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The Standing Stones of Yoxie is the remains of a building in a neolithic settlement called Pettigarths Field, about 4,000 years old, which also includes a megalithic tomb and Benie Hoose. The earlier assessment that the monument was a standing stone grouping has since been revised. It is now known to consist of a building partitioned into rooms. The 'standing stones' name is derived from the fact that the walls were built in part from megaliths, many of them still erect. The building was once about 18 by 11 metres in size, but little remains of the northern part. There is a main L-shaped block to the west, and a smaller forecourt to the east. There are no traces of door fixtures. A paved passage lined with stone boulders runs through the house, and traces of the paving continue through a circular room that it divides into two recessed sections.
The site seems to have been occupied for a long period of time. There is a local belief that the stones were used for ceremonies by Druid priests who lived at Benie Hoose – or even that druids still live there. However, the ruins are 4,000 years old. There is no written mention of Druids before around 200 BC, and no reliable sources even from later periods. Despite this the excavator, C.S.T. Calder, interpreted Yoxie as the remains of a temple, and Benie Hoose as a house that may have been used by the priests. He felt there were indications that this structure, and another similar one at Stanydale on Mainland, Shetland, were used for religious purposes. If so, they would have been the first known temples in the British Isles. However, early and middle neolithic society does not appear to have had complex social structures such as a priestly caste. It is now thought that both Yoxie and Benie are prehistoric houses.
Artifacts and material from the early and late Bronze Ages have been found. Some of the finds are Iron Age, while some date to the original Neolithic age settlement and others to a later occupation of the site in Iron Age. Pottery remains have been found in both houses. One large vessel found in Yoxie was very similar to a plain Bipartite Urn, possibly used for storing barley. More than 120 tools made of stone in a crude form have been unearthed in Yoxie.
References:The Church of St Donatus name refers to Donatus of Zadar, who began construction on this church in the 9th century and ended it on the northeastern part of the Roman forum. It is the largest Pre-Romanesque building in Croatia.
The beginning of the building of the church was placed to the second half of the 8th century, and it is supposed to have been completed in the 9th century. The Zadar bishop and diplomat Donat (8th and 9th centuries) is credited with the building of the church. He led the representations of the Dalmatian cities to Constantinople and Charles the Great, which is why this church bears slight resemblance to Charlemagne's court chapels, especially the one in Aachen, and also to the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. It belongs to the Pre-Romanesque architectural period.
The circular church, formerly domed, is 27 m high and is characterised by simplicity and technical primitivism.