Parker Pearson, M 2013 Researching : Theories Past and Present. International, No. 16 (2012-2013): 72-83, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ai.1601

ARTICLE Researching Stonehenge: Theories Past and Present *

Over the years archaeologists connected with the Institute of Archaeology and UCL have made substantial contributions to the study of Stonehenge, the most enigmatic of all the prehistoric stone circles in Britain. Two of the early researchers were Petrie and Childe. More recently, colleagues in UCL’s Anthropology department – Barbara Bender and Chris Tilley – have also studied and written about the monument in its landscape. Mike Parker Pearson, who joined the Institute in 2012, has been leading a 10-year-long research programme on Stonehenge and, in this paper, he outlines the history and cur- rent state of research.

Petrie and Childe on Stonehenge William Flinders Petrie (Fig. 1) worked on Stonehenge between 1874 and 1880, publishing the first accurate plan of the famous stones as a young man yet to start his career in Egypt. His numbering system of the monument’s many and blue- stones is still used to this day, and his slim book, Stonehenge: Plans, Descriptions, and Theories, sets out theories and observations that were innovative and insightful. Denied the opportunity of excavating Stonehenge, Petrie had relatively little to go on in terms of excavated evidence – the previous dig- gings had yielded few prehistoric finds other than antler picks – but he suggested that four theories could be considered indi- vidually or in combination for explaining Stonehenge’s purpose: sepulchral, religious, astronomical and monumental. Although he could not know that Stonehenge contained a large cremation cemetery, he guessed that its purposes were more sepulchral and monu- Fig. 1: William Flinders Petrie (c.1886).

mental than religious or astronomical (1880: * UCL Institute of Archaeology, London WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom 31). Of the latter notion, he remarked: ‘The [email protected] astronomical theory has the strong evidence Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge 73

Fig. 2: Gordon Childe and a Russian archaeologist at Stonehenge. of the very close pointing to the midsummer Stonehenge. By this time, a string of archae- sunrise, but apparently none other that will ologists had dug there: William Gowland in bear scientific scrutiny’ (ibid.). A few years 1901 (1902), in 1919–1926 later, another archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans and, from 1950 onwards, Richard Atkin- – later the excavator of Minoan Knossos – son together with Stuart Piggott and J.F.S. proposed that Stonehenge was a monument Stone. Atkinson’s book on Stonehenge was to the dead, built to honour the ancestors of published in 1956 and, in the heyday of the a whole prehistoric tribe (1885). ‘culture history’ paradigm, he concluded that Many years later, Gordon Childe (Fig. 2) it was built to the specification of a Bronze included Stonehenge in his magisterial Age Mycenaean architect (1956: 163–64). overview The Dawn of European Civilization. In Atkinson’s view, Stonehenge (Fig. 3) was Although the book was first published in a true example of architecture in contrast to 1925, it was only in the sixth and final edi- mere construction, unparalleled in Britain’s tion, published in 1957 – the year of his death barbarian Bronze Age (ibid.). He considered – that Childe speculated on the purpose of it to be entirely out of character with other 74 Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge

Fig. 3: Stonehenge from the air (photo: Adam Stanford).

