Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about 2.0 miles (3.2 km) west of Amesbury and 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks. It is at the centre of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.[1] Archaeologists believe the stone monument was constructed anywhere from 3000 BC to 2000 BC, as described in the chronology below. Radiocarbon dating in 2008 suggested that the first stones were erected in 24002200 BC,[2] whilst another theory suggests that bluestones may have been erected at the site as early as 3000 BC (see phase 1 below). The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury Henge monument. It is a national legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.[3][4] Archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 indicates that Stonehenge could possibly have served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings.[5] The dating of cremated remains found on the site indicate that deposits contain human bone material from as early as 3000 BC, when the initial ditch and bank were first dug. Such deposits continued at Stonehenge for at least another 500 years.[6] The site is a place of religious significance and pilgrimage in Neo-Druidry.

Stonehenge

Early history Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project based at Durrington Walls, noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence: Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead.[6] Mike Parker Pearson Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1,500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's time frame to 6,500 years. Dating and understanding the various phases of activity is complicated by disturbance Stonehenge Early history Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project based at Durrington Walls, noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence: Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead.[6] Mike Parker Pearson Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1,500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right. Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project based at Durrington Walls, noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence: Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many

from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead.[6] Mike Parker Pearson Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1,500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's time frame to 6,500 years. Dating and understanding the various phases of activity is complicated by disturbance of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right.

Before the monument

Some 4,500 years ago, as the solstice sun rose on Stonehenge, it is very likely that a midwinter feast would already have been roasting on the cooking fires. Experts believe that huge midwinter feasts were held in that period at the site and a startling picture is now emerging of just how far cattle were moved for the banquet. Recent analysis of the cattle and pig bones from the era found in the area suggests the cattle used were walked hundreds of miles to be slaughtered for the solstice celebrations from the west country or west Wales. Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield and his team have just won a grant of 800,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to answer some of the riddles about the enigmatic prehistoric monument. The grant is to fund Feeding Stonehenge, his follow-up research on the wealth of material, including animal bones, pottery and plant remains, which they found in recent excavations at Durrington Walls, a few miles from the stone circle a site which Parker Pearson believes key to understanding why Stonehenge was built and how it was used. His team fully excavated some huts but located the foundations of scores more, the largest neolothic settlement in Britain. To his joy it was a prehistoric tip, "the filthiest site known in Britain", as he dubbed it. "I've always thought when we admire monuments like Stonehenge, not enough attention has been given to who made the sandwiches and the cups of tea for the builders," said Parker Pearson. "The logistics of the operation were extraordinary. Not just food for hundreds of people but antler picks, hide ropes, all the infrastructure needed to supply the materials and supplies needed. Where did they get all this food from? This is what we hope to discover."

Stonehenge was begun almost 5,000 years ago with a ditch and earth bank, and developed over 1,000 years, with the circle of bluestones brought from the Preseli hills in west Wales, and the double decker bus sized sarsen stones. It was too early for the Phoenicians, the Romans or the largely mythical Celtic druids. The Anglo Saxons believed Stonehenge was the work of a race of lost giants, and a 12th-century historian explained that Merlin flew the huge stones from Ireland. It has been explained as a place of druidic sacrifice, a stone computer, a place of witchcraft and magic, a tomb, a temple or a solar calendar. It is aligned on both the summer and winter solstice, crucial dates which told prehistoric farmers that the time of harvest was coming, or the shortest day of winter past. Although not all archaeologists agree Geoff Wainwright and Tim Darvill have dubbed Stonehenge the stone age Lourdes, a place of healing by the magic bluestones Parker Pearson believes it was a place of the dead, while Durrington Walls, with its wooden henge, was the place of its living builders, and the generations who came to feast, and carry out rituals for their dead, moving from Durrington to the nearby river and on by the great processional avenue to Stonehenge. He found no evidence that Durrington was permanently inhabited or farmed, and the first tests on the pig and cattle bones support his theory that it was a place where people gathered for short periods on special occasions. The pigs were evidently slaughtered at mid-winter, and he expects the cattle bones to back this. What the sample already tested shows is that they were slaughtered immediately after arrival, after travelling immense distances. "We are going to know so much about the lives of the people who built Stonehenge," Parker Pearson said, "how they lived, what they ate, where they came from."
the area.

