STONEHENGE
Stonehenge is a Neolithic and Bronze Age monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Salisbury. It is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones, known as megaliths. There is some debate about the age of the stone circle, but most archaeologists think that it was mainly constructed between 2500 BC and 2000 BC. The older circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC.
The name Stonehenge is derived from the Old English words Stanhen gist meaning the 'hanging stones' and has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch. 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. It is only distantly related to the other stone circles in the British Isles such as the Ring of Brodgar as for example its extant trilithons make it unique.
The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. It is also a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. The monument itself is owned and managed by English Heritage whilst the surrounding downland is owned by the National Trust.
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.
 EARLY INTERPRETATIONS OF STONEHENGE
Many early historians were influenced by supernatural folktales in their explanations.
In 1615, Inigo Jones argued that it was a Roman temple, dedicated to Cnelus, a pagan god, and built following the Tuscan order. Later commentators maintained that the Danes erected it. Indeed, up until the late nineteenth century, the site was commonly attributed to the Saxons or other relatively recent societies.
The first academic effort to survey and understand the monument was made around 1740 by William Stukeley. As was his wont, Stukeley incorrectly attributed the site to the Druids. He contributed measured drawings of the site, which permitted greater analysis of its form and significance. From this work he was able to demonstrate an astronomical or calendrical role in the stones' placement.
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.
There are also some legends that Merlin the magician had a giant build the structure for him. Also there are some legends that state that the Devil is responsible for the building of Stonehenge.
ARCHAEOASTRONOMY AND STONEHENGE
The monument is aligned north east - south west and it has been often suggested that particular significance was placed by its builders on the solstice and equinox points so that for example, on midsummer's morning, the sun rose close to the Heel Stone, and the sun's first rays went directly into the centre of the monument between the horseshoe arrangement. It is unlikely that such an alignment can have been merely accidental.
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 alignments, both lunar and solar and argued that Stonehenge could have been used to predict eclipses. Hawkins' book received wide publicity, partly because he used a computer in his calculations, then a rarity.
Archaeologists were suspicious in the face of further contributions to the debate coming from British astronomer C. A. Newham and Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous Cambridge Cosmologist, as well as by Alexander Thom, a retired professor of engineering who had been studying stone circles for more than 20 years. Their theories have faced criticism in recent decades from Richard Atkinson and others who have suggested impracticalities in the 'Stone Age calculator' interpretative approach.
Today, the consensus is that some of the astronomical case, although not all, was overstated. Even so, since the sun rises in different directions in different geographical latitudes, for the alignment to be correct, it must have been calculated precisely for Stonehenge's latitude of 51° 11'. This alignment, therefore, must have been fundamental to the design and placement of at least some of Stonehenge's phases.
The recent discovery of a neighbour to the Heel Stone has challenged the interpretation of it as a midsummer sunrise marker and it may have instead been one side of a 'solar corridor' used to frame the sunrise. Sun worship is certainly not an uncommon phenomenon amongst Neolithic peoples given their reliance on it for crop fertility.
As a result, archaeoastronomers have claimed that Stonehenge represents an "ancient observatory," although the extent of its use for that purpose is in dispute. Some have theorised that it represents the female sexual organs (Article from The Observer), a computer or even an alien landing site.
THE BLUESTONES OF STONEHENGE
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. If Mercer's theory is correct then the bluestones may have been transplanted to cement an alliance or display superiority over a conquered enemy although this can only be speculation. 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.
Some archaeologists have suggested that the igneous bluestones and sedimentary sarsens had some symbolism, of a union between two cultures from different landscapes and therefore from different backgrounds.
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 did indeed come from modern day Wales. Petrological analysis of the stones themselves has verified that they could only have come from the Preseli Hills and it is tempting to connect the two.
The main source of the bluestones is now identified with the dolerite outcrops at Carn Menyn although work led by Olwen Williams-Thorpe of the Open University has shown that further bluestone sources over a wider area of Preseli were also exploited.
Aubrey Burl contends 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. No geological evidence has been found for any glacial activity between Preseli and Salisbury Plain however and no further specimens of the unusual dolerite stone have been found in the vicinity.
STONEHENGE AS PART OF A RITUALISTIC 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 Madagascan archaeologist Ramilisonina to suggest that timber was associated with the living and stone with the ancestral dead.
They have argued that Stonehenge was the terminus of a long, ritualised funerary procession, which began in the east at sunrise at Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, moved down the Avon and then along the Avenue reaching Stonehenge in the west at sunset.
