 Some of the stones have designs (spirals, circles, grooves and cup-marks) on them which may have indicated the presence of other monuments or gathering-places and/or signalled the trackways and other routes through the landscape, particularly through the river valleys to sources of food, to ritual gathering places, or to sources of axes.As well as providing focal points for the gathering of people for the purposes of trade, of ritual, and, in the Late Neolithic, for more 'tenurial' settlement and ownership of land, the stone circles probably had cosmological uses as well.For example, the Long Meg stone itself, which stands outside its accompanying circle, is aligned with the circle's centre on the point of the midwinter sunset.