Destination: Stonehenge — Part 1
Welcome to Destination: History, where we tackle interesting and fascinating places and take a stroll through the history behind them.
This the first of a two-parter. There is just so much good stuff for today’s destination that there was no way to fit this into one article. So for today’s article come along on a journey of moving big heavy stones around the country just to make a pretty design.
Join me as we take a look at today’s destination: Stonehenge, Part 1.
See Part 2 here:
Before the Stones
We start our journey way back in the Mesolithic Period and as we look around and take in our surroundings we see that there appears to be a fair bit of land covered in woods, especially down here in Southern England. But then there’s this odd open space and it’s this open space that in the current times, while the surrounds are definitely different, sits Stonehenge. Perhaps this is why Stonehenge is placed where it is, it was just a conveniently empty space.
The earliest structures that are believed to have stood in the area are thought to have been large pine posts that may have had a striking resemblance to the totem poles you see in Native American cultures. They’re believed to have popped up in this Mesolithic Period, or roughly between 8500 and 7000 BC.
Even though these posts appeared in the same area where Stonehenge sits today it isn’t really known if these totem-like poles had anything to do with Stonehenge. So there’s your first mystery for you.
Both the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods were dominated by hunter-gatherer groups. It’s really weird to see hunter-gatherers building monuments so grand as Stonehenge, they certainly didn’t have the technology to make it anything resembling easy. And it seems they were alone in their decision to create the structure as you won’t see anything like it anywhere else in north-western Europe.
And yet the area surrounding Stonehenge is pretty pumped full of evidence of massive hunter-gatherer activity throughout the Neolithic Period. You don’t even have to go 5 km from Stonehenge before you find barrows, which are Neolithic burial mounds, and cursus’, Neolithic ditches or trenches.
Right at the beginning of the Neolithic Period, so we’re now looking about 1500 years before Stonehenge, it’s believed that people started filtering in from Continental Europe. And the first domesticated plants and animals appear to have come with them.
And it’s these early people that seemed to have brought the ideas of building and making objects and monuments. This can be seen in how styles and ideas were shared across the British Isles, interestingly in the evidence left to us it seems that each region had their own distinctive style. The carved stone balls found throughout north-east Scotland is an example of this. Hundreds of them have popped up and believed to have been prevalent around 3100 and 2600 BC. While we really don’t know why they were made, they’re an interesting find for the area and the time period.
Much like our understanding of the purpose of Stonehenge, as well as the people who put the thing together, we don’t really have any idea why they would have dragged massive stones over decent distances without any modern invention.
A Henge of Stones
Stonehenge is an engineering marvel. Built before the invention of the wheel, or even before any metal tools to make the process easier, the stones were shaped and brought to their current position using basic and simplistic tools.
And it wasn’t just Stonehenge, all over the Salisbury Plain you’ll find evidence of occupation throughout these early periods. In fact, between 2200 and 1700 BC, which is part of the Bronze Age, you’ll find over 1000 barrows (or ancient burial mounds) along the River Avon from Stonehenge all the way up to Durrington.
The henge itself was built in several stages, we’ll get to the particulars of that in a moment, but for now we’ll just look at the basic strokes.
Initially there was a henge monument little is known about this but part of the stone circle that we see today was added throughout the late Neolithic period or around 2500 BC.
It’s believed that these people who made this early Stonehenge would have used deer antlers to have dug the circular ditch on the Plain.
As well as stones a ring of holes has also been discovered, called the Aubrey Holes after the 17th century antiquarian, John Aubrey, who found the holes and realised they were in a ring. Since then archaeologists and historians have come to the conclusion that timber posts would have sat in these holes. So perhaps not STONEhenge, but MIXEDhenge? But this school of thought is constantly changing, the truth is that no one really knows what would have sat in these holes.
It’s also thought that the burial mounds that you see nearby would have popped up in the early Bronze Age. And it’s not just burial mounds, there are evidence of buried cremations. Which does give rise to the theory that Stonehenge was a Neolithic cemetery.
