A prehistoric monument near Amesbury, Wiltshire, S England, UK, 130 km/80 mi W of London; a world heritage site. It was constructed in three major phases within the MiddleLate Neolithic period: 29502900 BC, a circular ditch with low inner and outer banks, c.110 m/360 ft in diameter, and a circle of pits known as Aubrey Holes which perhaps held timber posts; 29002400 BC, posts were set up inside the earthwork, and cremations were placed in the Aubrey Holes; the third phase, 25501600 BC, is that of the surviving stone monument, when a 30 m/100 ft diameter lintelled circle and inner horseshoe of 80 dressed sarsen (sandstone) blocks, each weighing 2050 tonnes, were erected, and bluestones from South Wales were set up in a circle and horseshoe. Alignment on the midsummer sunrise/midwinter sunset implies prehistoric use for seasonal festivals, but the association with the druids dates only from 1905, and has no historical basis. The theory, proposed in 1921 by British petrographer Herbert Thomas, that the pillars had been transported by land on wooden rollers from South Wales to Salisbury Plain has now been superseded by the view that they were carried to the area by glaciers.
Stonehenge is a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. It is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones and is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world. Archaeologists think that the standing stones were erected between 2500 BCE and 2000 BCE although the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Stonehenge itself is owned and managed by English Heritage whilst the surrounding downland is owned by the National Trust.
Etymology
Christopher Chippendale's Stonehenge Complete gives the derivation of Stonehenge as coming from the Old English words "stān" meaning "stone", and either "hencg" meaning "hinge" (because the stone lintels hinge on the upright stones) or "hen(c)en" meaning "gallows" or "instrument of torture". Medieval gallows consisted of two uprights with a lintel joining them, resembling Stonehenge's trilithons, rather than looking like the inverted L-shape more familiar today.
The "henge" portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. As often happens in archaeological terminology, this is a holdover from antiquarian usage, and Stonehenge cannot in fact be truly classified as a henge site as its bank is inside its ditch. Despite being contemporary with true Neolithic henges and stone circles, Stonehenge is in many ways atypical. Stonehenge is only distantly related to the other stones circles in the British Isles, such as the Ring of Brodgar.
Development of Stonehenge
The Stonehenge complex was built in several construction phases spanning 2,000 years, although there is evidence for activity both before and afterwards on the site.
Dating and understanding the various phases of activity at Stonehenge is not a simple task; Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles and stones visible today are shown coloured.
Before the monument
Archaeologists have found four (or possibly five, although one may have been a natural tree throw) large Mesolithic postholes which date to around 8000 BC nearby, beneath the modern tourist car-park. At this time, Salisbury Plain was still wooded but four thousand years later, during the earlier Neolithic, a cursus monument was built 600m north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the forest and exploit the area.
Stonehenge 1
The first monument consisted of a circular bank and ditch enclosure (7 and 8) measuring around 110 m (360 feet) in diameter with a large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south (14).
Stonehenge 2
Evidence of the second phase is no longer visible. Stonehenge is therefore interpreted as functioning as an enclosed cremation cemetery at this time, the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles.
Stonehenge 3 I
Archaeological excavation has indicated that around 2600 BC, timber was abandoned in favour of stone and two concentric crescents of holes (called the Q and R Holes) were dug in the centre of the site. The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on the plan) 43 of which were derived from the Preseli Hills, 250 km away in modern day Pembrokeshire in Wales. Other standing stones may well have been small sarsens, used later as lintels. What was to become known as the Altar Stone (1), a six-ton specimen of green micaceous sandstone, twice the height of the bluestones, is derived from either South Pembrokeshire or the Brecon Beacons and may have stood as a single large monolith.
The north eastern entrance was also widened at this time with the result that it precisely matched the direction of the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset of the period. This phase of the monument was abandoned unfinished however, the small standing stones were apparently removed and the Q and R holes purposefully backfilled. Even so, the monument appears to have eclipsed the site at Avebury in importance towards the end of this phase and the Amesbury Archer, found in 2002 three miles (5 km) to the south, would have seen the site in this state.
The Heelstone (5) may also have been erected outside the north eastern entrance during this period although it cannot be securely dated and may have been installed at any time in phase 3. Two, or possibly three, large portal stones were set up just inside the northeastern entrance of which only one, the fallen Slaughter Stone (4), 16 ft (4.9 m) long, now remains. Other features loosely dated to phase 3 include the four Station Stones (6), two of which stood atop mounds (2 and 3).
