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Stonehenge Is One of the Most Studied Monuments and Illustrates the Range of Approaches Archaeologists Have Taken to Try to Understand Prehistoric Religions

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Stonehenge Is One of the Most Studied Monuments and Illustrates the Range of Approaches Archaeologists Have Taken to Try to Understand Prehistoric Religions Key study Stonehenge Stonehenge is one of the most studied monuments and illustrates the range of approaches archaeologists have taken to try to understand prehistoric religions. Each decade brings new technologies and analogies which potentially shed light on a new aspect of the site. It also illustrates continuity and change in the use of particular ritual sites. The Stonehenge ‘prehistoric ritual landscape’ lies on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, an area of undulating chalk-land with the river Avon some 2km to the south-east, giving links to Amesbury (of Amesbury Archer fame) and Durrington Walls, a massive contemporary henge monument a few kilometres upstream. The number and variety of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in the area are greater in density than anywhere else in the United Kingdom and attest to the undoubted significance of the area in terms of ceremonial and funerary ritual. A full description of all the component parts of Stonehenge and their phases of development requires a book such as Richards (1997). The complex of stones now visible, some standing and some fallen, does not easily reveal the developmental phases and the orderliness of the monument during its active years. A major focus has been on understanding the sequence of construction and change. Partial excavations and geophysics have identified where later stone sockets cut earlier ones, the stratigraphy of the ditches has revealed periods of silting and the distribution or lack of stone chips from the processing of the stones indicates activity areas and is useful in identifying the order of construction. Precise dating has been an issue with C-14 dates based often loosely on single samples but there were three major phases in its development and several minor episodes of remodelling as well. Early monuments The place seems to have been significant from the Mesolithic when a line of three pits to hold massive pine posts was dug nearby. Current Open University research a mile away has also identified a Mesolithic settlement beside a spring which was repeatedly used between 7550 and 4750 BC. In the earlier Neolithic, a small causewayed enclosure, a dozen or so long barrows and two cursus monuments (the longer one being nearly 3km in length and just north of Stonehenge) reveal a continuing and growing involvement in the development of a ritual landscape by the local population. The initial part of Stonehenge was a relatively small henge with two entrances built around 3100 BC. Henges vary greatly in size but have a common factor of a basically circular shape created by a ditch with the upcast being thrown outwards to form an external bank. This classic non-defensive format could be interpreted as providing a viewing platform from which to witness activities taking place in the central and perhaps restricted access enclosure or maybe the bank simply blocked the view from outside so one had to enter the henge to participate in the ritual. Stonehenge is atypical: its surrounding ditch and internal bank are not significant earthworks – many people simply do not notice them when visiting the site – something one certainly couldn’t say about Avebury! Around the same time the fifty-six Aubrey Holes, a concentric circle of postholes, were dug just inside the bank. Over the next few centuries other post settings came and went and at least thirty cremations were placed in the monument. The ditch and pits were dug using antler picks and cattle shoulder blade shovels, several of which were left behind. Rebuilding in stone By the middle of the third millennium BC four other henge monuments had been built within 3km of Stonehenge itself; all are quite different, ranging from the small site at Fargo Plantation to Woodhenge, dominated by a circular timber construction which filled its interior, to the massive Durrington Walls at nearly 500m in diameter. However, the significance of Stonehenge was enhanced with a rebuilding in stone. The stone settings are formed by two quite different groups of stones. The larger stones weighing up to 45 tonnes are sarsens, a type of hard sandstone from the Marlborough Downs east of Avebury about 30km away. The smaller (though these can weigh up to 4 tonnes) bluestones originate from the Preseli Mountains in south-west Wales. Both clearly required a great deal of human ingenuity and effort in terms of transportation, no doubt using seaways and waterways where feasible and rollers for overland journeys. The first phase of stone settings around 2600 BC comprised a double horseshoe of the relatively smaller bluestones set in the centre of the henge (it may have been the intention to form two concentric circles but, if