Stonehenge

In the Spring of 2016, I was in an amazing anthropology class called The Archaeology of Human History. It was actually the inspiration for the final essay I wrote in the class Fiction & Reality (Technology and Transition), which I was taking that same semester. After spending three months swiftly moving through around six million years of upright hominid history, we were assigned a research essay on an archaeological site of our choice. I chose Stonehenge.

     Located in southern England in Wiltshire, the megalithic structure known as Stonehenge has towered over Salisbury Plain for thousands of years. Dr. Anthony M. Perks, writing with Darlene Marie Bailey in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, explains, “For most of the past thousand years it has been a centre of mystery, and at least three kings and two notable physicians have taken serious interest in it and the lost people who built it” (Perks and Bailey 2003). Indeed, the site has been the inspiration for myriad hypotheses regarding its construction and use. Some of the most prominent of these hypotheses focus on celestial alignments during the solstices while others claim the site shows reverence for either the living or the dead. Perks and Bailey offer a rather different interpretation, approaching the issue from a medical standpoint and juxtaposing an overhead view of the site with that of a drawing of the human vulva. Whatever the case, the evidence suggests that these massive blocks of stone were quarried from up to 240 miles away (Feder 2014).

     In 1974, the results of a thorough examination of Stonehenge by Alexander Thom, Archibald Stevenson Thom, and Alexander Strang Thom were published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy. This report details with meticulous precision the geometry that was likely used in the construction of Stonehenge as well as the probable dates around which construction took place. In short, the view just forty or so years ago was that Stonehenge probably took around 1,600 years to complete, starting around 4,800 years ago.

The earliest parts of the monument, probably constructed about 2,800 B.C., are the ditch and bank, the Aubrey holes, the Heel stone and perhaps the ‘stations’.... When people think of Stonehenge they probably think of the two impressive rings which were eventually built in the centre of the monument about 2,100 B.C. The outer of these rings is the sarsen circle which originally consisted of 30 huge stones, capped by a complete ring of lintels [Thom et al. 1974].

But, with more advanced methods and having been the first to excavate in those four decades, a team in 2008 used charcoal remains to determine a more precise construction period of the inner rings starting around 4,600 years ago (Feder 2014).

     The stones of Stonehenge consist of an inner horseshoe of trilithon uprights, made of sarsen stone quarried from about 19 miles north of the site and weighing up to several dozen tons; an outer ring of 30 lintels, made from the same sarsen stone and placed atop the uprights to cap them at roughly six tons a piece; and bluestones, positioned between the two rings and quarried from over 200 miles away, each weighing over four tons. Feder tells us, “The tops of all of sarsen uprights [sic] were precisely carved to produce two knobs, or tenons” (Feder 2014). To fit onto the sarsens, holes were drilled in the bottom of the lintels to match the tenons and produce the full ring. So, not only did these ancient architects have to cut and then transport these massive stone blocks weighing several tons over huge distances, they had to place them into geometrically oriented holes in the ground and then position massive stone lintels on top! With what would be considered primitive tools by today’s standards, the people that built Stonehenge accomplished something that modern engineers, with the aid of automated machine technology, find exceedingly impressive. But, it’s not the only ancient site in the area. Stonehenge has been connected with another about 2 miles away called Durrington Walls. According to Feder, “Durrington Walls appears to have been the place where, perhaps, Stonehenge’s builders lived and where, almost certainly, the monument’s ancient visitors feasted (Olding-Smee 2007)” (Feder 2014). And while evidence suggests that Stonehenge was a ritualistic place, the nature of those rituals has been a hotly debated topic for centuries.

     As mentioned before, a number of hypotheses regarding the purpose of Stonehenge have revolved around celestial observations (pun definitely intended). “It is universally admitted that the axis of Stonehenge pointed to the rising solstitial Sun,” writes Thom (Thom et al. 1974). Perhaps one of the most unusual, however, is that of Perks and Bailey, mentioned earlier. In essence, their idea connects that of Stonehenge being a place of reverence for the dead with that of Stonehenge being intimately intertwined with the Mother Goddess or Earth Mother.

The birth-canal analogy would account for the absence of any monolith at the geometric centre of the henge, despite the way in which one’s attention is drawn there: the central area is empty because it represents the opening to the world, the birth canal. This notion is supported by the remarkable find at nearby Woodhenge: the body of a sacrificial child was discovered buried at the centre of the circles.2 [sic] Clearly, we are approaching the concept of Earth Mother (Perks and Bailey 2003).

A hypothetical argument appears to be emerging:

     

If ideas of Earth Mother originated with or were shared by the people of the henge, Stonehenge could represent, symbolically, the opening by which Earth Mother gave birth to the plants and animals on which the ancient people so depended. The henge would honour her for giving them both life and livelihood (Perks and Bailey 2003).

Finally, tying the celestial concepts together with the Earth Mother/birth concept, Perks and Bailey speculate, “If we accept the underlying feeling that Stonehenge was some sort of temple, or at least sacred in some way, and combine this with the ideas of Earth Mother and Sun Father suggested by the stones, we can make sense of the many suggestions of ceremonials at the solstices” (Perks and Bailey 2003).

     The tentative nature of archaeology is perhaps one of the only valid justifications for updating textbooks yearly. With practically every excavation that takes place, new information about our species’ past is uncovered. Stonehenge is certainly no exception in this regard. Four decades of separation between excavations and of technological and methodological refinement reveal just how varied the responses to the evidence at hand with the knowledge of the time can be. Doubtless, as new excavations are sanctioned, and as new methods are developed and old methods are either refined or abandoned, the story will be updated. In other words, without a time machine—I won’t go into the countless paradoxes that arise with one’s existence—we are practically beholden to applying the best of what we know up until now to the admitted construction of an interpreted history none of us experienced and which is in reality as unfathomable to us as our way of life is to those ancient hominids upon which our speculations are.

Bibliography

Feder, Kenneth L. 2014 The Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory. Oxford 

     University Press, New York.

Perks, Anthony M, and Darlene Marie Bailey. 2003 Stonehenge: a view from medicine. Journal of 

     the Royal Society of Medicine 96(2):94–98.

Thom, Alexnder, Archibald Stevenson Thom, and Alexander Strang Thom. 1974 Stonehenge. 

     Journal for the History of Astronomy 5(2):71-90.