Stonehenge 3 II
The next major phase of activity at the tail end of the 3rd millennium BC saw 30 enormous sarsen stones (shown grey on the plan) brought from a quarry around 24 miles (40 km) north to the site on the Marlborough Downs. The stones were dressed and fashioned with mortise and tenon joints before 30 were erected as a 33 m (108 ft) diameter circle of standing stones with a 'lintel' of 30 stones resting on top. Each standing stone was around 4.1 m (13.5 feet) high, 2.1 m (7.5 feet) wide and weighed around 25 tons. the orthostats widen slightly towards the top in order that their perspective remains constant as they rise up from the ground whilst the lintel stones curve slightly to continue the circular appearance of the earlier monument. The average thickness of these stones is 1.1 m (3.75 feet) and the average distance between them is 1 m (3.5 feet). A total of 74 stones would have been needed to complete the circle and unless some of the sarsens were removed from the site, it would seem that the ring was left incomplete. Of the lintel stones, they are each around 3.2 m long (10.5 feet), 1 m (3.5 feet) wide and 0.8 m (2.75 feet) thick.
Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape 13.7 m (45 feet) across with its open end facing north east.
The images of a 'dagger' and 14 'axe-heads' have been recorded carved on one of the sarsens, known as stone 53. Further axe-head carvings have been seen on the outer faces of stones known as numbers 3, 4, and 5.
This ambitious phase is radiocarbon dated to between 2440 and 2100 BC.
Stonehenge 3 III
Later in the Bronze Age, the bluestones appear to have been re-erected for the first time, although the precise details of this period are still unclear.
Stonehenge 3 IV
This phase saw further rearrangement of the bluestones as they were placed in a circle between the two settings of sarsens and in an oval in the very centre. All the stones were well-spaced uprights without any of the linking lintels inferred in Stonehenge 3 III. Although this would seem the most impressive phase of work, Stonehenge 3 IV was rather shabbily built compared to its immediate predecessors, the newly re-installed bluestones were not at all well founded and began to fall over. Stonehenge 3 IV dates from 2280 to 1930 BC.
Stonehenge 3 V
Soon afterwards, the north eastern section of the Phase 3 IV Bluestone circle was removed, creating a horseshoe-shaped setting termed the Bluestone Horseshoe.
Stonehenge 3 VI
Two further rings of pits were dug outside the outermost sarsen circle, called the Y and Z Holes (11 and 12). Monument building at Stonehenge appears to have ended around 1600 BC.
After the monument
Even though the last known construction of Stonehenge was about 1600 BC, and the last known usage of Stonehenge was during the Iron Age (if not as late as the 7th century), where Roman coins, prehistoric pottery, an unusual bone point and a skeleton of a young male (780-410 cal BC) were found, we have no idea if Stonehenge was in continuous use or exactly how it was used. The burial of a decapitated Saxon man has also been excavated from Stonehenge, dated to the 7th century. For further details of Stonehenge's historical role, see below.
Theories about Stonehenge
Early interpretations
Many early historians were influenced by supernatural folktales in their explanations.
In 1615, Inigo Jones argued that Stonehenge was a Roman temple, dedicated to Caelus, (a Latin name for the Greek sky-god Ouranos), and built following the Tuscan order.
The first academic effort to survey and understand the monument was made around 1640 by John Aubrey. He declared Stonehenge the work of Druids.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, John Lubbock was able to attribute the site to the Bronze Age based on the bronze objects found in the nearby barrows.
The early attempts to figure out the people who had undertaken this colossal project have since been debunked.
First there is the matter of radio carbon dating the construction of the site itself. As has been already stated in the construction outlines above, the monument building of the site began around the year 3100 BC and ended around the year 1600. The theories of Inigo Jones and others that Stonehenge was built as a Roman temple have been long dismissed.
Other theories that have been taken out of consideration were the idea that Egyptian or Mycenaean or even Greek cultures, which coincided with the popular belief that these cultures infused Europe with Bronze Age culture.
The question that dominates the debate as to what Stonehenge was used for can be easily divided into those that believe it to be a religious or a scientific observatory.
Further supporting this line of evidence is the fact that the site’s alignment is focused along the lunar lines in a way that increases the accuracy of procession, which is the amount that the Earth’s slight tilt on its axis, or “wobble” will eventually change the timing of lunar events.
Again, much of the early interpretations as to the nature of this site and the reason for its construction can be theorized and speculated upon, but there is no bulk of hard evidence to point us in one direction or the other.
