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Porth Minick

Singing Up the Country: The Songlines of Avebury and Beyond

Singing Up the Country: The Songlines of Avebury and Beyond

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<< Our Photo Pages >> Stonehenge. - Stone Circle in England in Wiltshire

Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 11 January 2024  Page Views: 829162

StonehengeSite Name: Stonehenge.
Country: England County: Wiltshire Type: Stone Circle
Nearest Town: Salisbury  Nearest Village: Amesbury
Map Ref: SU1224742194  Landranger Map Number: 184
Latitude: 51.178851N  Longitude: 1.826177W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
4 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
4 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
5

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External Links:

I have visited· I would like to visit

43559959 trystan_hughes CharcoalBurner89 Suzipam1 would like to visit

vanoflife visited on 1st Dec 2023 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4

Couplands saw from a distance on 11th Sep 2023 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4

markj99 visited on 4th Jun 2023 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 4 I was travelling to Cornwall on the A303 when Stonehenge popped up on the horizon. I was magnetically drawn to revisit one of the great wonders of the world. The difference between my 2 visits, 14 years apart, was that I appreciated the surrounding barrows near Stonehenge so much more.

NDM visited on 1st Dec 2022 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 5 Access: 5

Hogeybare visited on 18th Aug 2022 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5 Expensive, and can't get near the stones. Would like to go back on a solstice event

RedKite1985 saw from a distance on 30th Apr 2022 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4

cliffrich visited on 31st Jan 2020 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 3 If you visit don't forget to see Woodhenge which is all part of the huge site which includes longbarrows/Cursus, an avenue, and lots of round barrows

Catrinm visited on 8th Nov 2019 Maxing out the English Heritage card before the Sunrise over the Stones conference at Bournemouth ...

abominabledrh visited on 15th Jul 2019 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 3

Chrus visited on 29th Mar 2019 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 4

elad13 visited on 4th Feb 2019 - their rating: Cond: 3

Hodur visited on 29th Dec 2018 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 5

Hayden visited on 19th Aug 2018 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 5 Was still an amazing sight to see despite the crowdedness

JamesSutherland visited on 22nd Jul 2018 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 5

lichen visited on 8th Dec 2016 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4

sba_dk visited on 25th Jun 2016 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 5 Access: 5

achiersnakes visited on 14th Jan 2016 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 5 Access: 5 Don't really need to say a lot about Stonehenge apart from how amazing it is. At first seeing the prices for the museum and shuttle bus I was sceptical about the experience but afterwards it was worth it. Amazing piece of history. Make sure you get the shuttle bus and museum pass - even just for the experience! Very cold and flat. The road adjacent to the henge ruins the ambience slightly, but not completely. Wonderful place to visit. Café also offers vegetarian/gluten-free food and drink.

emerald visited on 20th Oct 2015 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4 £14.50 admission fee now, English Heritage site, a good 25 minute walk up to the stones from the controversial visitors centre, buses do run for people with children or mobility problems, if you want the audio tour it's another £2- a rip off l think

XIII visited on 12th Aug 2015 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 4

kantonkats visited on 14th Jan 2015 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5

TwinFlamesKiss visited on 1st Dec 2013 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 5 Access: 5 Winter Solstice. Awesome atmosphere and not as crowded as Summer.

NorthernerInLondon visited on 9th Sep 2013 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 1 Access: 5

Estrela visited on 5th Sep 2013 The audio guide is good, keeps the visitors moving, but I really missed the opportunity to just stand and drink in the landscape and the relationship between the stones.

RichFox visited on 21st May 2013 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 5 Access: 5 A little overly-commercialised now of course, but, come on; Stonehenge is megalithic equivalent of seeing Black Sabbath back in 1971, before the drugs, mega-stardom and hair conditioner hit hard.

mfrincu visited on 2nd May 2013 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 5 Access: 5 Breathtaking place! The stones are amazing and seeing them live is a unique experience.

SolarMegalith visited on 25th Nov 2011 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4

tomatstone visited on 15th Oct 2011 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4

zaghareet visited on 1st Sep 2011 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5 Crowded, but worth the visit.

