Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a circular megalithic stone structure located on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, in southern England. It is the most famous of several such structures of standing stones found in Europe, and is international recognized as an iconic symbol of ancient Great Britain and prehistoric culture in general. The site has been widely studied and subject to various theories and interpretations about its method of construction and original usage. Notably, much of the structure is aligned with the position of sunrise at the summer solstice and sunset at the winter solstice. Many experts suggest Stonehenge could have been used for various purposes, including astronomical calculation, religious worship, and burial rituals.

Construction

Scholars believe work began on Stonehenge about 3700 BCE, when a circle 320 feet (98 meters) in diameter was enclosed with a 6-foot (1.8-meter) bank. Flanked by two stones, Stonehenge’s entrance is oriented to the northeast, the direction of the summer-solstice sunrise. This axis is marked by a 16-foot-high (5-meter-high), 35-ton (32-metric-ton) heel stone, located 96 feet (29 meters) past the entrance. Just inside the bank lies a circle 284 feet (87 meters) in diameter of fifty-six Aubrey holes. Named for antiquarian John Aubrey, these holes are evenly spaced some 16 feet (5 meters) apart, are between 2 and 4 feet (0.6-1.2 meters) deep, and were filled with chalk soon after being dug. Excavations revealed that holes contained fifty-eight human cremations, some of them in leather pouches, dating to 3000 to 2500 BCE. In this form, Stonehenge is thought to have been used for several centuries and then abandoned.

Around 2700 BCE, communal long barrow graves were replaced with round barrows for individuals, containing copper daggers, gold earrings, fine pottery, and a distinctive type of drinking cup without handles. Once believed to indicate an invasion of Beaker people, such artifacts were later interpreted as reflecting an emerging elite trading in flint, copper, tin, and prestige items while the people continued their Neolithic farming traditions. Isotope analysis has suggested Anatolian ancestry of those Neolithic farmer-builders. During this period new henges also began to appear, some near Stonehenge itself.

New work began at Stonehenge around 2100 BCE. By building two parallel chalk banks with exterior ditches more than one-third of a mile (roughly half a kilometer) long, the new builders created an avenue leading up to the northeast entrance. Eighty 6-foot (1.8-meter) bluestones, imported from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, were stood in two incomplete concentric circles. Two bluestone quarries, Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin, located 180 miles away in the Preseli, were used at that time. While many observers have argued that this means the builders must have had access to relatively advanced technology to transport such large stones, researchers have demonstrated that simple methods like hauling the stones with sledges and ropes would have been feasible. Researchers believe this period may also have been when four “station stones” were erected on the Aubrey Circle, imposing on it a rough rectangle. In 1978, a Beaker burial was discovered in the ditch, continuing the association of enclosures with death and ritual.

Between 2000 and 1550 BCE, the bluestones were removed, and large sarsen (foreign) sandstone blocks were brought from 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the north in the Marlborough Downs. Thirty blocks weighing 25 tons (23 metric tons) each were stood 3.5 feet (1 meter) apart to form a circle 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter, then topped by lintels, creating a flat circular “sidewalk” elevated 16 feet (nearly 5 meters) above the ground. Inside was a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of five trilithons (each made of two upright blocks topped by a lintel), with the open end of the horseshoe oriented on the northeast axis. Sixty bluestones were added, forming a circle 75 feet (23 meters) in diameter within the sarsen circle. Nineteen bluestones placed within the trilithons formed a bluestone horseshoe. The workmanship and innovative design of the Stonehenge sarsen circle occur in no other ancient megalithic monument.

Later alterations have been attributed to the Wessex culture of southern Britain’s early Bronze Age, given that dozens of Wessex round barrows dot surrounding ridges. Stonehenge would go on to be featured in the folklore of later peoples through the Middle Ages.

Research and Theories

Stonehenge has long fascinated people, and archaeologists and other experts have examined the site extensively. Much research has aimed to understand how exactly the structure was built and what it was used for. The fact that substantial labor would have been needed for its construction and the evidence of burials at and around the site have contributed to the widespread general belief that Stonehenge must have held some important religious or other ritual significance. However, scientists have proposed many different specific interpretations.

In 1965, Harvard astronomer Gerald Hawkins first theorized that Stonehenge served as a giant astronomical observatory, noting that stone alignments marked key positions of the sun and moon. Some other archaeologists have questioned the alignments’ precision, but research into the potential connection between the site and ancient knowledge of astronomy has continued.

In 2009, archaeologists studying the landscape surrounding Stonehenge as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project excavated twenty-five bluestones that they theorized once stood in a 33-foot (10-meter) circle surrounded by a henge. It was later referred to as "Bluestonehenge," and some scientists hypothesized that the site may have been used as a kind of crematorium for the burials thought to have been conducted at Stonehenge. The following year, without digging, the team used digital imaging technology to create a virtual representation of yet another henge site discovered approximately 2,950 feet (900 meters) away from the monument. Believed to have been built of timber rather than stone, the henge-like circle consists of a ring of twenty-four internal pits meant to hold posts that supported a free-standing timber structure up to 10 feet (3 meters) high. Another element was added to the mystery of the area when the team made a subsequent significant discovery in 2015: a row of around ninety stones hailed as "Superhenge" and thought to have been about five times the size of Stonehenge. Believed to have been built before Stonehenge, this site was discovered less than 2 miles (less than 3 kilometers) from that historic monument using radar. These finds prompted historians and scientists to rethink previous theories about the purpose of these sites and the history of the ancient cultures who constructed them.

Other modern technologies have allowed further examination of Stonehenge, its contents, and its surroundings. For instance, by analyzing isotopes of the rare earth metal strontium, twenty-first-century researchers have able to determine the age and geographic origins of the stones, as well as human and animal remains found at and near Stonehenge. Analyses of strontium and carbon isotopes have shown that people and canines visited from more than 250 miles away two thousand years before the monument was erected; some of those buried at Stonehenge came from 140 miles away in Wales; and that pigs and aurochs (now-extinct cattle) were brought from western Wales and northern Scotland, hundreds of miles away, to adjacent ceremonial feast sites. Those findings suggest that the location had been a longtime pilgrimage site and that perhaps the monument's construction was a unifying effort or a celebratory act.

Stonehenge Today

The Wiltshire site was privately held until 1918, when it was donated to the UK government. Archaeologists partially restored Stonehenge in 1958, reinstalling a fallen trilithon and shoring up its cracked pillars with metal rods. The ancient monument was designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 1986.

In 2013, a new visitor center with shuttle service replaced an older center and parking lot. Construction of a tunnel was proposed to divert traffic on the nearby A303 highway away from the historic site. In 2018, a meter-long core from the 1958 restoration project was returned, enabling geochemical analysis of a sarsen sample.

As an icon of Stone Age culture, Stonehenge has attracted considerable attention in modern times. In addition to its popularity as a tourist attraction, in the twentieth century it became a focal point for followers of Neopaganism and eventually New Age thinking. Visitation at the site tends to increase particularly around the solstices, and in the 1970s the Stonehenge Free Festival became a noted counterculture gathering in midsummer. Modern religious use of Stonehenge has at times proven controversial, however, notably including a violent encounter between pilgrims and law enforcement in 1985 that led the government to strictly limit access to the stones during solstices. Ticketed access was allowed in 1999, and in 2000 open access for religious observation resumed. Stonehenge's prominence has also attracted other demonstrations, such as vandalism by protesters seeking to draw attention to climate change in 2024.

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