EventsIn this issue: • Porthole Stones in Britain - Porthole entrances, familiar in European megalithic culture, less so in Britain. Dr Karen F Pierce looks at a couple in the Cotswolds
• The Neanderthal’s Stonehenge - Mark Greener presents evidence for more cultural sophistication in our forebears than generally assumed
• Say it with rosettes - Daisy wheel, hexafoil, rosette – one symbol may deter threat, or express affection, as Anthea Hawdon explains
• The Raven of Bradfield - Dr Simon Young comes across an unusual association of the raven as a bogey figure in South Yorkshire
• The Ancient Custom of Baba Marta Day - Sharon Higgins reports on a charming spring custom in Bulgaria

EventsIn this issue • The Haunted Stone of Beeston - An uncanny stone in the remains of an old priory in Norfolk draws Alan Murdie
• Swastikas, fylfots and triskeles on both sides of the Atlantic
• Waun Mawn: A precision equinox detector - Robin Heath sheds even light on a Welsh Neolithic site
• Can the mediaeval tales in the Mabinogion be traced in the modern landscape? • The Alt-Antiquarian:Walking myth into place - The old earth mysteries concept of the landscape zodiac has been damned to the lunatic fringe, but is that the best we can do?

Events Sacred sites around the world offer another level of experience to visitors and pilgrims, full of intensity, presence and, for some, higher levels of consciousness. The drawback is often overcrowded places, full of tourists whose presence can ruin this privileged moment.

Events In this issue: • Further reflections on river-names - Is there significance in clusters of similar river names on both sides of the Channel, asks Richard Stead?
• Weird Stones of West Wales - Miriam Perrett asks questions of possible artefactual stones
• ‘Dobby Lives in Our Hearts & Our Socks’ - Ceri Houlbrook investigates how one of Harry Potter’s friends has had an impact on our landscape
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ReviewsRob Ixer writes: In the mid 2010s it seemed that there was an annual Stonehenge 'Xmas box' to read but recently it has turned quieter, for, as one author disingenuously has said "what is there new to say". Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. During this wintry writing flurry Mike Pitts was asked repeatedly why he had not penned his own Christmas carol but replied it was too soon and he needed to let the dust settle. What Mike has come up with is a measured, dispassionate, but personal account from an independent, informed, highly literate, observer-player whose reportage-style of writing, especially in the middle chapters, has successfully avoided sounding like a poor channelling of Bernard Cornwell’s novel Stonehenge, but retains rather a customary and engaging, easy reading voice.
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Events In this issue: • Megalithic construction techniques: Trapezoidal long barrows - John Hill demonstrates how Neolithic builders may have approached the building of Capel Garmon and similar long barrows.
• Were the Wollaton Gnomes ‘intelligent light forms’? - This celebrated ‘fairy’ sighting is mysterious however you view it. Mave Calvert suggests another perspective.
• The Folkton Drums - Were these charming Bronze Age artefacts ‘for’ anything, or were they simply toys, as some have suggested? John Billingsley throws in another suggestion
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Events In this issue: • Erie Adventures - Justin Patrick Moore takes us on an esoteric ramble around Sandusky, Ohio
• The Call of the Cuckoo - Whether it’s a cuckoo or a gowk where you live, it’s garnered a lot of placenames around the country, and Jeremy Harte wonders why
• Cuckoos’ Nests - A couple of sidelines from Jeremy Harte’s discussion
• W: An afterlife - In NE165, we asked readers a question about subjective responses to variants of the letter W. John Billingsley reports back and asks if one variant is ‘heavy’ with meaning
• The Alt-Antiquarian - The arcane and obscure may enliven some neo-antiquarian conversations, but may also obscure a toxic political subtext
• Mike Haigh’s Archaeology Review - An amateur researcher’s hunch leads to a potentially valuable insight into notation in prehistoric cave art
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MysteriesIn this issue:
• The Forgotten Stones Of West Mendip - Phil Quinn
• Encoding Space: The Iron Age Of South-east Wales, a Question Of Defence Or Social Statementing - George Nash & George Children
• Rasputin - Neither Monk Nor Mad - Allen Hunt
• The Stone Circle Near Winterbourne Bassett - Terence Meaden
• A Supernatural Highway (Revisited) - Phil Quinn
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EventsA quick look at this fascinating and newly released book. It's packed with Breton culture, history and legends, always encouraging us to explore far beyond what the author describes as the the somewhat 'bland' main Carnac sites. There are not just standing stones - hugely impressive though some of these are, Brittany Stone Stories covers natural ravines and piles of stone (literally chaos!), rocking and ringing stones with so much life you almost have to hold them down.

There are tales of miraculous crossings in stone boats, the odd castle ruin, holy wells and sacred springs (fountaines). As with many books of this type there is folklore aplenty, the Christianisation of stones (of course). Also sacrificial stones, a few modern grave stones and memorials and not forgetting those lost sites which are sadly so common in our sphere of study.
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MysteriesIn this issue:
• Fact and Folly: the folklore of 'modern' sites - Phil Quinn
• The Wating Streets of Britain - Alastair McBeath
• Beckhampton Penning: the stone circle that never was - Neil Mortimer
• Our Lady of the Wandering Lights - John Palmer
• The Crooked Otherworld Road - Alby Stone
• Cracking the Code: The use of carpenters' marks in archaeological reconstruction - Jonathon Mullis
• Hidden Laughter: The Dorset Fairy Tradition - Jeremy Harte
• Rites of Passage and the Cultural Life of the Doorway - George Children and George Nash
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Mysteries In this Issue:
• Cheryl Straffon - Does the Goddess Live Here?
• Being There: Experiencing Ancient Sites
• Nick Thorpe - The Archaeology of the Undead
• Kenneth Brophy - This is Not Phenomenology
• Caron Burt - Muddy Feet and Bright Blue Fingers
• Jerry Wellard - Visions of Prehistory
• K. M. Koppana - Stones, Trees and Rock Paintings
• Aubrey Burl - Ever-Increasing Circles
• Jeremy Harte - Show Me the Way to Go Home
• D. J. Adams McGilp - Kilmartin House
• Paul Newman - Panic! Panic!
• Huw Sherlock - Time Team or Tame Team?
• News & Shortcuts, Letters, Reviews and Classified