Klingon visited on 21st Jul 2011 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 5

Nexos visited on 29th Dec 2010 - their rating: Amb: 5 Access: 5

h_fenton visited on 30th Aug 2010 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 5 Access: 5 Arrived at Stonehenge before dawn, watched the sun slowly rise from the roadside, crossed the road, popped my kite and camera into the air and then watched Stonehenge security scurry towards me before they told me to take it down because I might damage the stones.

dubnicos visited on 1st Aug 2010 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 2 Access: 5 The monument's too well-known! Always too busy, and partly on account of that you're rarely allowed anywhere it. It really takes away from the atmosphere. On the other hand, it does still make for a pleasant trip.

johnstone visited on 28th Jun 2010 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 4

Richard13 visited on 1st Sep 2009 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 3 Access: 4

markj99 visited on 17th Aug 2009 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 4 No-one could failed to be impressed by Stonehenge. Despite the interference of man over the millennia, Stonehenge retains huge gravitas.

jeniferj visited on 13th Oct 2008 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 2 Access: 5

ForestDaughter visited on 25th Sep 2008 - their rating: Access: 5

MartinJEley visited on 30th Jun 2008 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 4 Easily recognized by just about anyone I was always impressed to see the structure at close range. As a young boy growing up less than an hour from the site I recall still being able to walk through the remaining stones. The vast amount of work done over the years, and continuing today, to understand the development and meaning of the site often raises as many questions as it does answers. There are many books to choose from if anyone wishes to enter into the intrigue presented by the discipline of archaeoastronomy.

ChrisHealey visited on 20th Jun 2008 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 5 I went as a child too, but summer solstice 2008 was probably my first independent visit.

Woode visited on 20th Dec 2007 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 5

SteveC visited on 2nd Jul 2005 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 5

scherre visited on 1st Jul 2005 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Did the private access visit early in the morning. Totally worth it. Wow.

coldrum visited on 1st Jan 2005 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5 Better to book private access to Stonehenge. It cost's a bit more but you do get to walk within the circle and get a better idea of the monument. Private access is available throughout most of the year and must be booked in advance from English Heritage. Access is before the monument is open and after it is closed. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/

Erin visited on 1st Jan 2005 - their rating: Amb: 4 Access: 5

scherre visited on 1st Jan 2002 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5

scherre visited on 1st Jan 2002 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5

Andy B visited on 1st Jul 2001 Section on astronomical alignments - featured in Episode Three of BBC's History of Ancient Britain (of course I have visited but this is to get the order right)

graemefield visited on 27th Jun 2001 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 5

StuStuStudio visited on 20th Jul 2000 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 4 Very Impressive but with a lot of damage. LOTS of tourists but worth a look.

scherre visited on 1st Sep 1999 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 5

kthdsn visited on 1st Jun 1995 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 3 Access: 5

SandyG visited on 1st Jan 1995 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 4

woodini254 visited on 19th Dec 1993 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 5 Access: 5

Dutch visited on 7th Jun 1988 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 2 Back in 1988 it was very busy, one was not allowed to get near the stones. Even getting near the fencing would provoke warnings from the guards. Not a pleasant visit, it felt like being caught in a tourist trap. Which was a shame, because the nearby Avebury stone circle was accessible under very different circumstances. And was actually pleasant to visit.

sirius_b visited on 1st Feb 1988 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 4 Access: 5

ajmp3003 visited on 1st Mar 1986 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5

bat400 visited on 1st Aug 1985 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4 My friend had downplayed the site so as not to ruin any exaggerated image I had in my mind. He did such a good job that I was astonished, forcing him to stop the car a half mile to the east, so I could get out and revel in the view from a distance before we arrived.

Orcinus visited on 1st Jan 1983 - their rating: Amb: 4 Spent a week at the Stonehenge free festival in 1983 (had to go 250 miles home & back midway through to cash my giro!).

LPhillips visited on 21st Jun 1982 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 5 Also visited in September 1999.