Archaeoastronomy and Stonehenge
Stonehenge is aligned northeast–southwest, and it has been suggested that particular significance was placed by its builders on the solstice and equinox points, so for example on a midsummer's morning, the sun rose close to the Heelstone, and the sun's first rays went directly into the centre of the monument between the horseshoe arrangement.
A huge debate was triggered by the 1963 publication of Stonehenge Decoded, by British born astronomer Gerald Hawkins, who claimed to see a large number of astronomical alignments, both lunar and solar, at the site and argued that Stonehenge could have been used to predict eclipses. Their theories have faced criticism in recent decades from Richard Atkinson and others who have suggested impracticalities in the 'Stone Age calculator' interpretative approach.
The bluestones
Roger Mercer has observed that the bluestones are incongruously finely worked and has suggested that they were transferred to Salisbury Plain from an as yet unlocated earlier monument in Pembrokeshire. Stone felt that a Bluestone monument had earlier stood near the nearby Stonehenge cursus and been moved to their current site from there. Oval shaped settings of bluestones similar to those at Stonehenge 3iv are also known at the sites of Bedd Arthur in the Preseli Hills and at Skomer Island off the southwest coast of Pembrokeshire.
Recent analysis of contemporary burials found nearby known as the Boscombe Bowmen, has indicated that at least some of the individuals associated with Stonehenge 3 came either from Wales or from some other European area of ancient rocks.
The main source of the bluestones is now identified with the dolerite outcrops around Carn Menyn although work led by Olwen Williams-Thorpe of the Open University has shown that other bluestones came from outcrops up to 10 km away.
Aubrey Burl and a number of geologists and geomorphologists contend that the bluestones were not transported by human agency at all and were instead brought by glaciers at least part of the way from Wales during the Pleistocene.
Stonehenge as part of a ritual landscape
Many archaeologists believe Stonehenge was an attempt to render in permanent stone the more common timber structures that dotted Salisbury Plain at the time, such as those that stood at Durrington Walls. Modern anthropological evidence has been used by Mike Parker Pearson and the Malagasy archaeologist Ramilisonina to suggest that timber was associated with the living and stone with the ancestral dead amongst prehistoric peoples. They have argued that Stonehenge was the terminus of a long, ritualised funerary procession for treating the dead, which began in the east, during sunrise at Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, moved down the Avon and then along the Avenue reaching Stonehenge in the west at sunset. There is no satisfactory evidence to suggest that Stonehenge's astronomical alignments were anything more than symbolic and current interpretations favour a ritual role for the monument that takes into account its numerous burials and its presence within a wider landscape of sacred sites.
Construction techniques and design
Much speculation has surrounded the engineering feats required to build Stonehenge. In a 2001 exercise in experimental archaeology, an attempt was made to transport a large stone along a land and sea route from Wales to Stonehenge.
As far as positioning the stones, it has been suggested that timber A-frames were erected to raise the stones, and that teams of people then hauled them upright using ropes. The carpentry-type joints used on the stones imply a people well skilled in woodworking and they could easily have had the knowledge to erect the monument using such methods. He is progressing with his plan to construct a simulated Stonehenge comprising of eight uprights and two lintels.
Alexander Thom was of the opinion that the site was laid out with the necessary precision using his megalithic yard.
The engraved weapons on the sarsens are unique in megalithic art in the British Isles, where more abstract designs were invariably favoured. Similarly, the horseshoe arrangements of stones are unusual in a culture that otherwise arranged stones in circles. The axe motif is, however, common to the peoples of Brittany at the time, and it has been suggested at least two stages of Stonehenge were built under continental influence. This would go some way towards explaining the monument's atypical design, but overall, Stonehenge is still inexplicably unusual in the context of any prehistoric European culture.
Estimates of the manpower needed to build Stonehenge put the total effort involved at millions of hours of work. Stonehenge 1 probably needed around 11,000 man-hours (or 460 man-days) of work, Stonehenge 2 around 360,000 (15,000 man-days or 41 years) and the various parts of Stonehenge 3 may have involved up to 1.75 million hours (73 000 days or 200 years) of work. The working of the stones is estimated to have required around 20 million hours (830 000 days or 2300 years) of work using the primitive tools available at the time.
Alternative views
Stonehenge's fame comes not only from its archaeological significance or potential early astronomical role but also in its less tangible effect on visitors, what Christopher Chippindale describes as "the physical sensation of the place", something that transcends the rational, scientific view of the monument.
