Stonehenge
Also called the Avenue, and three barrows adjacent to the Avenue forming part of a round barrow cemetery on Countess Farm
Location: Wiltshire, West Amesbury, Salisbury Plain, England
Coordinates: 51° 10′ 44″ N, 1° 49′ 34″ W
The monument is owned by The British Crown, the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust, and Stonehenge is managed by the English Heritage.
Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another 500 years.
It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 ft (4.0 m) high, seven ft (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds).
Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed from around 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC.
One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected scheduled monument since 1882, when legislation to protect historic monuments was first successfully introduced in Britain. The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1986.
read the rest at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