BolshieBoris visited on 1st Sep 1978 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 4

rick_doble visited on 1st Sep 1969 - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 5 Access: 4 Without Stonehenge I wonder if we would have noticed all the other wonderful megalithic sites. I wonder what the stones looked like when they were made. I suspect that they were quite precise, not unlike Gobekli Tepe, originally.

deepblue visited - their rating: Cond: 2 Amb: 3 Access: 5

Anti_quarian visited - their rating: Amb: 5 Access: 4 Been several times through my life, used to live just up the road actually. For me the effect of the place only gets stronger as the years pass by. The biggest thrill is taking someone for their first visit, never fails to impress :-)

ModernExplorers visited - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 4 A fascinating site, shame they charge money to see it

Elric visited - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 5 Access: 4

coin visited - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 1 Access: 4

kith visited - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 2 Access: 5

Chrononaut1962 visited - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 5 Access: 3

returnViewersGuide visited On a family vacation in approximately 1976 we visited Stonehenge. At that time you could walk among the stones and during our visit there were only a few scattered people around and we had the whole place to ourselves a number of times. At that time I had no way of knowing how lucky we were to be there walking among and touching the stones.

Lazulilou visited - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 1 Access: 4

Tonnox Ahdzib PAB DrewParsons Bladup Ogham mark_a sorschaL neolithique02 TheCaptain SteveC sorschaL SteveC TimPrevett nicoladidsbury rldixon moor2moor hamish JimChampion AngieLake sem sorschaL davidmorgan MartinRS steph myf Runemage keniaar Andy B AnnabelleStar ScottHK whese001 ArchAstro Wazza12 mdensham mrcrow have visited here

Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Condition: 3.44 Ambience: 3.97 Access: 4.5

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by Bladup : The Heel Stone Quietly Watching The Winter Solstice Setting Sun at Stonehenge, 2023 (Vote or comment on this photo)
Stonehenge needs no introduction of course, and many other sites on the web cover it in detail, so I won't say much more. Just enjoy our unrivalled collection of images and see the comments lower down for links to all the latest Stonehenge research.

Access: (for now) Drive down the A303 and you can't miss it. Also a huge visitor centre etc of course.

There is now a web site Stones of Stonehenge with a page devoted to each stone, and some of the missing ones.

See also the many discussions about the meaning of Stonehenge in our forum, eg here, here and here.

Have a browse of our galleries of hundreds of photos from almost 20 years of summer solstice celebrations (photo here from 2005)

Previously featured: Researchers from the University of Birmingham and Ghent University (Belgium) have discovered hundreds of possible large prehistoric pits – and thousands of smaller ones – at the heart of the Stonehenge landscape, challenging our understanding of land use through time at the most intensively investigated prehistoric site in the world. More in the latest comments on our page

Circles of Stone: Stonehenge and Prehistoric Japan, the exhibition at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre which celebrates the rich culture of prehistoric Japan. Through a number of exquisite objects, some seen for the first time outside of Japan, the exhibition tells the story of Japanese settlements and stone circles of the middle and late Jōmon periods, roughly the same time Stonehenge was built and used.

Two new (April 2023) Stonehenge papers to share: 1) the piece of the Altar Stone removed in 1844 and now in Salisbury Museum is the real deal and 2) work from Mike Parker-Pearson suggesting "growing evidence that the Stonehenge complex was not a central place but a ‘peripheral place’, located on what may have been a long-term cultural boundary within southern Britain." See the most recent comments on our page for the links.

August 2023: Historic England have just released their collection of USAAF aerial photos online. Here's the ancient landscape around Stonehenge taken on Christmas Eve 1943. The circle is to the top right. Source: Historic England USAAF Archive.

The very first Festival of Neolithic Ideas came to Stonehenge on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th November 2023, with talks, demonstrations and activities. More details in the comments below.

Horatio, December 2023: "To me this pic sums it all up, thousands of years of celebration and thousands more to come." Please send us your winter solstice pics from this and previous years. Stonehenge or elsewhere, busy or deserted, we love to see them all and will feature the best along with the site visited on our home page