So of the stones that appear at Stonehenge there are two distinct types. The larger stones are known as ‘sarsens’ and the smaller ones are named ‘bluestones’.
You’ll find the sarsens in two concentric circles, the inner one is a horseshoe shape and the outer one a circle. The bluestones are in between the two sarsens circles and are in a double arc.
It’s thought that the sarsens were brought over to the Salisbury Plain from West Woods near Marlborough Downs, about 25 km north of Stonehenge. That’s a fair way to drag a stone for an art installation, especially when the stones weigh about 25 tonnes and that’s just the small ones the largest stone at Stonehenge, known as the Heel Stone, weighs about 30 tonnes.
On four of the sarsen stones archaeologists found they were carved with hundreds of images of axe-heads and daggers. They look to be similar to bronze axes that supposedly date to between about 1750 and 1500, so not too long after the henge was built perhaps while things were still being tweaked. The images are thought to maybe be a status symbol in the societies living in the early Bronze Age, but much like everything to do with Stonehenge a definitive answer is ever elusive.
Some of the sarsens have a lintel sitting atop, and these structures are known as trilithons, and can be seen upright at the centre of Stonehenge.
While there are only 50 sarsen stones that you can see when you visit the henge yourself, it’s believed that back in its heyday there would have been way more, but yet again that exact figure is not exactly known.
It’s believed that Stonehenge was being tweaked and stones moved around until about 1600 BC, the reason we know this is because radiocarbon dating of the bluestones has been carried out multiple times.
The bluestones are the smaller stones that you see. It’s believed that these guys came from Preseli Hills in the south-west of Wales, that’s over 250 km from Wales to Stonehenge. Clearly these stones must have held some importance to the Neolithic people, surely if they were carried all that way.
One theory is that the people who built Stonehenge may have used tree trunks to roll the stones from the Preseli Hills all the way over to Salisbury. Another interesting theory is that they used rafts to float the stones down along the coast and then up the River Avon, which actually seems like a pretty ingenious idea. Work smarter, not harder.
The name of ‘bluestones’ might be a bit strange to some of us because the stones aren’t necessarily blue in colour. That bluish appearance does appear however when the stone gets wet or when the stones are freshly broken, so if you want to see the colours try and get there on a typically drizzly English day.
The stones are a fair bit lighter than the sarsen stones, about 2 to 5 tonnes for each of them. Which does make sense as it’s believed that originally 80 bluestones would have sat at Stonehenge but you can only see just over half of them if you visit today.
Here’s Andrew Fitzpatrick from Wessex Archaeology to tell us what the movement of the stones meant:
Their arrival is when Stonehenge was transformed from a quite ordinary and typical monument into something unusual.
Roughly 300 years later the bluestones were moved around so that they formed a circle and then a smaller inner oval. But this wouldn’t be their final arrangement, later down the track they would be moved again this time to form an outer circle and an inner horseshoe which coincidentally is the formation you see today.
It’s also around this time of stone rearrangement that it’s thought that the avenue that connects Stonehenge with the River Avon was formed.
An interesting discovery was that of the Y and Z holes, antler remains found within them have been radiocarbon dated to around 1800 and 1500 BC which means that these holes could have been the last prehistoric activity to have taken place at Stonehenge. Like so much else to do with the stones their purpose is not known, but it is thought that it may have been the start of a new layout for the stones that was cut short and never completed.
In order to get all the stones sitting nicely and the lintels to not fall off a system of mortice holes and tenons was used. Once the stones were erected and upright using wooden stakes and A-frames they were then able to, supposedly, use timber platforms to raise the lintels into position. On the top of the upright stones the top of the stone would have been shaved down except for a bump, this bump would then have a corresponding ‘hole’ in the bottom of the lintel. This protruding tenon would sit in the mortice hole of the lintel ensuring the lintel wouldn’t move. The amount of precise measurements here from a prehistoric peoples is just astounding. And for some double protection, lintels next to each other would be held fast by tongue and groove joints. This is particularly interesting because you usually don’t see this kind of joint outside of woodworking.