Plane of Stonehenge
History

Stonehenge I The native Neolithic people of England began construction of Stonehenge I by digging a circular ditch using deer antlers as picks. The circle is 320 feet in diameter, and the ditch itself was 20 feet wide and 7 feet deep. Next, they used the chalky rubble taken from the ditch to built a steep bank circle just inside the outer circle. Inside the bank circle, they dug 56 shallow holes known as the Aubrey holes (named after their discoverer, 17th century scholar John Aubrey). Finally, two parallel stones were erected at the entrance to the circle, one of which, the Slaughter Stone, still survives. Also surviving are two Station Stones, positioned across from each other on opposite sides of the circle, which may also have been erected during this time. Stonehenge I seems to have been used for about 500 years and then abandoned.

Stonehenge II
Construction of Stonehenge II began around 2100 BC. In this phase, a semicircle of granite stones known as bluestones (from their original coloring) was assembled within the original bank and ditch circles. Several aspects of this phase are intriguing.

First, the bluestones come from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales, nearly 250 miles away. There were about 80 of them, weighing up to 4 tons each. How they were transported is not

known, although scholars don't regard the feat as impossible and various theories have been presented. It is intriguing to wonder, however, what makes the Stonehenge site so special that so much effort would be expended to drag the giant stones 250 miles instead of constructing the monument near the quarry. Second, the entranceway to the semicircle of bluestones is aligned with the midsummer sunrise. The alignment was continued by the clearing of a new approach to the site, "The Avenue," which has ditches and banks on either side like the original outer circle. Two Heel Stones (so-named from the shape of the one that remains) were placed on the Avenue a short distance from the circle (and, today, very close to Highway A344).

Trilithons and fallen stones of Stonehenge.

Stonehenge III
Stonehenge III is the stone circle that is still visible today. During this phase, which was started in about 2000 BC, the builders constructed a circle of upright sarsen stones, each pair of which was topped with a stone lintel (horizontal capstone). The lintels are curved to create a complete circle on top. There were originally 30 upright stones; 17 of these still stand. These stones came from the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles to the north, are 7 feet tall and weigh 50 tons each. The outside surfaces of all these stones were pounded smooth with hammers, and dovetail joints fasten the lintels to their uprights.

Within this stone ring was erected a horseshoe formation of the same construction, using 10 upright stones. Here the trilithons (set of two uprights plus the lintel) stand separated from one another, in 5 pairs. Eight of the original ten stones remain. The horseshoe shape opens directly towards the Slaughter Stone and down the Avenue, aligned with the summer solstice sunrise. About a century later, about 20 bluestones gathered from Stonehenge II were placed in a horseshoe shape inside the sarsen horseshoe. Less than half of these remain. Some shuffling around of the bluestones and digging of holes (probably in preparation for placing the bluestones, which was not completed) occurred around 1500 BC. The Altar Stone is the biggest of these newly-arranged bluestones that remains. Around 1100 BC, the Avenue was extended all the way to the River Avon (over 9,000 feet from Stonehenge), indicating that the site was still in use at that time.

Sunrise on the summer solstice at Stonehenge

What to See
Stonehenge stands in a grassy field in the Wiltshire countryside, and must have been a highly atmospheric site over the millennia since its construction. Unfortunately, in modern times the site has lost a great deal of this atmosphere, thanks to the intersection of two major highways nearby and the inevitable tourist infrastructure. In this regard, Avebury is far superior to Stonehenge. That said, Stonehenge is such a magnificent monument that it would impress no matter where it is. The astonishing scale and beauty of the stones, the great care and labor in construction, and the mystery that surrounds its Riverside Project based at Durrington Walls, noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence:

Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead.[6] Mike Parker Pearson Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1,500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right. Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project based at Durrington Walls, noted that Stonehenge appears to have been associated with burial from the earliest period of its existence: Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a domain of the dead.[6] Mike Parker Pearson Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1,500 years. There is evidence of large-scale construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's time frame to 6,500 years. Dating and understanding the various phases of activity is complicated by disturbance of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right.

