available, with the exception of the island's south-eastern corner. They are most densely concentrated in south-western Britain and on the north-eastern horn of Scotland, near Aberdeen. The tradition of their construction may have lasted for 2,400 years, from 3300 to 900 BCE, with the major phase of building taking place between 3000 and 1,300 BCE. These stone circles typically show very little evidence of human visitation during the period immediately following their creation. This suggests that they were not sites used for rituals that left archaeologically visible evidence, but may have been deliberately left as "silent and empty monuments". The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggests that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead, and wood with the living. Other archaeologists have suggested that the stone might not represent ancestors, but rather other supernatural entities, such as deities. In the area of modern Wiltshire, various stone circles were erected, the best known of which are Avebury and Stonehenge. All of the other examples are ruined, and in some cases have been destroyed. As noted by the archaeologist Aubrey Burl, these examples have left behind "only frustrating descriptions and vague positions". Most of the known Wiltshire examples were erected on low-lying positions in the landscape. There are four smaller stone circles known from the area surrounding Avebury: The Sanctuary, Winterbourne Bassett Stone Circle, Clatford Stone Circle, and Falkner's Circle. Archaeologists initially suggested that a fifth example could be seen at Langdean Bottom near the village of West Overton, although further investigation has reinterpreted this as evidence for a late prehistoric hut circle or a medieval feature. Burl suggested that these smaller circles related to Avebury in a manner akin to "village churches within the diocese of a cathedral". It was noted that while Falkner's Circle and Clatford Stone Circle bore many similarities in location and design, the Winterbourne Bassett Stone Circle was "distinctly different in setting and magnitude". It is possible that these three rings might have begun as timber circles before being changed to stone ones, or that the stone circles themselves included wooden elements. Antiquarian and archaeological investigation Knowledge of Winterbourne Bassett Stone Circle derives almost entirely from antiquarian sources. Stukeley recorded two concentric sarsen rings, with an outlying stone to the west of these. Smith's plan, produced in the 1880s, proposed a diameter of c.71m for the outer circle and 45m for the inner circle. The archaeologists