For some cool images of the way the stones are slotted together check out this link.
It’s believed that in the early Bronze Age a majority of the barrows found around Stonehenge were built and it looks as if the chosen location was on purpose. This has led credence to the theory that Stonehenge has something to do with burials.
But as we move into the Middle Bronze Age we start to see less and less monuments, like that of Stonehenge, constructed and more focus on farming and fields.
It seems that during the Roman period, so from about 43 AD, that Stonehenge would have been a spot visited by Romans mainly due to the amount of Roman objects found in around the henge. But recent excavations have raised the theory that perhaps Stonehenge was used as a place of ritual for the Roman people as well.
It’s actually from the medieval period that we see the first written records of Stonehenge. These early references are thought to be the earliest surviving ones about the Stones and the number of mentions only increase as we move further away from the 14th century, they even threw in some drawings and paintings just to keep things interesting.
Building the Henge
So archaeologists and historians now know that Stonehenge was probably being worked on and perfected for close to 400 years.
Unfortunately little is known about Stonehenge throughout the early years mainly because our own early excavations weren’t exactly the best. Here’s Mike Pitts to tell us a bit more about it, he’s the editor of British Archaeology and has actually led an excavation at Stonehenge himself which is a rare thing these days.
But none of these [early] excavations were particularly well recorded. We are still unsure of the detail of the chronology and nature of the various structure that once stood on the site.
Anyway, what we do know is that Stonehenge was made in stages, we think about six, so let’s get stuck into them.
The first stage of Stonehenge is thought to have been built between 3000 and 2935 BC. This is the oldest part of the henge and was basically just a circular ditch measuring about 100 metres across. Found within the circle where about 56 holes, they would later be known as Aubrey Holes. These were named after the bloke that figured out what they were in 1666, John Aubrey.
It’s thought that those who built this circular ditch used antlers as prehistoric picks to dig the ditch, this is evidenced by the pieces of antler found at the bottom of the ditch during an excavation. It was also found that cattle and deer bones that seemed to already have been a couple hundred years old were placed in the ditch as well.
As previously mentioned, the theory behind what the Aubrey Holes purpose was has changed over the years. Initially it was thought that the holes held wooden posts, but excavation and research carried out by the Stonehenge Riverside Project found that it’s more likely the holes held bluestones whose origin would have been Wales.
It really is a definite possibility that Stonehenge had a part to play in burial and the fact that about 150–240 cremation sites were found within and around the circular ditch and Aubrey Holes does only add to the likelihood of this possibility.
Of the cremation burials about 64 were excavated in the first decade of the 21st century and of these excavated burials most of them were adult males, so the archaeologists came to the conclusion that the area around the Aubrey Holes was originally used as a place of burial, probably between 3000 and 2300 BC. Oddly enough Stonehenge is actually the largest cemetery known in Britain that dates back to the 3rd millennium BC.
The remains of a smaller stone circle made of bluestones and creatively known as Bluestonehenge was found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2009 about 1.6km away on the bank of the River Avon. It’s believed Blustonehenge was made up of 25 bluestones and was possibly used as a place for cremation before the remains were scattered at Stonehenge. Sadly Bluestonehenge no longer exists, it’s actually believed that the stones that made up Bluestonehenge were later relocated to Stonehenege itself.
It’s believed that these bluestones came all the way from southwest Wales, or more precisely the Preseli Mountains. It’s also thought that the Altar Stone along with another two sandstone uprights came from the Brecon Beacon’s, which is a group of mountains that can be found about 100 km east of the Preseli ones.
The Altar stone is an interesting one, it isn’t actually an altar at all. It only got that name because Inigo Jones, a 17th century architect (not to be mistaken with Indiana Jones, the fictional archaeologist), thought that the toppled stone that just happened to land in the centre of the circle looked like an altar.
