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The Quest for the Origins of Stonehenge

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The Quest for the Origins of Stonehenge The Quest for the Origins of Stonehenge “The discovery of a dismantled stone circle—close to Stonehenge’s bluestone quarries in west Wales—raises the possibility that a 900-year-old legend about Stonehenge being built from an earlier stone circle contains a grain of truth. Radiocarbon and OSL dating of Waun Mawn indicate construction c. 3000 BC, shortly before the initial construction of Stonehenge. The identical diameters of Waun Mawn and the enclosing ditch of Stonehenge, and their orientations on the midsummer solstice sunrise, suggest that at least part of the Waun Mawn circle was brought from west Wales to Salisbury Plain. This interpretation complements recent isotope work that supports a hypothesis of migration of both people and animals from Wales to Stonehenge.” – Mike Parker Pearson et al, The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of west Wales, Antiquity 2021 Vol. 95 (379):pp.85–103. The Quest Begins Following the television program Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed first screened on BBC2 on 12th February, the story claiming to unveil a dramatic discovery linking Stonehenge to its original site 140 miles distant in Preseli, south-west Wales, has gone viral across news channels and social media. Reception has been mixed with some voices accusing the program, presented by respected anthropologist Alice Roberts, as parading myth as fact and not representing good science. Alice Roberts and Mike Parker Pearson at Waun Mawn The Stones of Stonehenge The huge sarsen stones, weighing around 25 tons each, comprising today what remains of the outer circle and inner trilithon horseshoe, were sourced locally and brought from Marlborough Downs about 20 miles away. This alone was a massive effort, but apart from the challenge of the shear size of the stones it appears to be in common with most prehistoric stone circle construction that utilised local material. The arrival of the earliest sarsens at Stonehenge has been dated around 2600 BC. However, it is now claimed that the first stone setting at Stonehenge was actually the smaller bluestones, each estimated to weigh between 2-4 tons. The arrival of these bluestones, has puzzled archaeologists since the British geologist Herbert Thomas identified their source as the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales a hundred years ago. Thomas identified a site called Carn Menyn in the Preselis as the source of the spotted dolerite bluestones at Stonehenge. His discovery led some to look anew at Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th century tale of the Kings of Britain which claimed Stonehenge was brought from Ireland during the days of King Arthur, including Stuart Piggott who excavated at Stonehenge alongside Richard Atkinson in the 1950’s. Perhaps Thomas was correct in postulating their use in an earlier stone circle as some of the bluestones present at Stonehenge today display clear evidence of previous working which may support claims of an earlier bluestone circle somewhere. Two spotted dolerite lintels (Stones 36 and 150) in the bluestone circle appear to have been reused from an earlier structure and three stones (Stones 67, 70, and possibly 69) from the bluestone horseshoe (or oval) display evidence of reworked tenons at their tops, while the tongue and groove on stones 66 and 68 suggests they were once joined. Bluestone 68 Thomas’s sampling was limited and he only spent one day in the Preseli Hills. It is now known that there are at least 20 different types of volcanic and igneous rocks, including dolerites (spotted and unspotted), rhyolites, sandstones and tuffs, that constitute the “bluestone group” of stones, an unsatisfactory generic term used to describe all non-sarsen stones at Stonehenge. The task of identification is compounded by the fact that many of the original stones are now missing and some reduced to mere stumps while the sad remnants of others are hidden beneath the Stonehenge turf; a mere 43 survive at the monument today, no doubt the result of robbing and breaking by souvenir hunters over thousands of years. Tales from the Riverbank The quest for the origins of Stonehenge started with The Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP), directed by Mike Parker Pearson, (then of Sheffield University), carrying out research in the Stonehenge landscape between 2003-2009. The SRP carried out fieldwork at key sites including Durrington Walls, the Cursus, and the Stonehenge Avenue to test the hypothesis that Stonehenge was a stone monument dedicated to the dead and Durrington Walls made from timber was for the living. Stonehenge – Durrington Walls Following extensive work at Durrington Walls, a large Neolithic settlement 2 miles from Stonehenge linked to the river Avon by a paved avenue aligned to the midsummer sunset, SRP moved onto Stonehenge in 2008 and re-opened Aubrey Hole 7, purposefully targeting this pit as it contained all the