
Written by M. M. Robinson, edited and submitted by Tim Prevett.
Great Stone Circles, and How They Work
Between May and December 2005 the late Jack Morris-Eaton (JACKME) published fourteen parts of a
study of stone circle geometry, then returned to it in 2008 with two more. It runs to twenty
articles covering Parts 1 to 16, with several parts split into a and b. It is the longest sustained
piece of writing on the Portal, and it has never been easy to read in order. Here it is in
order:
- Part 1
- Part 2,
Part 3a,
Part 3b
- Part 4,
Part 5a,
Part 5b
- Part 6a,
Part 6b,
Part 6c
- Part 7,
Part 8,
Part 9
- Part 10,
Part 11,
Part 12
- Part 13,
Part 14
- Part 15: Stonehenge Re-visited
- Part 16: Types of Goddess Stone
Alex Hunger's Intrepid Adventures in...
Between 2005 and 2008 Alex Hunger wrote up a dozen journeys for the Portal, from Brittany and
Sardinia to Syria and the Dacian hillforts of Romania. They have been read close to 142,000 times
between them, and they have never appeared together.
- Saint-Just in Brittany, 2005
- In Search of French Megalithic Sites, 2005
- German Stonehunting, 2005
- Roman Illyria, Croatia, 2006
- Continental European Megaliths, 2006
- A Megalithic Tour through Croatia and Bosnia, 2006
- In the Footsteps of Agamemnon, 2006
- The Nuragic Conspiracy: an adventure in Sardinia, 2007
- An adventure in Syria, 2007
- From a Berlin Tragedy to Salvation: the Restoration of the Tell Halaf statues, 2007
- The Day the Sky Fell on the Heads of the Celts, 2007
- The Dacian Hillforts, 2008
More Travels
Others who wrote up a journey rather than a site. The last is from 2025, so this is not only an
archive of people who have stopped writing.
Monuments and objects
Arguments
Not every feature article is a survey. These set out a case and invite you to disagree with it,
which is what the comments underneath them have been doing ever since. Listed by author.
- aluta, Ice Age Columbus, 2005
- Arjessa, The Origins of the Dobunni, the dark-haired people?, 2006
- enorm, The Religious Purpose of the Early Pictish Symbol Stones, 2013
- neolithique02, Jade axeheads, standing stones and the world of the spirits, 2012
- PéturH, Robin Hoods Bower, Wessex placename questions, 2003
- Terence Meaden, Was Tara the Earth Goddess at Avebury?, 2004
- Thorgrim, Britain's Prehistoric Atlantis, 2005
- Thorgrim, The Puddingstone Trail, fact or fantasy?, 2020
- VirtHist, The Cornovii: warriors or show-offs?, 2007
If you enjoy this sort of discussion there is masses more in our Mysteries Forum
Stonehenge and the Heavens' Hinge
Jonathan Morris (JonM) set out his reading of Stonehenge for Portal readers in 2012, introducing what he
calls the Heavens' Hinge. It remains one of the clearest statements of an argument that has since
run to two books, and the reviews of those books sit elsewhere in the archive, so the article and
the responses to it can now be read together.
Did the builders use a standard measure?
One of the oldest questions in the subject, and one the Portal has hosted a genuine exchange on
rather than a single view. In 2016 the contributor writing as Stockdale introduced a proposed unit
for megalithic architecture, alongside a review of the book behind it. Dr Thomas Gough and Peter
Harris took the argument further in 2021, and a reply to the review of their work was published in
2024. Four pieces, eight years apart.
If you enjoy this sort of discussion there is masses more in our Mysteries Forum
Book reviews
Three hundred and twelve reviews going back to 2001. The reviewers are Portal contributors rather
than publishers, so they say when a book is thin as readily as when it is good, and several have
drawn replies from the authors.
Browse all the book reviews
A few worth starting with, all of which sit alongside something you can still buy:
Many of these titles are in the Megalithic Portal shop, which is run as a
non-profit and puts everything it makes back into running the Portal.
Browse all the book reviews
The ones with no category at all
Three hundred and seventy-seven articles were published without ever being filed, so they appear
on no category page and can only be reached by knowing they exist. A few are worth reading in their own
right:
Also in the archive
One hundred and forty-two photo competition write-ups, and four hundred and forty-two events,
which are a record of where people went and what they found long after the date has
passed. Guides to individual counties are reached from the
search pages for the county they describe.
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