monuments in the ordinary sense; the remains appear to have been merely "tokens" representing a few individuals and a small portion of the bodies. It is possible that they may have been used to lend sanctity to the sites. The builders also scattered crushed quartz around the recumbents, which would have refracted and reflected the beams of moonlight. It may have been seen as "moonstone", serving to draw down the influence of the moon into the desired spot and imbue the ceremony with its radiance. Development and analysis The recumbent stone circles of Scotland have been linked to an earlier type of monument erected around 3000 BC, the Clava cairns near Inverness. The type example of the monument is the three circular cairns at Balnuaran of Clava, which are surrounded by a ring of standing stones rising in height from the northeast to the southwest. The cairns have burial chambers in the interior, each one reached by a passageway that leads in from the southwest side. An analysis published by Burl in 1981 revealed that the tomb passages all lay within the arc of the moon during its eighteen-and-a-half year cycle. However, they could not have been used for observations as their sightlines were too restricted. The cairns fell into disuse after about 2500 BC, but the lunar astronomical tradition reflected in their structures appears to have been transferred east to the Neolithic farmers of central Aberdeenshire. The gradation in height of the stone rings at Clava is replicated in the recumbent stone circles which appeared across Aberdeenshire during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, from around 2700–2000 BC. Their alignment with the southern moon is more precise than that of the Clava cairns; whereas the cairns encompass the entire arc of the moon, the orientation of most of the recumbent stones focuses on a much shorter arc. The degree of precision is limited, however, and the circles were clearly not observatories nor meant for precise knowledge of the moon's movements. Most recumbent stone circles seem to have encircled a cairn and typically it was a ring cairn, as distinct from a Clava cairn. In some instances, in particular at Tomnaverie stone circle, the cairn was built before the circle according to an overall design. This discovery places doubt on any intent to produce an accurate alignment for the circle. Usually all superficial trace of the cairns has disappeared