Almost the same story pops up elsewhere to what was in the Independent a couple of days ago – so the art gallery line, storm gods and protection against crop despoilation might be down to English Heritage, or a PR merchant who composed the news blurb. At http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/laser-scanning-reve… … we learn there were 72 new images found in the laser scan, 71 of which were axe heads and the other a dagger. They were invisible to the naked eye as a result of weathering but it is suggested that in the Early Bronze Age (after 2300BC) the stones would have been a lighter colouration and the images would have been clearly visible. On one of the stones there is a large cluster of axe heads, simulating perhaps a storm of axe heads, or a heavy meteor shower (as suggested by Moe Mandelkehr in the pages of SIS Review). Is this what it was all about?
I was wrong in the previous post and the axe heads all point skywards while it is the daggers that point downwards. This is why it was suggested they were engraved to placate a storm god – in the aftermath of something dreadful? Also, missed out in the last post is the suggestion the images face either towards a nearby group of tombs or directly at the centre of the stone ring.