Some people claim to have seen UFOs in the area, perhaps connected with the military installations around Warminster, that has led to ideas over it being an extraterrestrial landing site. New Age and neo-pagan beliefs might see Stonehenge as a sacred place of worship which can conflict with its more mainstream role as an archaeological site, tourist attraction, or marketing tool. Post-processualist archaeologists might consider that treating Stonehenge as a computer or observatory is to apply modern concepts from our own technology-driven era back into the past.
The significance of the 'ownership' of Stonehenge in terms of the differing meanings and interpretations held by the many orthodox and unorthodox stakeholders in the site has been increasingly apparent in recent decades. Wallis (Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights project, http://www.sacredsites.org.uk) have pointed to the huge variety of views which show the continued and growing importance of Stonehenge today, as symbol and 'Icon of Britishness'; For many, Stonehenge and other ancient monuments form part of the 'living landscape' which holds its own stories and which is there to be engaged with as people mark the seasons of the year. Today's mythology around Stonehenge includes the recent history of the Battle of the Beanfield and the previous Free festivals. Stonehenge has not one meaning but many.
Excavations at Stonehenge
The first recorded excavations at Stonehenge were carried out by William Cunnington and Richard Colt Hoare. In 1798, Cunnington investigated the pit beneath a recently fallen trilithon and in 1810, both men dug beneath the fallen Slaughter Stone and concluded that it had once stood up. In 1900 William Gowland undertook the first extensive work, establishing that antler picks had been used to dig the stone holes and that the stones themselves had been worked to shape on site.
The largest excavation at Stonehenge was undertaken by Lieutenant-Colonel William Hawley and Robert S. The two men excavated many portions of the features at Stonehenge and were the first to establish that it was a multi-phase site.
In 1950 the Society of Antiquaries commissioned Richard Atkinson, Stuart Piggott and John FS Stone to carry out further excavations. They recovered many cremations and developed the phasing that still dominates much of what is written about Stonehenge.
Myths and legends
"Friar's Heel" or the "Sunday Stone"
The Heel Stone was once known as "Friar's Heel." A folk tale, which cannot be dated earlier than the seventeenth century, relates the origin of the name of this stone:
The Devil bought the stones from a woman in Ireland, wrapped them up, and brought them to Salisbury plain. The stone stuck in the ground and is still there.
Some claim "Friar's Heel" is a corruption of "Freyja's He-ol" or "Freyja Sul", from the Nordic goddess Freyja and (allegedly) the Welsh words for "way" and "Friday" respectively.
Arthurian legend
Stonehenge is also mentioned within Arthurian legend.
In World Mythology: An Anthology of the Great Myths and Epics (3rd ed.), by Donna Rosenburg, on pp. 428-30, she summarizes the Stonehenge story of the definitive Arthur legend. By this the reader learns that, according to the legend of King Arthur, the rocks of Stonehenge were paganistic healing rocks from Africa. With the help of Merlin, Aurelius made Stonehenge that monument. Then Stonehenge was dedicated in Britain. Shortly after, Aurelius died and was buried within the Stonehenge monument, or "The Giants' Ring of Stonehenge".
Recent history
By the beginning of the 20th century a number of the stones had fallen or were leaning precariously, probably due to the increase in curious visitors clambering on them during the nineteenth century. Three phases of conservation work were undertaken which righted some unstable or fallen stones and carefully replaced them in their original positions using information from antiquarian drawings.
Stonehenge is a place of pilgrimage for neo-druids and those following pagan or neo-pagan beliefs. Despite efforts by archaeologists and historians to stress the differences between the Iron Age Druidic religion, the much older monument and modern Druidry, Stonehenge has become increasingly, almost inextricably, associated with British Druidism, Neo Paganism and New Age philosophy.
The earlier rituals were augmented by the Stonehenge free festival, held between 1972 and 1984, and loosely organised by the Politantric Circle. A consequence of the end of the festival was the violent confrontation between the police and new age travellers that became known as the Battle of the Beanfield when police blockaded a convoy of travellers to prevent them from approaching Stonehenge.
In more recent years, the setting of the monument has been affected by the proximity of the A303 road between Amesbury and Winterbourne Stoke, and the A344. In early 2003, the Department for Transport announced that the A303 would be upgraded, including the construction of the Stonehenge road tunnel.