Even though the consensus is that these stones were dragged all the way from Wales to Salisbury, there are some geologists that argue the point that the stones may have already been sitting, very conveniently, in the Salisbury Plain brought there by glaciers throughout the ice-age. But there is some contention about this theory. It’s just so convenient.
The Heelstone, quite a large sarsen, is also believed to have been put in at this first stage of construction, actually there are some that believe it may have been there even before this first stage.
Now except for some burials continuing, the people must have been pretty chuffed with their construction efforts because there doesn’t appear to be any activity taking place between the first and second stages in Stonehenge’s construction. So basically between 2935 and 2640 the place was used as is.
The second stage of construction is thought to have been between 2640 and 2480 BC. It was actually around 2500 BC that the majority of the sarsen stones would have been brought down from Marlborough Downs.
It’s thought that the stones were first placed northeast of the henge where they were made smooth by the use of hammer stones then, when they were ready, they would be taken into the circle and placed in the appropriate spot. The initial formation of the sarsen stones would have been five trilithons (which are two upright stones with a lintel sitting on top) in a horseshoe shape, the largest trilithon would have sat in the middle, and there would have been 30 upright sarsens forming a circle each with their lintels slightly curved, to take into account the curvature of the circle, and linked together with that tongue and groove joint we talked about earlier.
Most of the sarsens put in are about 5.5 metres high and weigh about 25 tonnes, but the massive trilithon, the one found in the centre, was about 9 to 10 metres high and weighed about 45 tonnes. We only have an estimate for this as there’s only one of the uprights remaining and it currently measures about 7 metres tall. Even sadder is that only 6 out of, what’s thought to be, around 230 lintels are still in their original spots in the sarsen circle and there are two more that have fallen, but of the five sarsen trilithons three are still in their spot with the remaining two on the ground as well.
The incomplete sarsen circle does lend itself to some theories about what might have happened. Of course the circle may have just never been completed. But because there is an empty hole it does suggest that perhaps this stone was used by the Romans for one of their buildings nearby.
The bluestones are believed to have originally been in a double arc, Richard Atkinson, who took part in excavations in the 50s and 60s, named these holes the Q and R holes. According to Atkinson, the Q and R Holes were around before the sarsen stones and trilithons were brought in, but when Darvill and Wainwright came along and excavated in 2008 they weren’t too sure about this. (We’ll talk more about these guys in part two). It’s thought that these bluestones were reused from Bluestonehenge and that the arc they formed were meant to be a part of the sarsen circle and trilithons.
The bluestones themselves are pretty small at 2 metres tall compared to the sarsens and oddly enough most of them are their natural shape as opposed to the worked smooth sarsens.
The Station Stones which are four upright stones that stand near the Aubrey holes are thought to have been added during this second stage of construction, but there are some that think they may have been added in between the first and second stages. The stones were put in a rectangle that was inline with the great trilithon and the bluestone arc, which conveniently (or not) was also aligned with the solstitial axis. Unfortunately, only two of the four have survived the many centuries that have passed.
Presumably around the same time as the sarsens were going up about 3 km away two concentric timber circles were being built. The larger of these is known as the Southern Circle and could be found in the middle of an ancient settlement. The smaller of the two is known as the Northern Circle and was built just north of the ancient settlement.
This ancient settlement is thought to have been made up of about 1000 houses and spread across 17 hectares after an excavation of nine of the houses took place between 2004 and 2007. It’s believed that the settlement was used as a seasonal builders’ camp for all the stones and timber posts that were being up-righted in the immediate area. Interestingly just outside the settlement stood the third timber circle in the area, known as Woodhenge for obvious reasons.
The third stage of the Stonehenge construction appears to have taken place between 2470 and 2280 BC. It was sometime throughout this period that the ceremonial avenue that links Stonehenge to the River Avon was dug. It’s thought that the avenue was along the same path that the bluestones would have gone along when they were moved from Bluestonehenge to the Q and R Holes that appeared during the second stage.
