Contents

Gary Nobles

Abstract List of contents List of figures List of tables Abbreviations Acknowledgements

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1.0 Aims and Objectives

1

2.0 Background

2

2.1 Vision 2.1.1 Perception 2.1.2 Getting out of your Mind 2.1.3 On the edge of Possibility 2.1.4 Through the eye of a camera

2 5 7 9 10

2.2 Stone Circles with a Recumbent Stone 2.2.1 Beyond the Earth towards the cosmos 2.2.2 Traditional and inherited explanations

11 15 16

2.3 Circularity of landscape

17

2.4 The Structure of Landscape and Horizon

19

3.0 Methodology 3.1 The Questionnaire 3.2 Digital Elevation Model 3.3 The analysis 3.4 Dissemination 3.5 The Contents of DVDs/CDs 4.0 Analysis

27

4.1 The Monte-Carlo Test 4.1.1 Establishing the Background Population 4.1.2 Comparisons with the Scottish Sites 4.1.3 Comparisons with the Irish Sites

27 27 33 37

4.2 People’s Perception of Horizons 4.2.1 Resembling a circle 4.2.2 Continuous Horizon 4.2.3 Putting it all together

41 43 46 48

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Gary Nobles

5.0 Discussion 5.0.1 Problems 5.0.2 The Software

50 51 53

6.0 Conclusion

55

Appendices Appendix A: Scottish Sites Appendix B: Irish Sites Appendix C: Locations of Panoramas Appendix D: Lines of Sight for Scottish Sites Appendix E: Lines of Sight for Irish Sites Appendix F: Graphs of Attributes for the Scottish Sites Appendix G Graphs of Attributes for the Irish Sites Appendix H: Monte-Carlo Shell Script Appendix I: Questionnaire Database Structure Appendix J: CHI Squared Results Appendix K: Graphs of Attributes of the Panoramas

57 59 61 62 72 82 91 101 103 104 106

Bibliography

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List of Figures Figure 1: The Mechanics of the Eye 2: Basic Visual Data 3: Optical Illusions 4: The sensory homunculus 5: Levi-Straus vs. Bateson 6: The locations of Recumbent Stone Circles 7: The Ring of Brodgar and its environs 8: Index for Visual Structure 9: The interaction of inclination, elevation and distance. 10: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Inclination for the Scottish Random Points 11: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Distance for the Scottish Random Points 12: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Scottish Random Points 13: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Inclination for the Irish Random Points 14: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Distance for the Irish Random Points 15: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Irish Random Points 16: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Inclination for the Scottish Sites 17: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Distance for the Scottish Sites 18: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Sites 19: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Irish Sites 20: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Irish Random Points with Trends 21: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Inclination for the Irish Sites 22: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Distance for the Irish Sites 23: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Irish Sites 24: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Irish Sites 25: Relative Cumulative Frequency Graph of Elevation for the Irish Random Points with Trends 26: Definitions of Circularity and their significance 27: The point of perceptual interaction 28: Combining the functionality of r.los and r.horizon

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List of tables Table 1: Comparisons between RSC’s 2: Parameters used for r.los and r.horizon 3: Typical time to conduct analysis of r.los on three platforms. 4: Circularity of the Panoramas 5: S.D. of Attributes of the panoramas ordered by (I+D+E) 6: S.D. of normalized values ordered by Circularity Index 7: Scottish sites 8: Irish Sites 9: Continuality of horizon 10: Perception of circularity

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ABBREVIATIONS RSC DEM S.D.

Recumbent Stone Circle Digital Elevation Model Standard Deviation

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Gary Nobles

Acknowledgements Firstly I would like to thank all of those who have helped in the course of this study. The one person who has made this study viable was my dissertation supervisor, Dr Mark Lake, as he designed the program r.horizon and he was happy to return to the code and make the process quicker. I also owe him a great deal of gratitude for guiding me along the way and always trying to help wherever possible. I wish to also thank those students who have helped and accompanied me through this intense year; Enrico Creama, Cecilia Smith, Exa Grub, Will Megarry, Suzanna Pembroke and John Moller. To them I say: “Let the rabbits jump!” I must thank and apologise to everyone who completed the questionnaire, thankyou for your numerous attempts to complete it whilst I was trying to resolve the unforeseen technical problems. The members of antiquist showed me great patience when I was trying to conduct this survey, it has been a great ice breaker when I meet members who say “Ah you’re the person who did that questionnaire!” A major debt of gratitude would have to go to my friends and family who have put up with me badgering them about the questionnaire and proof reading several sections of this dissertation. Especially to my brother, Christopher Nobles, for allowing me to bounce mathematical ideas off him after he has had a hard day at work, as well as helping me with the tedious task of importing the text files into a spreadsheet ready for analysis. This also extends to Michael Duff who kept popping over to help me whenever I got stuck configuring the server or Php and trying to get it all to work; I was always one step away. A further thanks has to go to Rebecca Rennell for introducing me to shell scripting, a method which severely cut down the amount of time it took to conduct each analysis. A process which has developed my appreciation of loops. I would also like to thank Dr Martin Green of Down Farm, Dorset and Mark of Lyscombe Farm, Dorset for allowing me on to their land to create some of the panoramas for the questionnaires.

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