This paper focuses upon alterity and how we can more fully embrace intimations of otherness in our dealings with prehistoric monuments. Taking as its inspiration recent attempts to explain such structures, and the landscapes of which they were part, it makes two arguments. First, that while ethnographic analogies offer a vital point of departure for thinking through the possibilities raised by alterity and otherness, we may well have been overlooking a rich set of data—derived from careful excavation and painstaking metrical analyses—that has been sitting in front of us for a very long time. Second, despite over a decade of sustained critical debate, we seem remarkably timid when it comes to seeing where these data might take us. Through the lens of two Late Neolithic stone circles from southern Britain (one big, one small), research into measurement units and alignments is allied with recent excavation and survey data in order to explore ideas of hybridity, nomad-geometry and the arresting/manipulation of time and motion. Placing these glimpses of alterity front and centre, they are then used to establish new starting-points for the interpretation of these structures.

本文重点关注他异性，以及我们如何在处理史前遗迹时更充分地接受他者性的暗示。以最近解释此类结构及其所属景观的尝试为灵感，它提出了两个论点。首先，虽然民族志类比为思考差异性和差异性带来的可能性提供了一个重要的出发点，但我们很可能一直忽视了一组丰富的数据——这些数据来自仔细的挖掘和艰苦的计量分析——一直摆在面前我们很长一段时间。其次，尽管持续了十多年的批判性辩论，但在看到这些数据可能将我们带向何方时，我们似乎非常胆怯。通过来自英国南部的两个新石器时代晚期石圈（一大一小）的镜头，对测量单位和路线的研究与最近的挖掘和调查数据相结合，以探索混合性、游牧几何学以及时间和运动的逮捕/操纵的想法。将这些异性一瞥放在首位和中心位置，然后将它们用于为解释这些结构建立新的起点。