The carbon-dating process that dated Stonehenge to about B.C. techniques now date the earliest stone structures at Stonehenge to.
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The Altar Stone may have been moved within the oval at this time and re-erected vertically.
Although this would seem the most impressive phase of work, Stonehenge 3 IV was rather shabbily built compared to its immediate predecessors, as the newly re-installed bluestones were not well-founded and began to fall over. However, only minor changes were made after this phase. Soon afterwards, the north eastern section of the Phase 3 IV bluestone circle was removed, creating a horseshoe-shaped setting the Bluestone Horseshoe which mirrored the shape of the central sarsen Trilithons.
This phase is contemporary with the Seahenge site in Norfolk. Roman coins and medieval artefacts have all been found in or around the monument but it is unknown if the monument was in continuous use throughout British prehistory and beyond, or exactly how it would have been used. A decapitated seventh century Saxon man was excavated from Stonehenge in Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many aspects of Stonehenge, such as how it was built and which purposes it was used for, remain subject to debate.
A number of myths surround the stones. There is little or no direct evidence revealing the construction techniques used by the Stonehenge builders. Over the years, various authors have suggested that supernatural or anachronistic methods were used, usually asserting that the stones were impossible to move otherwise due to their massive size. However, conventional techniques, using Neolithic technology as basic as shear legs , have been demonstrably effective at moving and placing stones of a similar size. The most common theory of how prehistoric people moved megaliths has them creating a track of logs on which the large stones were rolled along.
More recently two major new theories have been proposed. Professor Geoffrey Wainwright , president of the Society of Antiquaries of London , and Timothy Darvill , of Bournemouth University , have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing—the primeval equivalent of Lourdes. However, they do concede that the site was probably multifunctional and used for ancestor worship as well. A teenage boy buried approximately BC was raised near the Mediterranean Sea; a metal worker from BC dubbed the "Amesbury Archer" grew up near the alpine foothills of Germany; and the "Boscombe Bowmen" probably arrived from Wales or Brittany, France.
On the other hand, Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University has suggested that Stonehenge was part of a ritual landscape and was joined to Durrington Walls by their corresponding avenues and the River Avon. He suggests that the area around Durrington Walls Henge was a place of the living, whilst Stonehenge was a domain of the dead. A journey along the Avon to reach Stonehenge was part of a ritual passage from life to death, to celebrate past ancestors and the recently deceased.
Whatever religious, mystical or spiritual elements were central to Stonehenge, its design includes a celestial observatory function, which might have allowed prediction of eclipse, solstice, equinox and other celestial events important to a contemporary religion. There are other hypotheses and theories. According to a team of British researchers led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, Stonehenge may have been built as a symbol of "peace and unity", indicated in part by the fact that at the time of its construction, Britain's Neolithic people were experiencing a period of cultural unification.
According to Paul Devereux, editor of the journal Time and Mind: In certain ancient cultures rocks that ring out, known as lithophones , were believed to contain mystic or healing powers, and Stonehenge has a history of association with rituals.
Stonehenge dating methods
The presence of these "ringing rocks" seems to support the hypothesis that Stonehenge was a "place for healing", as has been pointed out by Bournemouth University archaeologist Timothy Darvill, who consulted with the researchers. The bluestones of Stonehenge were quarried near a town in Wales called Maenclochog , which means "ringing rock", where the local bluestones were used as church bells until the 18th century. The Heel Stone lies northeast of the sarsen circle, beside the end portion of Stonehenge Avenue. A folk tale relates the origin of the Friar's Heel reference.
The name is not unique; there was a monolith with the same name recorded in the nineteenth century by antiquarian Charles Warne at Long Bredy in Dorset. In the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth included a fanciful story in his Historia Regum Britanniae "History of the Kings of Britain" that attributed the monument's construction to the wizard Merlin. According to Geoffrey, the rocks of Stonehenge were healing rocks, called the Giant's dance, which Giants had brought from Africa to Ireland for their healing properties. The fifth-century king Aurelius Ambrosius wished to erect a memorial to 3, nobles slain in battle against the Saxons and buried at Salisbury, and, at Merlin's advice, chose Stonehenge.
The king sent Merlin, Uther Pendragon King Arthur 's father , and 15, knights, to remove it from Ireland, where it had been constructed on Mount Killaraus by the Giants. They slew 7, Irish, but as the knights tried to move the rocks with ropes and force, they failed. Then Merlin, using "gear" and skill, easily dismantled the stones and sent them over to Britain, where Stonehenge was dedicated. In another legend of Saxons and Britons, in , the invading king Hengist invited Brythonic warriors to a feast, but treacherously ordered his men to draw their weapons from concealment and fall upon the guests, killing of them.
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Hengist erected the stone monument—Stonehenge—on the site to show his remorse for the deed. In Henry gave the estate to the Earl of Hertford. It subsequently passed to Lord Carleton and then the Marquess of Queensberry. The Antrobus family of Cheshire bought the estate in The Antrobus family sold the site after their last heir was killed in the fighting in France. Stonehenge with about 30 acres, 2 rods, 37 perches [ Although it has been speculated that he purchased it at the suggestion of—or even as a present for—his wife, in fact he bought it on a whim, as he believed a local man should be the new owner.
