Thank you so much for sharing this very interesting hypothesis. While I am having some trouble visualizing it, I’m sure that after I meditate on it’s possibilities and try to sketch out the process, my understanding will clarify. I am so delighted that people today are still interested in understanding and explaining the beauty of such a marvelous achievement left for us by our ancestors and breathing a living soul into the monuments to their creativity, be they artistic, spiritual or simply an expedient to necessity.

Bendithion

Kat

The un-thrashed crop came from a distance so a haul-road led towards the high place. Some control over what came in was established by making the contributors line up in an avenue. As they came in their crop was measured and they were given the original credit card, uniquely designed for each place. By receiving this token there was some control over the share or dole they took out during various visits through the winter. They were woven from straw and called dollies. Like current bank notes and coins they were different so no one could go to another henge and illegally obtain a share of dole there.

In many places the stores of hay were quite large and a technique still applied in some parts of the world, albeit at smaller scale was applied. A central rig or rick pole was erected. The word rigid derives from this in the same way our term riveting derives from a Victorian construction technique that also changed our world considerably.
Thrashed material was stacked usually in a conical manner around the rick pole with horizontal bundles of twigs (bolraces) to aid aeration. The original site at Stonehenge was slightly elliptic so as to resist the wind, like a boat sailing. The rig pole there would have been about seventy-four feet high.
Sometimes a drainage trench was dug, a rigoll. At sometime a very clever human being invented a very special rigoll called by the English a maze. With symbolic cleverness the combination of the male-like rig and the rigoll in Mother earth provided sexual unity a satisfying side benefit that actually improved the productive living process. The hay was bulky and not worth carting to lower ground so it stayed high up and there was the added benefit that it would be less likely to suffer from flooding. The presence of wind meant it had to be secure. The central pole sometimes stood on a stone or was surrounded by strong stones and these were called tabernacles in the same way sailing ships have a hard wooden base to the mast or rig with the same name.
In order to safely prevent the crop from being blown away rigg bands radiated down to the ground where they were fixed to posts or riggbols. Bol is from the same root as bole, which we still apply to trees. This great harvest house or harvest home had many names. It was sometimes referred to as maze (English); Dolhaus (German referring to the harvest home;( Doolhoof, Dutch Harvest House) and Le dedal (French alluding to the ancient name for the old central tree or rig pole.
As the winter-season progressed those who had invested would turn up and present their dollies possibly at the heoul stone. Heoul appears in the old name for the dance called the reel, it was spelled righeoul. Halos is Greek for the thrashing floor and O Hal O Hal was the call to the dance. The dancing did not start until the spring. Before that the doles were taken and the riggbands moved into the next ring of posts. If when the last straw was visible the people could see new grass growing all around they celebrated .The maze was visible also the rig pole or pal. So they grabbed the riggbands, ribbons and danced around the mayspal. They danced the Riggadoon (rig adorn) the righeoul and had many a rigmarole.
So the postholes at Stonehenge, now hidden, performed the agricultural function later employed by barns. The word bolraces was still applied in recent barns. The bolraces did not last long but they were easily replaceable. Scorching their bases may have lengthened their survival.

Any human remains found are not symbolic, these sites should be considered as industrial estates of the present. The only people who would have lived there and only through the harvest period and the winter would have been the staff running the operation. Visits by others would have been as quick as possible. The exposure would have encouraged them to have underground buildings for shelter. They also needed space to store the dollies securely. One the season was over the current years dollies would be disposed of and maybe with some symbolic ceremony.

The surrounding bank was a boundary of containment and ensured that people could not easily get in to steal straw. They might nip in on foot but it would be impossible to drive a cart over. Some sites had arrangements for watchmen so all parts of the stack were visible.

Another thing you would not find is religious artefacts. The only key artefact was the corn dollie which by definition was not kept very long, the users could not feed off the dollie but they needed the straw for their cattle. Another interesting link is that the haystacks were built on fields called the winding piece (alluding to the winnowing) and the dole piece. The Celtic for a field is maes and that ancient word goes right back to Sanskrit and the meaning of “little points” namely the little points of new growth. At a deeper level it meant “creative life force”.

It is not surprising that such a focus of lie on earth should attract the attention of symbolists. It maybe that the very basic and un-symbolic function of crop gathering and nurturing could be further helped by siting these henges in special places, drawing on cosmic energies.

This possibility will have been the thing that led to structures like Stonehenge. The fortuitous provender for the physical body was added to by facilitating other more spiritual energies. Healing of a wider mix came into play. Maybe this is what is tantalising visitors to such places, the thought that there is something there that is universally healing. Tantalus is applied to mazes also and it is the place where you think you are almost at the centre but then you are taken far away before you eventually do get to the centre.

Clever symbolists will apply special numbers and special measures to whatever they build and there have been some very clever folk at work.
Graham Burgess Feb 20th 2008