The native Neolithic people of England began construction of Stonehenge I by digging a circular ditch using deer antlers as picks. The circle is 320 feet in diameter, and the ditch itself was 20 feet wide and 7 feet deep. Next, they used the chalky rubble taken from the ditch to built a steep bank circle just inside the outer circle. Inside the bank circle, they dug 56 shallow holes known as the Aubrey holes (named after their discoverer, 17th century scholar John Aubrey). Finally, two parallel stones were erected at the entrance to the circle, one of which, the Slaughter Stone, still survives. Also surviving are two Station Stones, positioned across from each other on opposite sides of the circle, which may also have been erected during this time. Stonehenge I seems to have been used for about 500 years and then abandoned.

Construction of Stonehenge II began around 2100 BC. In this phase, a semicircle of granite stones known as bluestones (from their original coloring) was assembled within the original bank and ditch circles. Several aspects of this phase are intriguing. First, the bluestones come from the Preseli Mountains in South Wales, nearly 250 miles away. There were about 80 of them, weighing up to 4 tons each. How they were transported is not known, although scholars don't regard the feat as impossible and various theories have been presented. It is intriguing to wonder, however, what makes the Stonehenge site so special that so much effort would be expended to drag the giant stones 250 miles instead of constructing the monument near the quarry. Second, the entranceway to the semicircle of bluestones is aligned with the midsummer sunrise. The alignment was continued by the clearing of a new approach to the site, "The Avenue," which has ditches and banks on either side like the original outer circle. Two Heel Stones (so-named from the shape of the one that remains) were placed on the Avenue a short distance from the circle (and, today, very close to Highway A344). Stonehenge III is the stone circle that is still visible today. During this phase, which was started in about 2000 BC, the builders constructed a circle of upright sarsen stones, each pair of which was topped with a stone lintel (horizontal capstone). The lintels are curved to create a complete circle on top. There were originally 30 upright stones; 17 of these still stand. These stones came from the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles to the north, are 7 feet tall and weigh 50 tons each. The outside surfaces of all these stones were pounded smooth with hammers, and dovetail joints fasten the lintels to their uprights. Within this stone ring was erected a horseshoe formation of the same construction, using 10 upright stones. Here the trilithons (set of two uprights plus the lintel) stand separated from one another, in 5 pairs. Eight of the original ten stones remain. The horseshoe shape opens directly towards the Slaughter Stone and down the Avenue, aligned with the summer solstice sunrise. About a century later, about 20 bluestones gathered from Stonehenge II were placed in a horseshoe shape inside the sarsen horseshoe. Less than half of these remain. Some shuffling around of the bluestones and digging of holes (probably in preparation for placing the bluestones, which was not completed) occurred around 1500 BC. The Altar Stone is the biggest of these newly-arranged bluestones that remains. Around 1100 BC, the Avenue was extended all the way to the River Avon (over 9,000 feet from Stonehenge), indicating that the site was still in use at that time. Stonehenge stands in a grassy field in the Wiltshire countryside, and must have been a highly atmospheric site over the millennia since its construction. Unfortunately, in modern times the site has lost a great deal of this atmosphere, thanks to the intersection of two major highways nearby and the inevitable tourist infrastructure. In this regard, Avebury is far superior to Stonehenge.

That said, Stonehenge is such a magnificent monument that it would impress no matter where it is. The astonishing scale and beauty of the stones, the great care and labor in construction, and the mystery that surrounds original purpose are just some of the reasons Stonehenge is one of the most popular sights in England. And under stormy skies, a fresh snowfall, a rainbow, a full moon, or the rising sun on the summer solstice, it is a mystical site indeed. A visit to Stonehenge begins across the highway from the monument, at the large and efficientlyrun Visitor's Centre. There is a fee for parking as well as for admission, which includes an optional audio guide. A pedestrian passageway leads under the highway to Stonehenge itself, where a designated path allows for views from all sides. For conservation reasons, visitors are no longer allowed to approach the stones except on the summer solstice, but access can be arranged by appointment or on a special tour.