Also announced has been a new heritage centre, which was intended to be open in 2006. in 1993 Stonehenge's presentation was condemned by the Public Accounts Committee of the British House of Commons as 'a national disgrace'. English Heritage proposes a new purpose-built facility 3km from the stones at Countess Road in Amesbury, on the edge of the World Heritage Site boundary. Locals in Amesbury have complained that the scheme would shift traffic congestion from Stonehenge to their own village. They have also suggested that the necessary time that the public would now have to spend travelling to and from Stonehenge would likely dissuade many visitors, especially American and Japanese tourists on whistle-stop tours of England, from visiting at all.
In July 2005 the plans were thrown into uncertainty following refusal of planning permission for the visitors' centre by Salisbury District Council whilst the British government placed the rising costs of the road scheme under review.
Replicas and derivative names
There is a full-size replica of Stonehenge as it would have been before decay at Maryhill in Washington state, built by Sam Hill as a war memorial. Stonehenge Aotearoa in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand is a modern adaptation aligned with the astronomy seen from the Antipodes; The University of Missouri at Rolla has a half-scale replica located on campus, UMR Stonehenge.
Carhenge was constructed from vintage American cars near Alliance, Nebraska by the artist Jim Reynolds in 1987. Another replica, called Stonehenge II, in Texas is constructed from an adobe-like material.
A full-size Stonehenge made out of foam — and inevitably called Foamhenge — stands near Natural Bridge, Virginia .
Another modern take on Stonehenge exists outside of Sante Fe, New Mexico, constructed out of junked refrigerators, known as 'Fridgehenge'.
Another full-size exact replica of what Stonehenge would have looked like 4000 years ago, also made of foam, was constructed and erected just 10 mi (16 km) southwest of the actual Stonehenge.
The rock band Black Sabbath featured a Stonehenge stage set for the 1983-1984 Born Again tour that ended up being too large to fit in most venues. This was parodied in the movie This is Spinal Tap, when the band orders a Stonehenge set but it arrives in miniature due to a confusion between feet and inches. There was also a Chicago based heavy metal band named Stonehenge that actually owned the trademark to the name. Stonehenge met with underground success in the 1990's - 2000's performing with acts such as Pantera, Iced Earth, Trouble and Manowar.
In the MMORPG Runescape, there is a Stonehenge look-alike sometimes refered to as "Runehenge (rune being taken from the name of the game)
Aside from modern replicas, several other archaeological sites have had Stonehenge's name partially or fully incorporated into their own names. America's Stonehenge is an unusual and controversial site in New Hampshire. A henge near Stonehenge containing concentric rings of postholes for standing timbers, discovered in 1922, was named Woodhenge by its excavators because of similarities with Stonehenge.
In May 2006, reports emerged of an "Amazon Stonehenge" Calcoene, 390 kilometres from Macapa, the capital of Amapa state, near Brazil's border with French Guyana.
Stonehenge in popular culture
In the film Troll 2 (1990), Creedence claims that her druid ancestors came from Stonehenge.In the film Shanghai Knights they crash onto Stonehenge in a car.
In the video game EarthBound, Stonehenge houses an alien facility underneath it.
Stonehenge is a venue in the video game Guitar Hero II.
Played a major role for a famous scene in the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.
Bibliography
| Atkinson, R J C, Stonehenge (Penguin Books, 1956) Bender, B, Stonehenge: Making Space (Berg Publishers, 1998) Burl, A, Prehistoric Stone Circles (Shire, 2001) Chippendale, C, Stonehenge Complete (Thames and Hudson, London, 2004) Chippindale, C, et al, Who owns Stonehenge? (B T Batsford Ltd, 1990) Cleal, R. Dobson, G, Stonehenge Aotearoa (Awa Press, 2005) Hawley, Lt-Col W, Report on the Excavations at Stonehenge during the season of 1923 (The Antiquaries Journal 5, Oxford University Press, 1925) | Hutton, R, From Universal Bond to Public Free For All (British Archaeology 83, 2005) Mooney, J, Encyclopedia of the Bizarre (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2002) Newall, R S, Stonehenge, Wiltshire (Ancient monuments and historic buildings) (Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1959) North, J, Stonehenge: Ritual Origins and Astronomy (HarperCollins, 1997) Pitts, M, Hengeworld (Arrow, London, 2001) Pitts, M W, On the Road to Stonehenge: Report on Investigations beside the A344 in 1968, 1979 and 1980 (Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 48, 1982) Richards, J, English Heritage Book of Stonehenge (B T Batsford Ltd, 1991) Richards, J Stonehenge: A History in Photographs (English Heritage, London, 2004) Stone, J F S, Wessex Before the Celts (Frederick A Praeger Publishers, 1958) Worthington, A, Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion (Alternative Albion, 2004) |
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