Note: "The Heel Stone quietly watching the Winter Solstice setting sun at Stonehenge, 2023", photo by Bladup
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Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by blingo : flew over Stonehenge t'other day and saw this? (32 comments - Vote or comment on this photo)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by WiltshirePM : Summer Solstice 2003 (12 comments - Vote or comment on this photo)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by Andy B : The Heel Stone alignment at dawn (15 comments - Vote or comment on this photo)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by pennymoon : This was taken at sunset on the 2nd August 2006 and is one of a group of fantastic photo's. The light was incredible and the atmosphere electric...with just myself and 7 others inside the stones there was a genuine feeling of connection with our ancestors. Right now, they would be celebrating the harvest and charting the dying of the light as the summer sun sank slowly towards the horizon. The... (6 comments - Vote or comment on this photo)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by dodomad : Publicity photo for Heritage Hikes, copyright English Heritage (12 comments - Vote or comment on this photo)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by sem : I've never seen such beatiful colors as these on Megaliths, and all natural. (1 comment)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by TysonM : The low angle of light from the setting sun really brings out the texture in these massive stones. I shot these color images of Stonehenge on Fuji Velvia and scanned in the film. Of course Fuji isn't making this kind of film anymore. (6 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by SteveMinett : Stonehenge Steve Minett (6 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by h_fenton : Looking along the avenue to Stonehenge - 30 August 2010 @ 6.55am. Kite Aerial Photograph sorry about the unusually prominent copyright notice (3 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by TimPrevett : A soaking wet, torrential Stonehenge. You have 1 hour at Stonehenge, and what does it do? Chuck down... the camera began getting moisture problems shortly after this, but with careful use of cotton buds, was remedied on the coach. With poor visibility, you have to turn your eye to other things. I spotted this reflection... nice, I thought. Many thanks to Tony from N Yorks who leant me a spare um... (10 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by pennymoon : Category *A* This photo has not been altered in any way - the depth of the blue between the massive stone, the moon waxing high in the sky. This was a truly magical evening in August 2006. Stonehenge had an unexpected effect on me, I was expecting - oh yeah, another stone circle, but it is just incredible; there is an energy there that feels ancient, cold, somehow...And whilst I stood with my ba... (1 comment)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by Jimit : Is this what the ancient builders intended the worshippers to see and be in awe of? A (near) Midwinter's Day sunset. (6 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by winnits : The sun rising over the Heel Stone from the centre of the monument on 27th June, 2002. (1 comment)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by bec-zog : Stonehenge; ink and watercolour by bec. (1 comment)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by riotgibbon : Dawn 4 - it all lines up and everything ... check it out! (13 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by h_fenton : Stonehenge - 30 August 2010 @ 6.34am. Kite Aerial Photograph sorry about the unusually prominent copyright notice (2 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by baz : Trilithon peephole (2 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by Startrack : Stonehenge Winter Solstice sunrise (4 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by davidmorgan : This was at the Winter Solstice. (9 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by moor2moor : sunrise at stonehenge

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by Bladup : Mr heel stone looks on as the solstice sun sets into stonehenge. (5 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by Aerial-Cam : Stonehenge at sunrise March 2007. This is a panoramic image taken from aprox 20m above the Avenue with the early morning dew helping to define the earthworks around the stones. The A303 runs behind the site with further barrows visible beyond that. All rights strictly reserved copyright Aerial-Cam 2007. Prints are available to order. Note to editors, I thought this would help show the road s... (7 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by VirtHist : We did this for our image portfolio: a CGI reconstruction of Stonehenge during the Winter Solstice whilst in its prime. (5 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by moor2moor : waiting for sunrise (2 comments)

Stonehenge.
Stonehenge. submitted by François-Xavier CATOIRE : Taken at Stonehenge on the Solstice. (1 comment)

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Stone Pages (Still Images) by Arosio and Meozzi
Megalithic Mysteries by Andy Burnham