British monuments and thus had to be an broadly that of the Aubrey, alien intervention. Conversely, Childe was Stukeley and others, followed by the 20th- in no doubt that it was an indigenous crea- century excavators at Stonehenge, followed tion. He had observed that stone circles were by the astronomers (Chippindale, 1994; Pitts, a peculiarly British phenomenon (1936) and 2001; Richards, 2007). he considered that Stonehenge was built by and for ancient Britons. From ancient druids to astronomers It had long been known that Stonehenge’s Putting aside for the moment the 12th- smaller monoliths – the bluestones – origi- century pseudo-history of Geoffrey of Mon- nated in the of west and mouth, the first theory about Stonehenge Childe theorized that their long-distance in modern times was that it was a temple movement must have been the result of a for ancient druids, an idea first proposed by cooperative effort that could only have taken John Aubrey in the mid-17th century and place under special conditions: ‘This fantas- later elaborated by almost tic feat ... must illustrate a degree of politi- a century later (1740). Both of these remark- cal unification or a sacred peace ...’ (Childe, able antiquarians realized that Stonehenge 1957: 331). This insightful observation, just had been built before the Romans. Stukeley like those of Petrie and Evans, was then for- in particular drew on Classical Greek and gotten by both archaeologists and the public Roman comparisons to argue that the plan at large. and elevations of Stonehenge could be inter- The conventional narratives on theories preted as a roofless temple. Neither scholar about Stonehenge surprisingly ignore these could have any idea of the true antiquity of ideas proposed by three of the greatest Stonehenge, 3,000–2,500 years before the archaeologists of the late 19th-early 20th Romans came to Britain, so they could only century and focus on a different history, extrapolate that it had been used by the peo- Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge 75 ple that Caesar and other Classical authors cal investigations (1967; 1971; Thom and named as the resident religious elite – the Thom, 1974) to ’ proposi- druids. Stukeley was so taken by this theory tion amongst other things that the circle that he even took up druidry. More recently, of 56 within the circuit of this reinvention has led to a small but thriv- Stonehenge’s bank and ditch could be used ing ‘new age’ religion; some 4,189 people to predict lunar and solar eclipses (1965), described their religion as ‘druid’ in the UK’s Stonehenge gained a new and sensational 2011 census. Although Classical authors reputation as a repository of the ancients’ referred to ancient druids worshipping only lost knowledge. As the counter-culture of in wooded groves – there is no mention of the 1970s and early 1980s claimed Stone- any link between druids and stone monu- henge as spiritual inspiration for a lost world ment, let alone Stonehenge – the association of mysticism, so the archaeological ‘fringe’ of druids with Stonehenge has become fixed imputed a new range of , in the public consciousness. ley lines and hidden forces responsible for Whereas Hawley (1921) followed Stuke- Stonehenge’s location and raised stones. ley’s theory, proposing that Stonehenge Following on from Hawkins, the astrono- was a temple for priests and nobles, Richard mer developed his own expla- Atkinson (1956) saw Stonehenge as resulting nation of astronomical prediction at from the concentration of political power in Stonehenge (1977), although his book was the hands of a single individual who could nowhere near as successful as Hawkins’ draw on the architectural tradition of the Stonehenge Decoded. John North, a respected Bronze Age Aegean. This classic notion of historian of science, also developed some diffusion from an advanced civilization is unusually elaborate astronomical theo- one of many perceptions of Stonehenge as ries about Stonehenge and its surrounding being constructed by the non-indigenous monuments (1996). For many who were ‘other’, whether from Brittany, impressed by the astronomical possibilities ancient Egypt or even outer space. Certainly of Stonehenge, the notion that it was oper- until a few decades ago, it was easy to per- ated by a ruling class of astronomer priests ceive Stonehenge as a mysterious intrusion became the theory of the day (e.g. Mackie, into an under-populated land where the few 1977). However, the astronomers’ bubble inhabitants eked out a miserable subsistence was burst by the arrival of archaeo-astrono- using only the most primitive technology for mers such as Clive Ruggles who could bring farming. As archaeologists have learned oth- expertise in both archaeology and astronomy erwise about population densities and early to bear on the problem. farming efficiency (e.g. Pryor, 2003), they Working from ethnographic analogies of have also discovered antecedents and precur- the integrated use of astronomy within the sors to the architecture of Stonehenge else- religions and cultures of traditional socie- where in Britain, notably in timber. In fact, ties, Ruggles and others not only argued for many of these innovations and architectures understanding the role of simple astronomy now appear to have originated on the mar- within its cultural context but also developed gins of Britain, notably in Wales and Orkney a critical methodology for assessing and eval- (Burrow, 2010; Gibson, 1998; 2010). uating competing astronomical claims. For Although the solstitial alignment of Stone- Ruggles, Stonehenge was not a computer henge and its avenue has been long known, or an observatory for prediction and obser- it was only in the 1960s that claims were vation, but a monument for memorializing widely accepted for Stonehenge’s role as an certain key heavenly events, notably the astronomical observatory or computational midsummer solstice sunrise, the midwin- calendar. From ’s astronomi- ter solstice sunset, along with the northerly 76 Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge

Fig. 4: The , showing prehistoric sites and topographic features in the environs of Stonehenge (drawing: Peter Dunn). and southerly major limits of moonrise and With the publication of the 20th-century moonset (Ruggles, 1997). Not only were cer- excavations at Stonehenge (Cleal et al., 1995) tain of these alignments only approximately came radiocarbon dates which demonstrated accurate but Ruggles also considered that that its ditch and bank were dug at the begin- large were less satisfactory mark- ning of the 3rd millennium BC and that the ers than sticks or slender posts for the bud- circle was put up around 2500 BC. ding prehistoric astronomer. These new dates pushed Stonehenge back into the Late Neolithic, contemporary with Stonehenge without Mycenae (Fig. 4) and the other timber During the 1960s and 1970s, Atkinson’s circles of Renfrew’s Late Neolithic chief- notion of Mycenaean influence was thor- dom phase. Speculation about Stonehenge’s oughly discredited by Colin Renfrew (1968) purpose, while thriving on the ‘alternative who later developed a social evolutionary scene’, was more muted among academics in model of Stonehenge as the product of a con- the 1980s and 1990s. Many tended to agree federation of chiefdoms at the Early Bronze with media archaeologist Julian Richards, in Age apogee of ’s evolution from tribal the wake of his Stonehenge Environs Project Early Neolithic farmers to Late Neolithic and (1990), that Stonehenge was a temple of the Early Bronze chiefdoms (1973). By this point sun, basically a modification of Stukeley’s in time, however, the views of professional idea without the druids. archaeologists had largely separated from those of numerous amateur enthusiasts pur- Stonehenge for the ancestors suing alternative theories about earth and In 1998 I was lucky enough to be able to sky mysteries, ley lines, astrology and mega- invite Ramilisonina, a Malagasy archaeolo- lithic yards, a split that remains today. gist, to Britain. We had worked together for Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge 77

