(This site currently under construction with neolithic web publishing tools)
The sun rises over the sweeping chalk downs of Salisbury Plain, illuminating a hidden world of ancient mystery, shimmering through forgotten dream and untold legend in drifting river mist, shining on the Heel Stone this solstice morning as it has done every summer solstice morning for more than five thousand years. One can imagine watching a procession of rough-clad men and women approach along the scarcely visible avenue, wending through the rising mist and rising sun, voices rising in chant, in unison, in a language never set to stone nor papyrus, scratching at the fringes of some race memory the intonations and inflections of so long ago, in worship and in awe of powers cosmic and earthly which unbidden control the lives of men and women and all creatures, powers the effects of which can be charted in the great wheel of the sky turning on its axis, daily, monthly, yearly. Here, in measured spaces, people have demarked these motions, even to the great progression of the goddess moon over nearly nineteen years in its turning, and here they come to worship, to celebrate, to gather for the sharing of visions beyond our sight. Here is Stonehenge, the heart of a culture far older than Roman Britain or Classical Greece, older than Abraham's journey to Canaan, older even than the union of Egypt's Upper and Lower Kingdoms.
Stonehenge forms the heart of a vast, almost invisible and highly symbollic landscape of neolithic henges, over 300 burial chambers, and other sites. In many ways the most remarkable prehistoric site in western Europe, Stonehenge extensively represents the ingenuity of those cultures which immediately predate the historical era. Many legends account for the construction of Stonehenge, including the medieval idea that it was erected by Merlin in the days of King Arthur, the later concept that it was built by the Romans, and the modern romantic notion that it was built by the Druids. However, archeologists have clarified much detail concerning when it was built and by whom, although how and why remain major mysteries. As becomes clear upon investigation of the different elements of the site, Stonehenge passed through three main phases of development over a period of some two thousand years.
The First Stonehenge, dated between 3200 and 2500 BCE, incorporates the earliest elements of the site: the isolated, unshapen sarsen (hard sandstone) Heel Stone which stands 4.9 metres high beside the A360 highway, its long-missing partner on the western side, the henge itself (the ditch and internal bank which encircle the stone circle), and the stake holes which mark the 18½-year lunar cycle. None of the stones of what we now call Stonehenge (the stone circles within the embankment) were erected during this first phase.
After a 300 year period of apparent neglect, around 2200 BCE, construction began on what is now called Second Stonehenge, when more than 80 4-ton bluestones (spotted dolerite originating in Dyfed, southwest Wales) were brought to Stonehenge to be set up in two concentric circles in the centre of the enclosing bank and ditch. These circles included an entrance avenue facing the Heel Stone and marking the line of midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset. However, for some reason still unguessed, this work was never completed. There is also keen debate regarding whether men quarried and transported the bluestones (over sea and land a distance exceeding 80 miles) or if glaciation had left the bluestones in their new locale.
In about 2000 BCE the construction of Third Stonehenge was begun with the removal of the unfinished bluestone circles and, in their place, the raising of the great sarsen (hard sandstone) blocks surviving today. More than 80 of these stones, the most massive weighing 45 tons, were dragged (perhaps on wooden rollers or along a greased wooden track) over 20 miles from Marlborough Downs in north Wiltshire. In a most remarkable feat of engineering and architectural design, 30 upright stones were each carefully shaped to appear the same size, each bulging in the middle (entasis) to counteract the effect of perspective (keystoning). The unique lintel stones completing the trilathons (unknown anywhere else) were dovetailed together and joined to the uprights with mortice and tenon joints which are readily apparent in the photos below. Moreover, each lintel was curved on its long side so that the whole ring of 30 stones would approximate a perfect circle. So sophisticated was this construction that for some years scholars and architects assumed that craftsmen from the Mediterranean were responsible for the design and execution. However, the monument is roughly contemporary with the first Minoan palace at Knossos in Crete and thereby predates the Mediterranean architects by some hundreds of years. Inside the circle of 30 stones, the five great trilathons were erected. This work was probably completed by 1600 BCE, as indicated by carvings of axeheads and a dagger on some of the stones.
Click on the images below to see a larger, high resolution version.
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Other images will be posted in the future.
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You may copy and distribute these images in electronic form for educational use, provided that no charge is made and the copyright owner is duly acknowleged. Any and all other use without copyright owner's permission is expressly forbidden. |
All material on this and other Standing Stone Designs web pages copywrite © Ernest Black 1996 unless otherwise noted.