PDF e-magazine for free download: HI-RES LOW-RES
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Events In this issue: • Lost Lands and Surfacing Stones - Changing environments combine with oral tradition and new-found archaeology to affirm that history is never still
• Getting Wise about the Royal Mile - The recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the elaborate ceremonies ensuing draw Robin Heath to explain Britain’s arcane royal geography
• Numinosity and Sacred Place - The experience of Place, not religion, is at the heart of human apprehension of the holy all around the world, argues Paul Devereux
• The Curse of the Senegambian Stones - NE likes to draw attention to other megalithic cultures across the globe and here Mark Greener introduces us to a remarkable group of sites in West Africa
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MysteriesIn this issue: • Caught Knapping: The Strange Career of Flint Jack - Robert Halliday describes the life of a once-notorious Victorian forger of prehistoric artefacts
• Wassail! The origins of a drinking toast - Richard Sermon
• Stones of Power - Raised in Magic Hour - Robert Farrah considers the folktales surrounding some prehistoric monuments and the dire consequences for those who would disturb these ancient places
• Bridestones Revisited: Uncovering one of England's Best-Kept Neolithic Secrets - Paul and Vicky Morgan describe a once-mighty megalithic site in Cheshire, a county where the prehistory is rarely monumental
• Sacred Preseli - David Kaiser considers aspects of the Preseli Mountains that may have led to the peaks being considered sacred in antiquity, and how this relates to the Stonehenge bluestones
• The World Turned Upside Down Stonehenge Summer Solstice Before the Hippies - Notorious as it was, the Free Festival wasn't the first time people had assembled at Stonehenge in modern times. Adam Stout revisits earlier midsummer gatherings at the stones - and more...
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Resources In this issue: • Gone to Earth - A fox deployed its cunning for 300 years at a farm near Leeds
• Bishop Gundulf’s Tears - Simon Crook considers the Coldrum Ley and ‘the lamentation of the landscape’
• Apocryphal gods over Mersey -Rumours of spirits take Andrew Mitchell out in the Wirral bush
• Number and Measure at the Buizegem-Edegem Circles - John Palmer investigates the geomancy of ancient Netherlands
• Having Your Say - Reader input on river loops and propped stones
• All Things Considered: Reviews - Books on sacred and forgotten places and what they are known by, and rituals unmasked
• Northern Folk - A new venture celebrates northern cultural tradition
• Season’s Gleanings - Archaeology, folklore and absurdity from around the world
• Mike Haigh’s Archaeology Review - Mike’s round-up includes ancient weights, flayed Vikings, recycled protection, and Stonehenge’s ancient landscape
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EventsIn this issue: • Propped Stones in the Outer Hebrides - Simple but distinctive: David Shepherd investigates Scottish examples of what may have been a precursor of the dolmen
• Where do you lay, Mr Watkins? - No one thought to seek Alfred Watkins’ own place in the landscape till Rob Stephenson came along
• Fancy flutter’d on her wildest wing - Fairies were a potent source of inspiration for 19th-century British artists. Mark Greener recommends an ongoing exhibition
• Sacred Bends - Bob Trubshaw considers the significance of enclosure within the loop of a river
• Season’s Gleanings - Giant Japanese tombs, mind after death, war among the ancients, and more
• Mike Haigh’s Archaeology Review - Wessex and Yorkshire attract Mike’s attention, with quirky but complex artefacts and new Bronze Age understandings
• The Alt-Antiquarian - When do we see and when should we look?
• Having Your Say - A variety of readers’ responses to recent issues
• All Things Considered: Reviews - Books and e-books for delectation, distraction and discovery
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EventsIn this issue: • Stones of Arabia - Standing stones are being re-erected as waymarkers across a desert to honour an ancient sacred trail
• From Russia with Malice - The prehistory of Russian hacking paranoia? David Taylor summarises a bygone suspicion of leys as threats to national security
• Follow her forward, the innocent hare - It’s spring, and the hare is part of its magic, as John Billingsley relates in a tribute to its extraordinary presence
• A new dimension to ancient measures - Peter Harris describes further research on the Harris-Stockdale Megalithic Foot
• The Angell of England and Great-Nephew to the Queen of Faerie - It’s the 17th century, and in Lancashire new Protestants are tinged with extraordinary inspiration.
• Mark Valentine remembers the Grindletonians
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Events In this issue: • Mike Haigh’s Archaeology Review - Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the dead, plus a dolmen, a shrine, and lakeside dwellings on a prehistoric armchair ramble
• Clap-cans: A Greater Manchester bogie - Various uncanny entities from ghosts to boggarts are said to clank as they move; but do their tales really have currency, asks Simon Young?
• The Neolithic specialist builder from Aberdeen - John Hill discusses the remarkable consistency of design in recumbent stone circles
• Up the Bonk: Titterstone Revisited - Simon Moreton adds to the discussion from NE165 of intersections between place and human culture at a Shropshire hill
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EventsAfter many years of research and fieldwork, Dr Thomas Gough and Peter Harris have published the results and conclusions in their book, A New Dimension to Ancient Measures, published by Moravian Press of Elgin. The book is now available to order from the Megalithic Portal online shop.
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