Theories about Stonehenge
In the late s a nationwide appeal was launched to save Stonehenge from the encroachment of the modern buildings that had begun to rise around it. The buildings were removed although the roads were not , and the land returned to agriculture. More recently the land has been part of a grassland reversion scheme, returning the surrounding fields to native chalk grassland. During the twentieth century, Stonehenge began to revive as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopaganism and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids. The historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it.
This assembly was largely ridiculed in the press, who mocked the fact that the Neo-druids were dressed up in costumes consisting of white robes and fake beards. Between and , Stonehenge was the site of the Stonehenge Free Festival. After the Battle of the Beanfield in , this use of the site was stopped for several years and ritual use of Stonehenge is now heavily restricted. When Stonehenge was first opened to the public it was possible to walk among and even climb on the stones, but the stones were roped off in as a result of serious erosion.
English Heritage does, however, permit access during the summer and winter solstice, and the spring and autumn equinox.
Additionally, visitors can make special bookings to access the stones throughout the year. The access situation and the proximity of the two roads has drawn widespread criticism, highlighted by a National Geographic survey. In the survey of conditions at 94 leading World Heritage Sites, conservation and tourism experts ranked Stonehenge 75th in the list of destinations, declaring it to be "in moderate trouble". As motorised traffic increased, the setting of the monument began to be affected by the proximity of the two roads on either side—the A to Shrewton on the north side, and the A to Winterbourne Stoke to the south.
Plans to upgrade the A and close the A to restore the vista from the stones have been considered since the monument became a World Heritage Site. However, the controversy surrounding expensive re-routing of the roads has led to the scheme being cancelled on multiple occasions. On 6 December , it was announced that extensive plans to build Stonehenge road tunnel under the landscape and create a permanent visitors' centre had been cancelled.
The earlier rituals were complemented by the Stonehenge Free Festival , loosely organised by the Politantric Circle , held between and , during which time the number of midsummer visitors had risen to around 30, Beginning in , the year of the Battle, no access was allowed into the stones at Stonehenge for any religious reason.
This "exclusion-zone" policy continued for almost fifteen years: However, following a European Court of Human Rights ruling obtained by campaigners such as Arthur Uther Pendragon , the restrictions were lifted. At the Summer Solstice , which fell over a weekend, over 30, people attended a gathering at and in the stones. The gathering was smaller around 21, people. Throughout recorded history, Stonehenge and its surrounding monuments have attracted attention from antiquarians and archaeologists.
John Aubrey was one of the first to examine the site with a scientific eye in , and in his plan of the monument, he recorded the pits that now bear his name, the Aubrey holes. He also began the excavation of many of the barrows in the area, and it was his interpretation of the landscape that associated it with the Druids. The most accurate early plan of Stonehenge was that made by Bath architect John Wood in William Cunnington was the next to tackle the area in the early nineteenth century. He excavated some 24 barrows before digging in and around the stones and discovered charred wood, animal bones, pottery and urns.
He also identified the hole in which the Slaughter Stone once stood.
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Richard Colt Hoare supported Cunnington's work and excavated some barrows on Salisbury Plain including on some in the area around the Stones, some excavated in conjunction with William Coxe. To alert future diggers to their work they were careful to leave initialled metal tokens in each barrow they opened. Cunnington's finds are displayed at the Wiltshire Museum.
In Charles Darwin dabbled in archaeology at the stones, experimenting with the rate at which remains sink into the earth for his book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. Stone 22 fell during a fierce storm on 31 December William Gowland oversaw the first major restoration of the monument in which involved the straightening and concrete setting of sarsen stone number 56 which was in danger of falling. In straightening the stone he moved it about half a metre from its original position.
During the restoration William Hawley , who had excavated nearby Old Sarum , excavated the base of six stones and the outer ditch. He also located a bottle of port in the Slaughter Stone socket left by Cunnington, helped to rediscover Aubrey's pits inside the bank and located the concentric circular holes outside the Sarsen Circle called the Y and Z Holes. Stone re-excavated much of Hawley's work in the s and s, and discovered the carved axes and daggers on the Sarsen Stones. Atkinson's work was instrumental in furthering the understanding of the three major phases of the monument's construction.
In the stones were restored again, when three of the standing sarsens were re-erected and set in concrete bases. The last restoration was carried out in after stone 23 of the Sarsen Circle fell over. It was again re-erected, and the opportunity was taken to concrete three more stones. Later archaeologists, including Christopher Chippindale of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge and Brian Edwards of the University of the West of England , campaigned to give the public more knowledge of the various restorations and in English Heritage included pictures of the work in progress in its book Stonehenge: A History in Photographs.
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In and , in advance of a new car park being built at the site, the area of land immediately northwest of the stones was excavated by Faith and Lance Vatcher. Subsequent aerial archaeology suggests that this ditch runs from the west to the north of Stonehenge, near the avenue. Excavations were once again carried out in by Atkinson and John Evans during which they discovered the remains of the Stonehenge Archer in the outer ditch, [83] and in rescue archaeology was needed alongside the Heel Stone after a cable-laying ditch was mistakenly dug on the roadside, revealing a new stone hole next to the Heel Stone.
In the early s Julian Richards led the Stonehenge Environs Project , a detailed study of the surrounding landscape.