Layout and Location - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 128

In view of the description that followed, it is amazing that the
site should have been destroyed and even more incredible that the
memory of it should have been dropped out of the archaeological
literature. Part of the explanation is that Ludovic MacLennan Mann,
the author of the pamphlets in the Mitchell Library, had a falling out
with the other Glasgow archaeologists. The onset of the war may
have been another factor. But it is still utterly astonishing that not
a single reference work so far consulted mentions a site that was at
least 300 ft across and seems to have included the major features of
Stonehenge, Stenness, Avebury and the great wooden henges.
Mann went along with the prevailing mythology in associat-
ing the structure with the Druids - the title of the second leaflet
was “The Druid Temple Explained” - and much of his effort was
spent in finding fanciful connections between the layout of the
site, adjacent cup-and-ring markings (of which there were a great
many), local place names and Celtic mythology. As a result he was
led into a quite extraordinary extension of the Celtic/Druid period,
since he believed the circle dated to around 3000 b.c. His reason-
ing was based on his interpretation of the carving as depicting the
solar eclipse of 2983 b.c., but having come by that route to a date
soon after Stenness and the ring of Brodgar, he recognized that
the alignments would have to be corrected for the change in the
obliquity of the ecliptic (see below). The main part of the structure
was built 800 years or so later, contemporary with Stonehenge II
or Stonehenge III, but the Clydebank site, known as “Knappers”
was so elaborate that its construction may well have taken as long
as Stonehenge itself. Its period of active use seems to have gone
on for a great deal longer because apparently it was unique among
mainland sites in being used for systematic, individual burials.
At the center of the site there was a spiral stone structure, built
around a rectangular chamber. Mann argued that because there
were no burials within it the structure was an altar. (It might also
have been for lying in state or cremation. The exit from the spiral
faced midsummer sunset but was only a foot wide, so it's easier to
imagine it as an elaborate altar rather than as a roofed building. If
so, however, the Avebury Coves are crude by comparison.) Around
it, with a diameter just twice that of the inside of the stone spi-
ral, there was a wooden structure with a wide opening, equal in
width to the radius, and with a “doorway” skewed about 7° to the