A number of locations in the UK have long barrows (for burying the dead), causewayed enclosures (no certainty of purpose) and stone circles (no certainty of purpose. They arrived in that order, and were preceded by simpler burials for the dead, such as cairns.

A common theme is defined areas, via causeways, enclosures, henges and stone circles. I am thinking that being inside the defined area is what matters most.

When long barrows were built, they typically had ditches alongside them, the result of digging up building material. At the same time, presumably, burials started to become ceremonial, and may have incorporated aspects of what would become pagan magick ritual.

My idea is that being inside the ditches was considered to be safe from whatever those people feared, possibly something like demons or bad spirits. Combined with now appreciating how people could adjust the landscape to their needs, this led to the development of enclosures. Those enclosures could have had differing functions, maybe a temporary village, maybe pens for animals, or a marketplace. The point is that the demarkation of the enclosure was not to keep anything physical out, just the spiritual.

Then when the pagan magick developed further, it was decided that a safe space just for magickal ceremonies would be good to have, so they developed henges and stone circles. The henge for protection.

And today, pagans still “cast a circle” to perform ritual inside of. The broom was part of that, the concept of sweeping anything bad from the circle. The demonising of witchcraft in more recent times could be why they switched from permanent circles to temporary ones.

Protection magick is perhaps the oldest of all magick, and exists in every ancient culture. And in the UK they protected parts of the landscape by digging and shifting the land.