so, this plan did not come to fruition). However, this design was not set to last and all the stones were later removed and, presumably, stored off-site. Darvill and Wainwright who located a possible quarry for these stones argue that they may have had an association with healing. Local folklore associates both quarry and monument site with such power. The sarsen circle of the late third millennium had thirty dressed uprights topped by a continuous ring of horizontal lintels held in place by mortice-and-tenon joints with the uprights and tongue-and- groove with each other. Within this circle, a horseshoe setting of the largest sarsens (up to 45 tonnes) was made up of 5 trilithons (free-standing settings with two uprights and a lintel connecting them). These stood over 7m from ground level. These sarsen features were never moved once erected. The bluestones, however, ‘stored’ to one side, were returned to the site early in the second millennium. Two circles of holes outside the sarsen circle (the ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ holes) may have been dug to take them but the designers did not follow through on this idea. Instead the bluestones reappear as a circle inside the sarsen ring and also in an oval/horseshoe setting within the sarsen trilithon horseshoe. By this final phase the whole middle section gives the appearance of being quite tight and cluttered and is clearly unique in terms of stone circles and settings within henge monuments. Stonehenge was undoubtedly a highly complex monument designed and built by people with developed engineering skills allied to an eye for calendrical events and contemporary religious beliefs. A number of additional single large stones can be linked to the use of the site and will feature in a complete study of the arrangements: the Heel Stone, the Slaughter Stone and the four Station Stones. During the Bronze Age several of the stones were carved with images of metal axes and at least one dagger. At one time these were thought to link Stonehenge to Mediterranean builders but radiocarbon dating demolished that idea. Today they are barely visible due to visitor erosion but have recently been recorded by laser scanning. The nature of beliefs These changes which span the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age may have reflected changes in use and belief. The entrance to the inner area through the earthworks faces north-east. An earlier one (there were two originally) to the south was later blocked and the current one realigned to lead out onto the Stonehenge ‘Avenue’. This linear earthwork has two banks with internal ditches and is about 12m wide overall. It runs straight for just over 500m before taking first a more easterly course and then a south-easterly one down to the river Avon. The avenue seems to focus the monument on the midsummer sunrise and most popular theories build on this. This includes ideas about an earth goddess/mother with Stonehenge representing a womb. However, the midwinter solstice is on the same axis and increasingly archaeologists see this as the real focus. Darvill (. 274) has suggested that the site may have been viewed as the home of a winter god. Coinciding with the stone construction phases, a major funerary landscape developed with the construction of literally hundreds of round barrows, a great many of which cluster together to form barrow ‘cemeteries’. Some of these can be clearly seen to be linear cemeteries laid out in a rough line across the landscape such as the Winterbourne Stoke Crossroads group just to the west of Stonehenge and on King Barrow Ridge either side of the Avenue. Ancient long barrows were significant in these new alignments. An influential interpretation of the change to stone has come from Parker-Pearson (1993) and the Madagascan archaeologist Ramilisonina. They saw the stone as marking a permanent monument to the ancestors and contrasted the area around Stonehenge, which has little sign of habitation, with Durrington Walls with evidence of feasting: timber for the living, stone for the dead. They argue that the dead were taken from Durrington down the Avon and then up the Avenue. The Avenue itself is suggestive of processions. Parker-Pearson has led an exciting joint university investigation of the area since 2005 on the Stonehenge Riverside Project. At Durrington Walls, excavations revealed evidence of an ‘avenue’ which predates the eastern entrance to the henge and leads from a large timber circle (similar to the one at Woodhenge) for a distance of 170m down to the River Avon. The width of this ‘avenue’ compares to the Stonehenge Avenue. These excavations (Parker-Pearson 2012) have also provided evidence of a potentially extensive settlement. Eight houses, very similar in layout to those at Skara Brae (p. 274), and with impressions suggesting similar furniture, have been found in a small part of what is expected to be a much larger area of habitation. Several hundred houses may lie under the huge bank. Finds indicate that this settlement was probably occupied on a seasonal basis.
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