The stone sources for the Calanais Stone Circles

 

The stone sources for the Calanais Stone Circles are extensively discussed in: Richards, C. (Ed.). (2013). Building the Great Stone Circles of the North. Oxbow Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13gvfvx and also in Calanais Survey and Excavation, 1979-88 

Glib statements that they are all "gathered" from the immediate neighbourhood show a complete lack of understanding.

The "high" circles seem to have been mainly erected at the sources for their rocks and not built to last. The "low" circles are the ones that still stand and, whilst the stones seem not to have travelled far, they were quarried and hauled. They were not simply gathered. Richards examines the quarrying and the routes of the monoliths in depth.

There is question over the large monolith in the centre of Calanais itself, there is a suggestion it is not local, maybe coming from over ten miles away, but that is only a suggestion.

Richards notes the intriguing difference in the cultures: "Unlike the Orcadian stone circles, materially and metaphorically, the Calanais stone circles are not constituted out of the stuff of different landscapes. To that extent they are not emblems of a bricolage of island materiality, nor a manifestation of collective identities mediated through that materiality. Instead, they are discrete entities formed of the substance upon which they either stand or lie in close association."