Ancient Sites Directory by Chris Tweed
Earth Mysteries by Chris Witcombe
Wicker Screen by Phil Dunn
Stonehenge-Avebury.net by Terence Meaden
The Complete Stonehenge by Emily Mace
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Stonecentric by Frank Wayman
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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 67m NE 41° Heel Stone* Standing Stone (Menhir) (SU1229142244)
 174m E 98° Stonehenge Bowl Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SU12424217)
 321m NW 310° Stonehenge Car Park Postholes* Timber Circle (SU120424)
 614m NE 46° The Avenue* Ancient Trackway (SU12694262)
 686m NNW 329° Great Cursus Barrows, Stonehenge* Round Barrow(s) (SU11894278)
 788m NNW 346° Great Cursus, Stonehenge* Cursus (SU12064296)
 828m WSW 238° North of Normanton Gorse Barrows* Barrow Cemetery (SU1154441754)
 914m E 100° Amesbury 39 Bowl Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SU13154204)
 1.1km SSW 204° Normanton Down* Barrow Cemetery (SU118412)
 1.1km SSW 213° Bush Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SU11644126)
 1.2km E 89° New King Barrows* Barrow Cemetery (SU13454222)
 1.2km WNW 297° Fargo Disk Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SU11154275)
 1.3km ESE 117° Coneybury Henge* Henge (SU134416)
 1.4km WNW 301° Great Cursus W Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SU11064291)
 1.4km SW 217° Normanton Down Long Barrow* Long Barrow (SU1141341071)
 1.5km E 86° The King Barrows Ridge* Barrow Cemetery (SU137423)
 1.5km ENE 66° Old King Barrows* Barrow Cemetery (SU13604280)
 1.5km WNW 298° Amesbury Cursus (W)* Cursus (SU109429)
 1.5km ESE 123° King Barrow (Amesbury)* Barrow Cemetery (SU13554137)
 1.6km WSW 243° Pond Barrow and Wilsford Shaft Round Barrow(s) (SU1086441475)
 1.8km NE 55° Amesbury Cursus (E)* Cursus (SU137432)
 1.9km E 99° Amesbury 38 Bowl Barrow* Round Barrow(s) (SU14114192)
 2.1km NW 312° Winterbourne Stoke Cursus (E) Cursus (SU107436)
 2.1km ESE 113° Bluestonehenge* Stone Circle (SU14204137)
 2.1km WSW 257° Winterbourne Stoke* Barrow Cemetery (SU10174171)
View more nearby sites and additional images

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Stonehenge Complete

Stonehenge Complete

Web Links for Stonehenge.

Stone Pages (Still Images) by Arosio and Meozzi
Megalithic Mysteries by Andy Burnham

Archived Web links for Stonehenge.

Ancient Sites Directory by Chris Tweed
Earth Mysteries by Chris Witcombe
Wicker Screen by Phil Dunn
Stonehenge-Avebury.net by Terence Meaden
The Complete Stonehenge by Emily Mace
Alastair's Derbyshire Stone Circle Pages by Alastair McIvor
Stonecentric by Frank Wayman
About Stonehenge by Christiaan Stoudt
English Heritage by Paul Linford et al
Tania Ruiz's Web Pages by Tania Ruiz
STILE by Clive Ruggles
Stonehenge Campaign by Dice George

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"Stonehenge." | Login/Create an Account | 238 News and Comments
  
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Re: Stonehenge. Aubrey Holes c.8000 BC ? by adriank999 on Wednesday, 24 January 2024
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Amesbury near Stonehenge has been dated c.8000 BC Were they the Stonehenge builders?
In his book Stonehenge Decoded, Hawkins argued that the various features at the Stonehenge monument were arranged in such a way to predict a variety of astronomical events. He proposed that the Aubrey Holes were used to predict eclipses of the moon. Hoyle also expressed this view.
blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/tag/fred-hoyle/

The use of the car park post holes and the station stones, which are part of the earliest features of Stonehenge, to determine their alignments to the post holes suggests that they are also of the same era. The station stones are on the same circle as the Aubrey Holes which have never been dated so if Hawkins and Hoyle are correct in their proposition that the Aubrey holes could be used to track eclipses of the moon, with C.A Newham’s observations of the alignments from the station stones to the car park post holes suggests the Aubrey holes are contemporary with the car park post holes.
www.stonehengemonument.co.uk/2020/10/ca-peter-newham-and-station-stone.html


Thus the Eclipses of the moon, outlined by Newham, and the Aubrey holes as an eclipse predictor by Hawkins and Hoyle suggests they are contemporary firmly dating Stonehenge as an astronomical observatory c.8000 BC
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Stonehenge. by Kurokenji on Friday, 12 January 2024
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It really looks fantastical, I can't wait to see stonehenge with my own eyes one day
[ Reply to This ]

Festival of Neolithic Ideas at Stonehenge, Sat/Sun 11/12th November 2023 by Andy B on Thursday, 09 November 2023
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The very first Festival of Neolithic Ideas is coming to Stonehenge on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th November! Get involved with a superb range of hands-on activities, demonstrations, and talks led by experts in the field.

From radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA, to astronomy and laser scanning, we will reveal how the latest advances in science and archaeological techniques have developed our understanding of the Neolithic period, including Stonehenge and the people who built it. The festival will also explore the tools and technologies used by Neolithic people to understand and shape the world around them.

The Festival is aimed at anyone with a curious mind, young or old.
Entry is included with General Admission ticket to Stonehenge. Book online and save 10%.

More details at
www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/whats-on/stonehenge-festival-of-neolithic-ideas/
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Stonehenge by DavidHoyle on Wednesday, 11 October 2023
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Can we get the location updated please as at present the lat lon is on the path and nowhere near the centre?
From looking at maps, it is close to 51.178854, -1.826172
Grid ref is about SU 12247 42194
Thanks, David
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Historic England have just released their collection of USAAF aerial photos online by Andy B on Wednesday, 16 August 2023
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Historic England have just released their collection of USAAF aerial photos online. Including the ancient landscape around Stonehenge taken on Christmas Eve 1943. Source: Historic England USAAF Archive. Explore the USAAF collection and read more about the background here.
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Stonehenge Photos on Facebook today by AngieLake on Tuesday, 08 August 2023
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I'm unsure if this link will work, but have just viewed some great photos of Stonehenge on Facebook by Jackie Smith:
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10159701017463785&set=pcb.2413266688856494
There are 16 altogether, taken yesterday with a dramatic sky.
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Stonehenge: Lovely filmed visit by Pam Ayres on TV by AngieLake on Thursday, 01 June 2023
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Readers may be interested in checking out the Channel 5 programme on TV, tonight, 1st June 2023, 7.00pm : 'The Cotswolds With Pam Ayers'.
It was a repeat, but unsure when first broadcast.
The filming is lovely and quite informative, and Pam Ayers seemed visibly moved by being alone among the stones at dawn.
Dr Sue Greaney also appears, answering questions about Stonehenge.
Catch it on repeat if you can. That section started around 7.12pm.
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Stonehenge Source of stones by AngieLake on Thursday, 04 May 2023
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This may be a huge shot in the dark, but I just read an old newspaper cutting posted in Barnstaple History Page on FB. (I come from the area originally). The post is dated 1920, and about a boulder found at a garden centre in Newport (an area of Barnstaple, near the school I went to).
It was investigated and found to be porphyrite and '... occur in association with the granite of the south of Scotland... and are common in Pembrokeshire and West Carmarthenshire'.
Also, 'a very ancient road exists beneath the soil close to where the boulder was found.' ..' being of common occurrence across the Severn Sea. Possibly this particular one was shipped over for some purpose and afterwards discarded. If it came here by natural means it was probably during the Glacial Period.'

I will post up the cutting separately on the site page.
(Hope this is ok Admins)
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Stonehenge: The Little ‘Big Other’ by Mike Parker-Pearson by Andy B on Friday, 07 April 2023
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A detailed new paper by Mike P-P in the Journal of Urban Archaeology and pleasantly Open Access: Whilst Stonehenge cannot be considered urban, this famous stone circle was part of a much larger complex which included not only other monuments and significant topographic features but also extensive areas of late Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement during 2500-2200 bc.

The unusually large settlement at Durrington Walls, less than 3 km to the east of Stonehenge, appears to have been occupied primarily seasonally and by people who brought their livestock from many different parts of Britain. With the arrival of Beaker-users, the settlement focus shifted to the west of Stonehenge. There is growing evidence that the Stonehenge complex was not a central place but a ‘peripheral place’, located on what may have been a long-term cultural boundary within southern Britain.

https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/10.1484/J.JUA.5.133454 or http://doi.org/10.1484/J.JUA.5.133454