The avenue isn’t uniform in its width varying from about 18 to 35 metres and the avenue ends at a small henge close to the river. Oddly enough the first 500 metres closest to Stonehenge are aligned with the summer solstice sunrise and the sunset of the winter solstice. Amazingly excavations that took place in 2008 showed that these 500 metres were built along a natural chalk ridge that just happened to be aligned to the solstices.
The fourth stage of construction was between 2280 and 2030 BC, but it was around 2200 BC that the bluestones were moved around so that they formed a circle and an inner oval. Our mate Atkinson had the thought that the inner oval was changed to form a horseshoe by Romans removing the stones or someone later on taking one of the stones for themselves.
Stonehenge’s fifth construction stage occurred between 2030 and 1750 BC, it was also somewhere in here that the Z Holes were dug. This ring of pits was found outside the Sarsen circle.
A similar thing happened throughout the sixth construction stage, which is thought to have been between 1640 and 1520 BC, the Y Holes, a second ring of pits, was dug. Unfortunately because of the large estimation ranges with radiocarbon dating pretty much all of the dates can be out by several decades, sometimes even centuries, so take any dating around Stonehenge with a couple of grains of salt.
Excavations of the Stones
The earliest known excavation to have taken place at Stonehenge was, supposedly, to have been in the very centre of the stone circles. It was George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, who was out looking for treasure in the 1620s and must have thought that a group of stones could very easily be a substitute for an ‘X’.
The intrigue that Villiers brought with him to the stones had James I, who was King at the time, thinking something could be important here, so he got our old friend Inigo Jones, the architect, to come round and have a good look into the stones. Eventually coming to the conclusion that Stonehenge had to have been built by the Romans, and why not, most things were.
Old mate John Aubrey stopped by in the late 17th century and started surveying the stones, this was where he first recorded the ring of pits that would later bear his name, the Aubrey Holes. But Aubrey wasn’t all about the holes in the ground, his is actually the first known drawing of Stonehenge to be of any accuracy which he produced in 1666.
But Aubrey didn’t limit himself to just Stonehenge, he went all over Britain studying and surveying all the other circles he came across, namely Avebury, and pretty much came to the conclusion that it couldn’t have been the Romans or even the Danes that had built the Stone circle, it had to have been even earlier, it had to have been the native inhabitants of the land, and that meant Druids. Why Druids? Probably because back in the day they were the only prehistoric people that priests had thought worthy enough to mention in their classical writings. So Druids it was.
Aubrey’s conclusion about the Druids was backed up by another antiquarian, William Stukeley, who popped round to survey Stonehenge in the 18th century, he was actually the first one to recognise and record the Avenue and the Cursus that sits nearby.
It was also Stukeley who first used the term ‘trilithon’ when talking about two upright stones and a lintel sitting on top. And he was serious about studying Stonehenge, reportedly, in 1723 he spent over two days just measuring the stones, ending up with over 2000 measurements.
By using units of measurement he was able to disprove that Stonehenge was built by the Romans, because the Roman units of measurement weren’t used when placing the stones. When using the Roman units of measurement
the distance between the stones produced fractions of numbers.
The fact that the distances between stones weren’t whole numbers according to the Romans, Stukeley decided was
ridiculous and without design.
So Stukeley came to the same conclusion as Aubrey: the stones had to have been made before the Romans, by the ancient inhabitants of the land, and that meant more Druids.
Once we get round to 1874 Sir William Flinders Petrie had turned up to survey Stonehenge for himself. Coming back to do it again in 1877 allowed him to devise a numbering system for each of the stones that we actually still use today. Known more for his work in Egypt, Flinders Petrie was able to draw the most accurate image of Stonehenge.
