A stone circle is a useful dramatic device. It is visually striking. Often eerily so. There's a reason why so many stories involving stone circles focus on the idea of people turned to rock. The stones stand, gathered like figures. Tracing some of the lumps and clefts in the sarsens at Avebury, for example, it's easy to find yourself searching for faces. Although such circles are built from the natural world and speak to its rhythms – its seasons, its solstices – they also exist in opposition to the landscape. Their appearance is surreal, sometimes foreboding. Without beginning or end, they suggest all manner of strange possibilities enclosed within their compass.