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.
Stonehenge is located at 51° 10′ 43.9″ N, 1° 49′ 31.6″ W.
[image]
The "henge" portion 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. For example, its extant trilithons make Stonehenge unique. Stonehenge is only distantly related to the other stone circles in the British Isles, such as the Ring of Brodgar.
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 bluestones 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 Heel Stone (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. At first, a second stone, now no longer visible, joined it. 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. The mounds are known as 'barrows' although they do not contain burials (2 and 3). The Avenue, (10), a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading 3 km to the River Avon was also added. Ditches were later dug around the Station Stones and the Heel Stone, which was by then reduced to a single monolith.
Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed Sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each and were again linked using complex jointings. 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. They are difficult to date but are morphologically similar to later Bronze Age weapons. The pair of trilithons in north east are smallest, measuring around 6m (20 feet) in height and the largest is the trilithon in the south west of the horseshoe is almost 7.5m (24 feet) tall.
This ambitious phase is radiocarbon dated to between 2440 and 2100 BC.
In 1615, Inigo Jones argued that Stonehenge 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.
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.
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.
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 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. 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 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 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.
The largest excavation at Stonehenge was undertaken by Colonel William Hawley and his assistant Robert Newall after the site had come into state hands. Stonehenge and 30 acres of land had been purchased by Mr. Cecil Chubb for £6,600 on September 21, 1915 - he then donated the purchase to the British state three years later. Their work began in 1919 following the transfer of land, 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.
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. 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.
Arthurian legend:
Stonehenge is also associated with Arthurian legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth said that Merlin the wizard 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.
Stonehenge is a place of pilgrimage for neo-druids and those following pagan or neo-pagan beliefs. The midsummer sunrise began attracting modern visitors in 1870s, with the first record of recreated Druidic practices dating to 1905 when the Ancient Order of Druids enacted a ceremony. Later the sun-worshipping Church of the Universal Bond adopted the site for their neo-Druidic rituals from 1912 until 1932 when their plans to scatter the ashes of cremated former members at the site were refused. Despite efforts by archaeologists to stress the differences between the Iron Age Druidic religion (the Celts first came to Britain about 500 BC), the much older monument (Stonehenge construction ended about 1600 BC), and modern Druidry, Stonehenge became increasingly associated with abstruse rituals practised by white-robed wizards.
After the Second World War the Universal Bond was permitted to re-commence its ceremonies although archaeologists such as Glyn Daniel and Stuart Piggott continued to campaign against what they saw as bogus Druidry throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
The earlier rituals were augmented by the Stonehenge Free Festival, held between 1972 and 1984, and loosely organised by the Politantric Circle. However, in 1985 the site was closed to festivalgoers by English Heritage and the National Trust by which time the number of midsummer visitors had risen from 500 to 30,000. 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. There was then no midsummer access for almost fifteen years until limited opening was negotiated in 2000.
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. Projects for moving the road or placing it in a tunnel under the site have been proposed in the past, but these have often been opposed, as they are either too expensive or too destructive. In early 2003 the Department for Transport announced that the A303 would be upgraded, including the construction of the Stonehenge road tunnel. The plans are still controversial and the government has not yet finalised the plans.
Also announced has been a new heritage centre, which was intended to be open in 2006. Current provision for visitors has often been criticised; in 1993 Stonehenge's presentation was condemned by the Public Accounts Committee of the British House of Commons as 'a national disgrace'. Even so, the plans for the new centre have aroused significant controversy especially from nearby landowners and residents. 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. Visitors would be ferried to and from drop off points near the monument by land trains. They would then approach the stones themselves on foot for the final kilometre.
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, to visit at all.
By 2008, the new road schemes were to have been completed and the old roads closed. Costs for the new road and visitor facilities were estimated at £270m by English Heritage. In July 2005 however 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. Remediation of unsuitable geology along the road route the site may add a further £200m to the costs.
The Bronze Age carvings of a dagger and an axehead were first discovered by archaeologist Richard Atkinson in 1953 on stone number 53, one of the imposing sarsen trilithons. A contemporary survey in 1956 by Robert Newell revealed that the total number of axes on this stone totalled 14, all on the same face of the stone, looking inwards to the centre of the stone circle. Typologically, the axes have a Middle Bronze Age date.
The surface of stone 53 containing Bronze Age carvings was laser scanned at a resolution of 0.5mm, resulting in hundreds of thousands of individual 3D measurements known as a Point cloud. This data was then processed into a meshed 3D solid model for analysis using custom software written by Archaeoptics called Demon3D.
The team pioneered some visualisation techniques to enhance the outlines of the known carvings. During this process, the faint outline of two previously unknown axes was spotted in an animation, separate from the carvings recorded by Newell. Subsequent enhancement of the data confirmed that the shapes were of flanged axes, similar in shape to those which are clearly visible, but either badly eroded, or were originally carved much shallower than their counterparts. The larger of the two carvings differs slightly from the other axes in that it has two 'lugs' along its shaft, and others have interpreted that it could represent either an axe, a mushroom, or a ram's skull.
The results of these investigations were published in the November 2003 edition of British Archaeology, and the project website can be visited at / where animations and interpretations of the data may be viewed.
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. It is even aligned to the midsummer sunrise, but to the true position of the sun at the virtual horizon, rather than the apparent position of the sun at the actual landscape horizon. Stonehenge Aotearoa in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand is a modern adaption aligned with the astronomy seen from the Antipodes, it was built by the Phoenix Astronomical Society from wood and sprayed concrete. The University of Missouri at Rolla has a half-scale replica located on campus, UMR Stonehenge is built from solid Granite.
Carhenge was constructed from vintage American cars near Alliance, Nebraska by the artist Jim Reynolds in 1987. A full-size Strawhenge was assembled in Kemnath in Bavaria in 2003 from 350 bales of straw and used as a music venue. Another replica, called Stonehenge II, in Texas is constructed from an adobe-like material.
Tankhenge existed in the border zone of Berlin in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Wall. Tankhenge was constructed from three ex-Soviet armoured personnel carriers.
A full-size Stonehenge made out of Foam - and inevitably called Foamhenge - stands near Natural Bridge, Virginia whilst a Polystyrene version was built by British television station Channel 5 in 2005 as the centrepiece for a programme on the original monument.
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. When bassist Geezer Butler was initially asked by the stage designer how he visualised the Stonehenge set, Butler responded, "Life size, of course." This was ridiculed in the movie This is Spinal Tap, when the band orders a Stonehenge set but it arrives in miniature.
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. The timber Seahenge in Norfolk was named as such by journalists writing about its discovery in 1998.
In November 2004, a 7 m diameter circle of postholes was found in Russia and publicised as the Russian Stonehenge.