human remains from previous excavations at Stonehenge that had been reburied in 1935. Studies of the human remains from the Aubrey Hole, totalling at least 52 cremation burials, led the team to conclude that Stonehenge is effectively Britain’s largest third millennium BC cemetery. Controversially the human remains have still not been returned to Stonehenge, the sacred place where they were meant to be, despite legal challenges by the Stonehenge Druids. After excavating just the one pit SRP re-aligned the date of the first monument at Stonehenge back by 500 years to around 3000 BC seeing bluestones standing in all 56 Aubrey Holes, the first stone setting. In 2009 the project team discovered a henge monument by the River Avon at the terminus of the Stonehenge Avenue. At the centre of this so-called West Amesbury henge were 9 stoneholes in an arc, imagined as holding 24-26 bluestones in a full circle (at least half now missing, eroded by the river Avon). These stoneholes were closely comparable with bluestone holes at Stonehenge, indeed the imprint of one is claimed to be very similar to the distinctively indented cross-section of Bluestone 68 at Stonehenge (illustrated above). Hence the monument was speculatively named “Bluestonehenge”, although no lithic evidence was found at the site to support the notion of a bluestone circle; not a chip, not a flake. SRP hoped the construction of this putative bluestonestone circle was contemporary with the proposed date for the arrival of the bluestones at Stonehenge standing in the 56 Aubrey Holes in 3000–2920 BC. But there was a lack of secure dating evidence for the construction. The stone circle was probably dismantled 2480–2230 BC, roughly contemporary with construction of the Avenue.Conveniently, 56 in the Aubrey holes and 24-26 at Bluestonehenge provides the ultimate number of bluestones considered by Richard Atkinson in the final setting at Stonehenge of around 80. However the final number of bluestones is far from certain. Excavations by Atkinson (1954) and Darvill & Wainwright (2008) across the Bluestone Circle found the spacing of stumps under the turf to be very close, suggesting, if continuous, that a complete circle may have been filled in like a wall. However, figures are typically given as between 40-60 for the Bluestone Circle and around 24 in the Bluestone Horseshoe. It should be noted that the Bluestone Horseshoe was originally closed at both ends forming an oval, but 4 or 5 stones were ripped out to leave 19 in an open horseshoe; where did these bluestones go? Stonehenge Avenue excavation Excavation by SRP across the line of the Avenue revealed deep periglacial fissures underlying the first 500m from the monument that aligned with Stonehenge’s solstitial axis (midwinter sunset– midsummer sunrise). Parker Pearson concluded that Stonehenge was built at this precise location in the prehistoric landscape because of this alignment, an immense project that unified the ancient Britons. Provenancing the Stones Beyond the Stonehenge Riverside Project the team took on further research as The Stones of Stonehenge Project (SOS) once again directed by Professor Mike Parker Pearson (now UCL Institute of Archaeology), to explore the origin of the stones used in the construction of Stonehenge: sourcing the huge sarsens and the bluestones using geological analysis to pinpoint the precise locations. After matching source material to core samples taken from a limited number of sarsens at Stonehenge in 1958 researchers have identified West Woods, 15 miles (25km) north of the monument on the edge of Wiltshire’s Marlborough Downs as the exact origin of the sarsen stones. Yet, the sarsens fail to excite many people and the real interest is in the bluestones. Modern science has managed to pinpoint the exact source of some of the bluestones owing to advances in technology since Herbert Thomas’s day. Dr Richard Bevins (Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales) and Dr Rob Ixer (UCL and University of Leicester) have now identified the outcrops of Carn Goedog (near Carn Meyn) as the main source of Stonehenge’s ‘spotted dolerite’ bluestones and Craig Rhos-y-felin as a source for one of the ‘rhyolite’ bluestones, oddly abundant in the debitage at Stonehenge but absent as a standing stone. Craig Rhos-y-felin At Craig Rhos-y-felin the SOS team claimed to have found traces of prehistoric stone extraction along with a prepared but abandoned megalith and a stone hole within which another was apparently extracted. Continuing investigations claimed to have uncovered evidence of further megalith quarrying in the Preselis at Carn Goedog, identifying this site as a source for spotted dolerite bluestones, not Carn Menyn as originally claimed by Thomas. However, it is debatable whether there is any direct evidence of quarrying at either site. The dating of Craig Rhos-y-felin was obtained from radiocarbon testing of charcoal from a fire claimed to be the quarry-men’s camp revealed a date several hundred years before the construction of the first stone setting at Stonehenge.
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