over the millennia. The circles are of fairly modest dimensions and Burl theorised that they could have been constructed by a single family. Transporting the massive recumbents was a different matter; the fifty-ton recumbent at Old Keig was transported from six miles away and may have required over 200 people to drag it to its final resting place. Strichen stone circle provided a unique opportunity to test how the recumbents might have been transported. It was incorrectly restored in the 19th century by Lord Lovat, so between 1979–83 it was fully excavated and correctly restored by a team led by Burl, Ian Hampsher-Monk and Philip Abramson. The restoration required the team to move some of the stones, and it was found that the most efficient non-mechanical means of doing so was to drag the stones along a slippery path of wet straw using logs as a kind of sledge. Unlike the more grandiose Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments found elsewhere in Scotland, the recumbent stone circles of Aberdeenshire do not appear to have been intended to overshadow or overawe other more modest works. Even considering their geographical clustering, they are also well-spread out. Clive Ruggles and Aubrey Burl suggest that this indicates that they were constructed to serve as local ritual centres for groups of subsistence farmers each inhabiting territories of about , living on an egalitarian basis without powerful leaders and possibly numbering no more than about twenty or thirty people per group. Legacy The circle builders left no records, but their works were remarked upon and to some extent mythologised in historic times by the region's later inhabitants. The 16th century Aberdonian historian Hector Boece wrote that in the times of King Mainus ... huge stones were assembled in a ring and the biggest of them was stretched out on the south side to serve for an altar ... In proof of the fact to this day there stand these mighty stones gathered together into circles 'the old temples of the gods' they are commonly called – and whoso sees them will assuredly marvel by what mechanical craft or by what bodily strength stones of such bulk have been collected to one spot. The English antiquarian John Aubrey recorded in the 17th century that people believed of the Easter Aquhorthies recumbent stone circle that "Pagan priests of old dwelt in that place" and that the Priests caused earth