In the late 19th century one of the sarsen stones and, consequently, its lintel fell and this prompted concerns about the stability of the stones. And so in 1901 we see some of the stones, particularly the large trilithon that was leaning at the time, straightened to preserve their positions. Professor William Gowland took advantage of the straightening work going on to conduct some excavations around the base of the leaning stones. By using excavation techniques he brought with him from Japan, and piecing together what he found, Gowland was able to put forward the theory that the stones were built in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.
Not too long later in 1918 Stonehenge’s ownership changed from a private owner to that of the Office of Works, we will go into more detail about this in part 2 but this change in ownership meant that a survey was conducted that deemed a couple of stones as unsafe and therefore a full-on programme of restoration and excavation was needed.
Enter Lieutenant-Colonel William Hawley, originally a military man he found his passion in archaeology and was asked to oversee the programme at Stonehenge in 1919. After first concentrating on straightening the most dangerous of the stones, Hawley soon started to focus on the excavation part of the programme in 1920, which included
[excavating] the whole of Stonehenge within and including the circular ditch and bank.
Even though Hawley’s excavations were cut short he managed to get a surprising amount done. Recently his work has faced some criticism but he was a meticulous observer and compared to the standards and methods of the time he did a pretty decent job. In fact it was actually Hawley who named the pits, first noted by John Aubrey, the Aubrey Holes. And it was in fact Hawley who thought they had originally held bluestones but he, himself, changed his mind when he saw that Woodhenge was made of timber posts. But as we know current thinking is that the Aubrey Holes did in fact hold stones after all. It was also during Hawley’s time that the Y and Z holes were uncovered.
Hawley was out there excavating for a good seven seasons, much of the time by himself but he didn’t let that stop him from jotting down his thoughts and theories on the reasons for the stones. But his theories were incomplete due to the limited knowledge of the Neolithic and Bronze Age inhabitants of the land. Knowledge in this area really only started to grow as Hawley was finishing up his work at Stonehenge.
Aerial photography of the whole place was taken in 1925 and 1926 and it showed dark spots near the henge known as Durrington Walls. It was the Wiltshire archaeologist, Maud Cunnington, who, along with her husband and a small team, went about excavating the site where the dark spots were found. This site, mainly because of its similarities to Stonehenge, was called Woodhenge. Cunnington published the results of her excavations and even created a presentation for visitors by marking where the timber posts would have stood with concrete pillars.
Around 1950 Richard Atkinson, Stuart Piggott and JFS ‘Marcus’ Stone turned up to have a look at excavating Stonehenge themselves and they hung around until 1964. They really wanted to answer some questions that had been left open by Hawley as well as take part in restabilising the stones.
The Society of Antiquaries asked Atkinson if he could have a look at the records left unpublished by Hawley in 1950 and see if he could work them into a publishable volume. In order to do this, the three blokes decided that some extra limited excavations would be needed if they were going to attempt to answer those unanswered questions. So they went ahead and closely looked at two of the Aubrey Holes, the Heel Stone, part of the Avenue, part of the bank and ditch and a selection of bluestones.
Even though he was an active professor, first at the University of Edinburgh and later at Cardiff University, Atkinson was quite involved with the restoration project that took place between 1958 and 1964, which actually uncovered a double bluestone arc.
Atkinson went ahead and wrote a book on his theories about Stonehenge, mainly his ‘three-stage chronology’ for the site. He was also pretty popular doing TV and radio guest spots, but oddly enough he never fulfilled his originally purpose of formally publishing his and Hawley’s left-over research. It wasn’t actually until 1995 that an archaeological report on the excavations was officially published by Wessex Archaeology.
The report showed the chronological development of Stonehenge and it was Alex Baylis, who was an expert on radiocarbon dating, who went down to Salisbury to use new techniques to figure out just what was the chronology. It is Baylis’ research that allows us to understand the phases of which Stonehenge was built as well as the changes that would have taken place in the surrounding landscape towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC.