The heel stone

Circle of light: how Stonehenge shapes a landscape

Jonathan Jones continues his story of British art in pictures with a look at the mystical monument on Salisbury Plain that has haunted the British imagination for centuries. Stonehenge is a circle that shapes a landscape. The hills and valleys around it seem to radiate from it. Shaped and mounted between 3,000 and 2,500BC in a powerful architecture of pillar and lintel, its stones define geometry, mathematics, the power of the mind. It has haunted the British imagination. The medieval chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed Merlin brought the stones from Ireland; the romantic artists Blake and Constable powerfully pictured this mystic place.

Circle of light

Salford scientists reveal the 'sound of Stonehenge'

Bits missing Salford's clever academics, who once took me shopping in a virtual supermarket you sat in an armchair wearing a helmet and a glove have now recreated the sound of Stonehenge. We are nowhere nearer cracking the mystery of the monument as a result; but who would want to be? Apart from all the mountains of remaindered books of theories, a puzzle solved is never as gripping as a conundrum still under way. But the four-year project by Dr Bruno Fazenda and colleagues at Huddersfield and Bristol universities, has established how the shouts, speeches, songs or sacrificial screams would have sounded, whatever material they may have contained. The method has been a painstaking piece of 'archaeoacoustics', a relatively new discipline which reveals the sound quality of buildings from the past.

Secrets of Stonehenge
The mysteries of Stonehenge remain as deep as they ever were after the discovery of a 'twin' site on Salisbury Plain.

Aerial view of Stonehenge Though there was much in the recent series of Doctor Who that niggled me, the sight of our heroes galloping towards Stonehenge couldn't fail to squeeze out a gasp of delight. While I know nature is remarkable without exception, certainly not only cordoned off by a gorsedd of standing stones, there's something dizzying about the presence of stone marshals in formation. Summer news from Salisbury Plain suggests Stonehenge is no longer the only megalithic player in town. Pricking the arrogance of singularity, archeologists have found confirmation of a woodhenge buried beneath ground level within chanting distance of the stone circle. Professor Vince Gaffney calls the finding "remarkable", suggesting it will "completely change the way we think about the landscape around Stonehenge". Is that so? Presumably this is the same landscape that was so dramatically unaltered in October 2009 when another bluestone circle was discovered a mile away to the left. The same landscape that counts chalk horses, wood henges, barrows, tumps and stone avenues among its closest neighbours. And while it is almost beyond excitement to witness archeologists using clever machines, allowing them to see the subterranean landscape and map it digitally, the sun's unhurried arc across the sky seems to make more progress than the body of scientists exploring what these sites were for and how they were assembled. Those old stones sing to us still, that much is evident from the thousands of visitors who daily pay their fare to shuffle round them. Such is their popularity that the many have to be herded round them widdershins (anti-clockwise, hence decreasing the power of the stones) and reminded at regular intervals not to touch them. But what is it about them that keeps drawing us back, distracted from asking what we want to know by the multi-lingual audio-guides babbling away in our ears?

I am lucky enough to live way out west, about as far as you can get before reaching the Irish Sea. The landscape of Pembrokeshire has more than a tangential link with that of Stonehenge. The bluestones, which form such an integral though subtle part of the stone circle, have their origins in the wild rock-crested ridges of the Preseli mountains. The link between West Wales and mysticism is as intact as the one between Wimbledon and strawberries. Out on the fringes of the land you don't have to walk far before passing a lonely dolmen or recumbent burial chamber. Indeed, much like armoured police vans in central London, sacred sites out west seem to be becoming more frequent by the day. So confident was the modern world in claiming to have the number of our stone-moving ancestors, Coca-Cola mounted a challenge in 1999 to show how easy it would be to move a bluestone from Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire, using only the technology assumed to be available 4000 years ago. They jolted the stone downhill to Milford Haven using tree trunks as rollers and once at the estuary, attached it to a simple boat, with the intention of sailing it across the Bristol Channel. No sooner was it off shore than it sank, taking the Coca-Cola challenge with it. But the legacy of this millennial endeavour was to suggest that whatever energy helped form Stonehenge it was more than brute force and grunting. There are many different ways of gaining information from the natural world and the established scientific method presents one of them. The more intuitive and spiritual methods of consulting with the spirits of place, element, plant and animal might seem hilarious to those who would consider Glade Air Wick the acme of rational achievement, but they have as much a place in our relationship with the world. More, sometimes, in that they offer the individual conducting the questions a sense of humility instead of hubris, and don't see the need to kill or smash the object of enquiry. Or drop it into Milford Haven. Stonehenge attracts some because it's a riddle. For others, it is the most obvious situation in the world. A circle is a place to gather, to dance and drum or sit in silence and meditate. It's a place to heal and whisper and tell the time. For those who want to know how the stones got there and what they may mean, I'd advise putting down the audio guides and asking them; providing that the impossible is permitted to be an answer. There is a field not far from me where a stone has just risen, as if being born from the earth. Where there was recently nothing but tussocks of grass and clusters of Poppets-shaped sheep poo, there now stands a megalith. As compelling, even reassuring, as the rational method is, it is never the whole story. I can't help thinking the originators of sites like Stonehenge, however they constructed it, had a better understanding of this than us. For all our machines.