The journey from wood to stone via water was a symbolic journey from life to death. 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 OF STONEHENGE
Much speculation has also surrounded the engineering feats required to build Stonehenge. Assuming that the bluestones were brought from Wales by hand and not transported by glaciers as Aubrey Burl has claimed, various methods of moving them relying only on timber and rope have been suggested. During 2001, in an exercise in experimental archaeology, an attempt was made to transport a large stone along a land and sea route from Wales to Stonehenge. Volunteers pulled it on a wooden sledge over land but once transferred to a replica prehistoric boat, the stone sank in rough seas in the Bristol Channel.
It has been conjectured that timber A frames were erected to raise the stones and that teams of people hauled them upright using ropes. The topmost stones may have been raised up incrementally on timber platforms and slid into place or pushed up ramps. 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.
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 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 that 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 the various phases of Stonehenge put the total effort involved at millions of hours of work. Stonehenge 1 probably needed around 11,000 hours work, Stonehenge 2 around 360,000 and the various parts of Stonehenge 3 may have involved up to 1.75 million hours work.
The working of the stones is estimated to have required around 20 million hours work using the primitive tools available at the time. Certainly, the will to produce such a site must have been strong and it is considered that advanced social organisation would have been necessary to build and maintain it.
MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF STONEHENGE
The Heel Stone was once known as the 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.
One of the stones fell into the Avon, the rest were carried to the plain. The Devil then cried out, "No-one will ever find out how these stones came here." A friar replied, "That's what you think!," whereupon the devil threw one of the stones at him and struck him on the heel. The stone stuck in the ground, and is still there.
Some claim "Friar's Heel" is a corruption of "Freya's He-ol" or "Freya Sul", from the Germanic goddess Freya and (allegedly) the Welsh words for "way" and "sun day" respectively.
Stonehenge is associated with Arthurian legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth said that Merlin directed its removal from Ireland, where it had been constructed on Mount Killaraus by Giants who brought the stones from Africa. After it had been rebuilt near Amesbury, Geoffrey further narrates how first Ambrosius Aurelianus, then Uther Pendragon, and finally Constantine III, were buried inside the ring of stones.
In many places in his Historia Regum Britanniae Geoffrey mixes British legend and his own imagination; it is intriguing that he connects Ambrosius Aurelianus with this prehistoric monument, seeing how there is place-name evidence to connect Ambrosius with nearby Amesbury.
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Images of Stonehenge
Close up of Stonehenge
The sun rising behind the Heel Stone at Stonehenge, shortly after sunrise on the summer solstice June 21, 2005
Photograph © Andrew Dunn
SUMMER OR WINTER SOLSTICE AT STONEHENGE?:
Despite as many as 20,000 people visiting Stonehenge during the 2005 summer solstice, growing evidence is indicating that ancestors such as the ancient druids did not visit at all in the summer, but rather during the winter solstice.
The most recent such evidence includes bones and teeth from pigs that were slaughtered at nearby Durrington Walls, their age at death indicating that they were slaughtered either in December or January every year. Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield has said "We have no evidence that anyone was in the landscape in summer."
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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. They may have also excavated one of the Aubrey Holes beneath it. In 1839, one Captain Beamish dug around the Altar Stone and a little later Charles Darwin was granted permission by the Antrobus family who owned Stonehenge to hold a small excavation to test his theories about earthworm activity burying ancient structures.
On New Year's Eve 1900, another trilithon fell over and Sir Edmund Antrobus undertook to right it and set it in concrete. Following public pressure and a letter to The Times by William Flinders Petrie, he agreed to re-erect the stones under archaeological supervision so that records could be made of the below ground archaeology. Antrobus appointed a mining engineer William Gowland to manage the job who despite having no previous archaeological experience produced some of the finest, most detailed excavation records ever made at the monument. Gowland established 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 Colonel William Hawley and his assistant Robert Newall after the site had come into state hands. Their work began in 1919, funded by the Office of Works, and continued until 1926. The two men excavated portions of most 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 Marcus Stone to carry out further excavations. They recovered many cremations and developed the phasing that still dominates much of what is written about Stonehenge.
In 1979 and 1980 Mike Pitts led two smaller investigations as part of service trenching, close by the heelstone, finding the evidence for its neighbour. More recent excavations have been held to mitigate the effects of electrical cables, sewage pipes, and a footpath through the site
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Moon over Standing Stone Circle
Cummins, Richard
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