Fig. 5: Excavations at by the Stonehenge Riverside Project (photo: Adam Stanford). almost a decade in Madagascar studying was not a new one, as the long-forgotten megalithic monumentality so I was inter- ideas of Flinders Petrie and Arthur Evans now ested to see his reaction to and reveal. In the 1920s, Hawley dug up nearly 60 Stonehenge. Avebury, 20 miles to the north, cremation burials from inside Stonehenge was first on our itinerary and he asked if I but all had been reburied in 1935. In 1987 had learned nothing from working in Mada- Aubrey Burl concluded that Stonehenge was gascar since it was obvious to him that such built as a ‘house of the dead’ (1987). By the stone circles must be monuments to the mid-1990s some prehistorians such as Alas- ancestors, constructed in stone to represent dair Whittle (1997), Barbara Bender (1998) the eternity of life after death in contrast to and Josh Pollard were beginning to think the use of wood for the temporary world of about the properties of different materials the living. Together we formulated a model – stone, earth and chalk – in Stonehenge’s of Stonehenge as part of a wider landscape sequence of construction and were making in which it and the complex at the connection between stone, permanence Durrington Walls (Fig. 5) and Woodhenge and immortality. were linked by avenues to the River Avon. The The ‘stone for the ancestors’ hypothesis, model generated a series of predictions and, however, was able to explain how and why frustrated that no one else was interested in complexes of the living and the dead might testing these, I embarked on the Stonehenge be juxtaposed along a tract of water, and Riverside Project in 2003 with a team of co- to predict the wider use of this duality in directors: Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Late Neolithic Britain. Avebury could be Thomas, Chris Tilley and Kate Welham. shown to conform to this model and, more The idea that Stonehenge might be associ- recently, other paired complexes have been ated with the ancestors or, at least, the dead recognised at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney 78 Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge

(Card, 2010) and Forteviot (Noble and Bro- 18th-century visitors to Stonehenge remov- phy, 2011). ing chips of stone for their imagined powers The Stonehenge Riverside Project’s field- of healing (Atkinson, 1956: 190–191) were work ran over seven years and, whilst the taken as further evidence of long-term conti- main planks of the ‘stone for the ancestors’ nuity in beliefs that the bluestones had cura- model was supported by the newly excavated tive properties. In Darvill and Wainwright’s evidence, we became increasingly aware that view, if Stonehenge had been a place of certain aspects of Stonehenge’s sequence the dead between 3000 BC and 2500 BC, it and attributes could not be fully explained became a place of life and healing after 2500 by the theory as it stood. BC when, in their estimation, the bluestones were brought to Stonehenge. The healing hypothesis Around 2005 a new hypothesis was put for- An ancestral place ward by Tim Darvill (2006; 2007), arising out One of the consistent problems with theo- of his work with Geoff Wainwright around rizing Stonehenge is that different theories the spotted dolerite outcrops in the Preseli tend to seize on particular aspects and pro- hills of Wales where many of the bluestones mote those as the most significant, either originate. In one sense this was a very old minimizing or ignoring other elements or hypothesis because it was first proposed by inconsistencies. Rather like the blind men Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the each feeling a different part of the elephant Kings of Britain in about 1138. In this book, and pronouncing it a different type of beast Geoffrey explains that Stonehenge was built depending on what portion was felt, so theo- as a memorial to the Britons treacherously ries about Stonehenge have rarely been fully slain by the Saxons. Merlin tells his men that holistic or contextual. Any attempt at a sat- the stones must be fetched from a stone cir- isfactory theory has to explain a myriad of cle in Ireland, the ‘Chorea Gigantorum’, built features: the stone uprights and lintels, the by giants. The reason why only the stones of unique dressing and shaping of the stones, this particular circle would do is, explains the astronomical sightlines, the burials, the Merlin, because they have healing proper- bringing of a variety of spotted dolerite, ties. The giants would throw water against rhyolite, volcanic ash and mono- the stones and bathe in troughs at their foot liths from Wales, the sequence of re-building to cure illnesses. over almost 1,000 years, and the relationship The proponents of this healing hypothesis with the River Avon and Durrington Walls, reckoned that not only was there a grain of amongst other evidence. truth in what might be a prehistoric myth Stonehenge was certainly unique in Neo- handed down until the Medieval period lithic Britain but it also shared many aspects but also that the Preseli spotted dolerite with less well-known monument complexes outcrops were associated with Medieval of the period. Thus we have to tack back and holy wells and healing springs coming off forth between the specifics of Stonehenge the south side of the Preseli hills, a further and the generalities of British Neolithic mon- aspect of proposed long-term continuity. ument complexes. Stonehenge’s uniqueness The discovery that the Beaker burial known derives primarily from the use of lintels as the Amesbury Archer, found 3 miles linking the uprights, the enormous effort from Stonehenge (Fitzpatrick, 2011), had in shaping and dressing the stones, and the an infection in his knee, together with two bringing of perhaps as many as 80 bluestone examples of Early Bronze Age trepanation monoliths from west Wales. Its astronomi- from Salisbury Plain, were taken as sup- cal orientations towards midwinter solstice porting evidence for this theory. Records of sunset and midsummer solstice sunrise are Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge 79

