This
treatise is the record of five years of field-work and computation
carried out over the whole of East Anglia and its border areas
to the west. As a study of possible astronomical alignments
of great antiquity, marked on the ground by monoliths and earthen
mounds, it has had to use many disciplines - archaeology, astronomy,
geology, mathematics, geodesy and tertiary surveying. As no
man is master of all these, least of all the author, frequent
mistakes have been made. And yet the original working hypothesis
has survived all vicissitudes, and has become more firmly grounded
as successive mistakes have been corrected In the absence of
a written record, there can be no proof that the, admittedly
remarkable, claims put forward, here, are not a mirage of purely
random events. But great care has been taken that each step
should be supported by a calculated, negligible probability
of randomness. On my handling of this factor, must rest the
acceptability, or otherwise, of the conclusions reached.
I should
like to acknowledge the debt I owe to Professor A. Thom and
Professor G.S. Hawkins for the inspiration and direction which
their respective work in the archaeo-astronomical field has
given me
- Christian O’Brien - 1976.
