“ … revelatory for Smith was his ‘discovery’ in the early 1970s that the standing stones at Calanais (Callanish) had inaccuracies in their constituent geoglogical dating technologies, stones which he could infer as

        ‘fantastical mathermatical constructions sitting for thousans of years [in Scotland], staring at the stars,       
        measuring them for themselves, like huge clocks. And here I was looking at an art, because it was an art, 
        ‘Minimal’, ‘Conceptual’ – but 6000 years old. Different time-scale. I was inheritor, we were all inheritors.’ 
        Alan smith, in conversation with the author, 10 December 2004. " 

SCOTTISH ART SINCE 1960: HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS AND CONTEMPORARY OVERVIEWS – The Feel of the Situation: National Identity and the Avant-Garde in Scottish Art (1968-78) – Prof. Craig Richardson