Stonehenge bones may be evidence of winter solstice feasts

Stonehenge was begun more than 5,000 years ago and developed over 1,000 years.

Some 4,500 years ago, as the solstice sun rose on Stonehenge, it is very likely that a midwinter feast would already have been roasting on the cooking fires. Experts believe that huge midwinter feasts were held in that period at the site and a startling picture is now emerging of just how far cattle were moved for the banquet. Recent analysis of the cattle and pig bones from the era found in the area suggests the cattle used were walked hundreds of miles to be slaughtered for the solstice celebrations from the west country or west Wales. Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield and his team have just won a grant of 800,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to answer some of the riddles about the enigmatic prehistoric monument. The grant is to fund Feeding Stonehenge, his follow-up research on the wealth of material, including animal bones, pottery and plant remains, which they found in recent excavations at Durrington Walls, a few miles from the stone circle a site which Parker Pearson believes key to understanding why Stonehenge was built and how it was used. His team fully excavated some huts but located the foundations of scores more, the largest neolothic settlement in Britain. To his joy it was a prehistoric tip, "the filthiest site known in Britain", as he dubbed it. "I've always thought when we admire monuments like Stonehenge, not enough attention has been given to who made the sandwiches and the cups of tea for the builders," said Parker Pearson.

"The logistics of the operation were extraordinary. Not just food for hundreds of people but antler picks, hide ropes, all the infrastructure needed to supply the materials and supplies needed. Where did they get all this food from? This is what we hope to discover." Stonehenge was begun almost 5,000 years ago with a ditch and earth bank, and developed over 1,000 years, with the circle of bluestones brought from the Preseli hills in west Wales, and the double decker bus sized sarsen stones. It was too early for the Phoenicians, the Romans or the largely mythical Celtic druids. The Anglo Saxons believed Stonehenge was the work of a race of lost giants, and a 12th-century historian explained that Merlin flew the huge stones from Ireland. It has been explained as a place of druidic sacrifice, a stone computer, a place of witchcraft and magic, a tomb, a temple or a solar calendar. It is aligned on both the summer and winter solstice, crucial dates which told prehistoric farmers that the time of harvest was coming, or the shortest day of winter past. Although not all archaeologists agree Geoff Wainwright and Tim Darvill have dubbed Stonehenge the stone age Lourdes, a place of healing by the magic bluestones Parker Pearson believes it was a place of the dead, while Durrington Walls, with its wooden henge, was the place of its living builders, and the generations who came to feast, and carry out rituals for their dead, moving from Durrington to the nearby river and on by the great processional avenue to Stonehenge. He found no evidence that Durrington was permanently inhabited or farmed, and the first tests on the pig and cattle bones support his theory that it was a place where people gathered for short periods on special occasions. The pigs were evidently slaughtered at mid-winter, and he expects the cattle bones to back this. What the sample already tested shows is that they were slaughtered immediately after arrival, after travelling immense distances. "We are going to know so much about the lives of the people who built Stonehenge," Parker Pearson said, "how they lived, what they ate, where they came from."