Fig. 6: Excavation of the in 2008 (photo: Adam Stanford). not particularly unique – similar arrange- fissures cannot be determined without fur- ments were made at earlier monuments, ther excavation, the parallel ridges and gully such as the passage tombs of Maes Howe in run for about 150m from just west of the Orkney and in Ireland – but what . Recent geophysical investiga- is unmatched is the concentration of solstice tions (Darvill et al., 2012) have conflated the sunrise/sunset aligned monuments in the fissures with cart tracks running the length Stonehenge environs, including Durrington of the Avenue to its elbow, but our excava- Walls’ Avenue and its Northern Circle and tions in 2008 showed that the cart tracks Southern Circle, as well as Woodhenge and are not only distinct from the fissures but . are also not the cause of the ridges (since The reason for this concentration may be the area within the ridges is not hollowed linked to the presence of natural landforms out by traffic erosion). Nor can the ridges at and in front of Stonehenge, aligned coin- be explained as resulting from differential cidentally on the midwinter solstice sunset weathering of chalk bedrock where it was and midsummer solstice sunrise and embel- protected by the Avenue banks, since the lished by the ditches and banks of the Ave- banks were much narrower than the ridges nue itself. These take the form of unusually beneath them. deep and wide periglacial fissures, flanked Two other features are also aligned on this by two low ridges of chalk bedrock (Fig. 6). solstitial axis. The first of these is Newall’s Running parallel on the southeast side is a Mound at the Avenue’s elbow, found to be shallow gully. From examination of sections a natural mound of clay-with-flints (Evans, across the Stonehenge Avenue northeast of 1984). The second is a mound within the the Heel Stone, it appears that these features centre of Stonehenge (Field and Pearson, formed a corrugated surface about 30m 2010) that may well be a natural chalk knoll, wide. Although the length of the periglacial given the height of bedrock on its south side 80 Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge as revealed in Darvill and Wainwright’s 2008 was replaced by the widespread adoption of trench (2009: fig. 9). uniform artefact styles and fashions of con- As Charly French and Mike Allen have struction across Britain. remarked, the periglacial fissures would have shown up as vegetational stripes at times of Ancestral unification – bluestones summer drought and beneath the shallow and sarsens soils of the early Holocene landscape, provid- It was against this background of increasing ing prehistoric observers with a demonstra- commonality in material styles and cultural tion of the unity of heaven and earth through practices that Stonehenge was constructed, this remarkable conjunction (Allen and in its first stage just after 3000 BC and in French, forthcoming). Given that the Stone- its second stage around 2500 BC. If Stone- henge chalkland was lightly wooded and open henge was built for the ancestors then they in the early Holocene (French et al., 2012) and were ancestors of at least two geographically that Early Mesolithic hunters erected large different but no longer culturally distinct pine posts in the immediate vicinity in the groups. Whereas Childe considered Stone- 8th and 7th millennia BC (Cleal et al., 1995: henge to illustrate a degree of political uni- 43–56; Allen and Gardiner, 2002), this may fication, we can now make a strong case for have been a conjunction noticed not just in Stonehenge to have been constructed for the the Neolithic but probably millennia earlier. very reason of unification both at a human The recent discovery of long-lived and dense and a cosmic level. Mesolithic occupation beside the River Avon The Stonehenge Riverside Project’s field- near Vespasian’s Camp (Jacques et al., 2012) work at and around Stonehenge is now fin- also demonstrates that the Stonehenge land- ished and is being followed up by new field- scape was likely to be a ‘persistent place’ for work at the sources of Stonehenge’s stones Mesolithic people and thus a centre of their to see whether the theory of ancestral uni- world long before any stones were erected. fication makes sense from the Welsh end. If the location of Stonehenge was on a The conventional narrative about bringing long-recognised axis mundi, as the natural the bluestones from the Preseli hills in west landform and Mesolithic activity suggest, Wales includes their quarrying on the south- then Stonehenge’s unity of solar, lunar and ern edge of those hills at Carn Meini (also earthly elements helps us to understand that known as Carn Menyn) and dragging them the monument was designed to integrate southwards to Milford Haven for transport them in a holistic and unified fashion. That by boat towards Salisbury Plain. notion of unity can also be found in the In contrast to this orthodox view, recent bringing together of the two types of stone geological research by Rob Ixer (UCL Research – sarsen and bluestone, each with their very Fellow) and Richard Bevins (National separate geographical origins. Whereas sars- Museum of Wales) suggests that many of the ens are local to the region (most probably bluestones came from the north side of the from 20 miles to the north on the Marlbor- Preseli hills (Ixer and Bevins, 2011; Bevins et ough Downs between Avebury and Marlbor- al., forthcoming). At Craig Rhos-y-felin in the ough), the bluestones hail from west Wales, Brynberian valley, a tributary of the Nevern, around 140 miles away. For most of the 4th we are currently excavating the quarry for millennium BC, the two areas were culturally one of the rhyolite monoliths whose debit- separate, at least in terms of ceramic styles, age has been found at Stonehenge (Fig. 7). mortuary practices and funerary monu- At the head of that tributary lie the outcrops ments, with a major material culture divide of Carn Goedog and Carregmarchogion, running from the Wash to the Southwest. recently recognised as the dominant sources From c.3400 BC onwards, this regionalism of the spotted dolerite bluestones. Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge 81

