Guide to Waterford Monuments

Stone Circles

Stone Circles are believed to be of pre-Christian date but have proven difficult to date accurately. This is mainly due to the absence of archaeological artifacts, such as pottery shards, bones, etc. which are not often found at these sites.

Stone Circles remain a mystery, as they display no evidence of human dwelling, and rarely have graves or burial pits. This suggests that they were constructed  purely for ceremonies and were in used on ceremonial occasions only. The type of ceremonies (if any) is entirely unknown.

There is some theories also of solar alignments, and that some circles were designed to track the positions of the Moon on the horizon.

Some of the circles in Waterford are quite modest and low in height and are referred to as Kerb Circles which suggests that they may have originally surrounded a cairn.

A nice example can be seen at Toureen (above).