It was also around this time that Faith Vatcher led excavations on the Stonehenge landscape, discovering postholes that dated from well before the stones were brought in, meaning that there was activity in the area about 4000 years before Stonehenge was even constructed. It’s the posts that would have sat in these postholes that hold a likeness to the totem poles of north-eastern Native America. Vatcher went on to publish the official guidebook for all Avebury monuments. So if you’re interested make sure you check it out. The Avebury Monuments, Wiltshire, by Faith Vatcher .
In 2002 there was an increase in interest in the Stonehenge landscape and excavations started up once again.
Between 2003 and 2009 Professor Mike Parker Pearson led the Stonehenge Riverside Project which looked to prove that Stonehenge was somehow related to the monuments found at Durrington Walls. An avenue has been found linking one of the circles at Durrington Walls to the River Avon, just as Stonehenge is linked and evidence of occupation has also been found in the form of burials, pottery and structures, potentially providing new insights on rituals and movement of the native inhabitants.
As part of the Strumble-Preseli Ancient Communities and Environmental Study, or SPACES project, Tim Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright dug a trench near the stones revealing activity of Roman occupation at some point.
From 2009 to 2013 English Heritage, which is now known as Historic England, had some research teams come in and do some quite detailed earthwork surveys of all the major monuments in the area including Stonehenge. Part of the survey meant that Stonehenge would be checked over with lasers which turned out to be very revealing. The lasers revealed carvings on the stones from the Bronze Age and even provided new understandings in how the stones were smoothed and shaped.
And as a geophysical survey was taken of the wider landscape in 2013 new details emerged of the known sites but it also uncovered a couple of new ones like barrows, henges and a couple more pits.
When 2016 came about Stonehenge was celebrating 30 years classed as a World Heritage Site along with Avebury which meant that it was one of the first sites found in the UK to be added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Here’s a bit about what UNESCO has to say about the sites:
Stonehenge is the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, while Avebury is the largest in the world. Together… they help us to understand Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial and mortuary practices. They demonstrate around 2000 years of continuous use and monument building … As such they represent a unique embodiment of our collective heritage.
Whatever significance they held back in the day they certainly are significant to us now.
Even though 2020 was a shocker of a year it turned out to be an exciting one for Stonehenge. All the way back in 1958 cores were taken of the stones in an effort to pinpoint their origin through chemical composition analysis. Something had happened where it hadn’t worked or they had been lost of something and the whole thing was dropped because more core drilling would only hurt the stones. But who else than 89 year old Robert Phillips came forward. He had been a part of the works back in ’58 and wanted to return part of the core. Well, happy days. Researchers set about doing their analysing with fancy machines and came to the conclusion that the core of the sarsen stones had in fact definitely come from West Woods near Marlborough.
This is Susan Greaney, from English Heritage, telling it like it is:
While we had our suspicions that Stonehenge’s sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, we didn’t know for sure, and with areas of sarsens across Wiltshire, the stones could have come from anywhere … this evidence highlights just how carefully considered and deliberate the building of this phase of Stonehenge was.
The interest in Stonehenge and its landscape has not waned in the last several decades and it continues today through ‘intense archaeological research’ by specialist teams. There is even
a set of research questions for the monument and the wider World Heritage site…set out in the Stonehenge WHS Archaeological Research Framework.
Check out this link to the Archaeological Research Framework if you wish to peruse it.
So this is the end of Part 1 for Stonehenge see below for Part 2, where we’ll get into the real interesting stuff like the theories behind why Stonehenge was built and what it was used for, the henge’s role in the war and how Stonehenge has been and continues to be cared for.
If you liked this article and want to hear it in an audio format then check out the Destination: History podcast in your favourite podcast app.
Liked this article? There’s more where that came from. Become a paid member, like me, and you can read until you just can’t read anymore. Here’s a link to become a member (by joining through my link, part of your membership fee will be directly supporting my work).
Originally published at https://destinationhistorypod.com on October 17, 2021.