Fig. 7: Excavation of the Craig Rhos-y-felin rhyolite monolith quarry in , Wales (photo: Adam Stanford).

This new evidence raises the probability a maximum diameter of 160m, this earth- that the stones were initially taken north- work would be the largest henge in Wales if wards into the Nevern valley, to be either car- it is indeed from the period of Stonehenge. ried by boat around the Pembrokeshire coast Only excavation will tell whether it is associ- or dragged inland along the inter-connecting ated with a dismantled stone circle. valleys of south Wales to the Severn estuary. In addition, we must consider the possibility Conclusion that the bluestones were originally sourced In conclusion, there has been a long and var- for a local stone circle in the Nevern valley ied succession of theories about Stonehenge. immediately north of Preseli. Instead of see- Many are still in circulation even though ing the stones as quarried specifically for their empirical basis has not stood the test of Stonehenge, it may be that they were des- time. New discoveries are being made all the tined first for a monument that was later time, forcing existing theories to be modified dismantled, moved and merged with sarsen or rejected as partial or incomplete. From the stones at that long-lived centre on Salisbury outset, the ancestor hypothesis developed by Plain. Perhaps their moving represented the the Stonehenge Riverside Project set out pre- merging of two major ceremonial centres, dictions that could be followed up with field- one for western Britain and the other for work, in turn feeding back into theorizing. southern Britain. That reflexive relationship has, over ten years, It is just possible that there is indeed a proved to be an extremely rewarding process, Neolithic ceremonial centre in the Nev- making the quest for the purpose of Stone- ern valley in the form of a suspected henge henge exactly what archaeology should be – beneath the later prehistoric hillfort of Cas- the excitement of potential possibilities, the tell Mawr (Mytum and Webster, 2003). With triangulation of multiple lines of evidence, 82 Parker Pearson: Researching Stonehenge the not-knowing where the evidence will Darvill, T C 2006 Stonehenge: the Biography lead and, most importantly, the fun of work- of a Landscape. Stroud: Tempus. ing with skilled and inspirational colleagues. Darvill, T C 2007 Towards the within: Stone- henge and its purpose. in D A Barra- References clough and C Malone (eds) Cult in Con- Allen, M J and French, C A I Forthcoming text: Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology. 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How to cite this article: Parker Pearson, M 2013 Researching Stonehenge: Theories Past and Present. Archaeology International, No. 16 (2012-2013): 72-83, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ ai.1601

Published: 24 October 2013

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