Anne Macaulay (11 March 1924 – 1998) was a Scottishmusicologist, author and lecturer.^{[1][unreliable source?]}

Macaulay was born in Aithernie, Fife in Scotland nearLundin standing stones, the youngest child of Alison and Sir David Russell.^[2] Her family soon moved toSilverburn nearLundin Links where her father managed a paper-making business through theGreat Depression and had interests in religion,archaeology, industry and a good sense of family values.^[3] She attendedSt Leonards School inSt Andrews during theSecond World War going on to briefly attend the University of Edinburgh which she departed for South Africa she learned how to fly anaeroplane. Around this time her brother, Patrick Russell died and she accompanied her father toIstanbul where he had funded anarchaeological excavation. It was here that she met Bill Macaulay,curator of theGlasgow Museum of Art and an expert inmosaics andByzantine art whom her father held in high esteem. In 1953, they married and moved toJohnsburn House inBalerno near thePentland Hills.^{[citation needed]} Together they had five children, the last in born in 1957. She developed an interest in classical guitar, which she learned to play to a high standard. This led to an interest inPythagorean mathematics and its relationship with music. It was from this that her interest instone circles andprehistoric geometry developed and she began to read the work ofAlexander Thom. Over the next several years, she proceeded to resurvey much of Thom's work and travelled widely to Turkey,Malta, Egypt, Greece and throughout theBritish Isles in search of further evidence of his ideas.

After the break up of her marriage to Bill in 1971 she worked for 17 years trying to bring her work and the mass of data she had recorded into order. Her work became well known to other academics and musicians such as ProfessorJay Kappraff,Keith Critchlow,Andrew Glazewski and Paul Segovia. She lectured at conferences andsymposia in the United States and the UK and in 1994 was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by theUniversity of Edinburgh.^[4] Macaulay's research interests included the origin of the alphabet, history of the guitar, the deity Apollo, and pythagorean mysteries. She was atrustee of the Salisbury Centre^[5] inEdinburgh and lectured for theResearch into Lost Knowledge Organization (RILKO). She died early, in 1998, but her family said of her"She was fortunate to walk with many who knew the ancient ways, and she uncovered the truth as easily as drinking a cup of tea".^[2]

Macaulay's work was posthumously collated, edited and published in 2006 by Vivian T. Linacre, aPerth basedsurveyor who is president of theBritish Weights and Measures Association (an advocacy group forImperial units and Richard A. Batchelor, an honoraryResearch Fellow at theUniversity of St Andrews, geologist and investigator into thegeometry ofFife.^[2] The book contains a critical re-assessment of the geometry used in over one hundred and eighty of the stone circles surveyed by Alexander Thom (who surveyed over two hundred) along with their mensuration using themegalithic yard and the megalithic rod. From Professor Fernie's 1981 studies of theMetrological Relief in theAshmolean Museum,Oxford (which Macaulay gives by its previous nameThe Arundel Stone) she claimed a similarity between theGreek Fathom and the megalithic rod of 2.072 m. She also suggested that many of the megaliths had been designed using a "thirdyardstick" length of one Greek Foot, depicted on the Metrological relief at 0.296 m, or one seventh of a megalithic rod.^[6] Concerning this claim,Jay Kappraff wrote "However, according to the archaeological record, there was no standard unit of a 'foot' in ancient Greece."^[7] She found that the best direct evidence for the use of an ancient unit of measure in megalithic Britain at the fan of stone rows inMid Clyth.Douglas Heggie had found this gave the strongest evidence for an early unit of measure of any site in the UK.^[8] Heggie was very dubious about the existence of the megalithic yard, stating that his careful analysis uncovered "little evidence for a highly accurate unit" and "little justification for the claim that a highly accurate unit was in use".^[9]

Macaulay suggested that a high culture ofbards (ordruids) emerged following an influx ofIndo-European farming techniques into Britain in the fifth millenniumBC. This culture were able to determine pythagorean mathematics from harmonious soundingtriads played on ancientLyres.^[10] These mathematics were then suggested to have been used in the construction of stone circles and exported back toGreece via thetin trade.^[11]

• Floris Books – Megalithic Measures and Rhythms
• The Megalithic Portal – Megalithic Measures and Rhythms – Book Review by Dr Nick Kollerstrom