With thanks to Tim Daw for the link.
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    Re: Stonehenge: The Little ‘Big Other’ by Mike Parker-Pearson by Andy B on Friday, 07 April 2023
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    "Whilst Stonehenge cannot be considered urban" Very droll and a slightly strange choice of journal but fair play to Mike for making it Open Access - possibly that was part of the reasoning for using this journal?
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    Re: Stonehenge: The Little ‘Big Other’ by Mike Parker-Pearson by mountainman on Sunday, 09 April 2023
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    This article marks a huge shift in MPP's position on all sorts of things -- deserves to be read carefully. It was not the great centre of things, and it apparently had no purpose.......... he more or less admits that it was a folly.
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Assessing the authenticity of a sample taken from the Altar Stone in 1844 by Andy B on Friday, 07 April 2023
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Assessing the authenticity of a sample taken from the Altar Stone at Stonehenge in 1844 using portable XRF and automated SEM-EDS by Richard E. Bevins, Nick J.G. Pearce, Duncan Pirrie, Rob A. Ixer, Stephen Hillier, Peter Turner and Matthew Power

Megalithic Stone 80 at Stonehenge, the so-called Altar Stone, is traditionally considered to be part of the bluestone assemblage, a diverse range of lithologies exotic to the Wiltshire Landscape. However, the Altar Stone, a grey-green micaceous sandstone, is anomalous when compared with the other (predominantly igneous) bluestones, in terms of its lithology, size and weight, and certainly in terms of its provenance. Recent investigations into the character of the Altar Stone have focussed on excavated fragments now attributed to be derived from the Altar Stone, as well as non-destructive portable XRF (pXRF) analysis on the Altar Stone itself (re-analysed as part of this investigation).

In this study we have investigated a sample from the collections of Salisbury Museum, 2010K 240 (also referred to as Wilts 277), which bears a label recording that it was collected from the underside of the Altar Stone in 1844. We examined the sample petrographically and also by using pXRF and automated SEM-EDS techniques. Like the excavated fragments, this sample from the Altar Stone shows a distinctive mineralogy characterised by the presence of baryte and kaolinite along with abundant calcite cement. The presence of baryte leads to relatively high Ba being recorded during pXRF analysis (0.13 wt%).

Combined, these results validate the history recorded on the specimen label and, as far as we know, makes this the only specimen taken purposely from that megalith. As such sample 2010K 240 provides a ‘go-to’ proxy for future studies of the Altar Stone as well as validating those samples recently assigned to the Altar Stone.

In addition, this study demonstrates the vital importance of historic collection specimens and their preservation, conservation and documentation, as well as the role pXRF can play in the analysis of sensitive cultural artefacts and monuments that cannot be analysed using invasive or destructive techniques.

More details at
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1gq7B,rVDBflAF

THIS LINK VALID UNTIL May 17th 2023 only, at which the article becomes paywalled.
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    Re: Assessing the authenticity of a sample taken from the Altar Stone in 1844 by mountainman on Sunday, 09 April 2023
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    Andy, I don't see what any of this has to do with the human transport of the bluestones. There was no evidence in support of it before, and after the publication of recent papers there is still no evidence in support. If this monolith is made of reddish sandstone it clearly does NOT compare well with the Altar Stone. It is still true that nobody knows where the Altar Stone came from. Even if it came from the Sennybridge / Crickhowel area, it is perfectly feasible that it was transported southwards by glacier ice and ended up near Stonehenge. The glacial transport theory is still by far the most likely to be reliable. Just look at all those glacial erratics in the bluestone assemblage at Stonehenge....... they would not be out of place near the snout of a modern glacier.
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Re: Stonehenge Photo from 1860s by AngieLake on Friday, 28 October 2022
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I was Googling for info on Brian May's stereo photograph collection for my grandson who's doing Film Studies at Uni, and came across this news from the Salisbury Journal, 3rd August 2021. I can't find a news item on this in our files, so I hope it's of interest to readers.

Quote from article [3.8.21]:

"STONEHENGE’S oldest family photograph has been discovered in the collection of Queen legend Dr Brian May.

The image will be on display as part of a collection set to a soundtrack performed by May, viewed through a digital stereoscope, and loaned to English Heritage by the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy.

Queen guitarist, astrophysicist and stereoscopic enthusiast Brian May said: “I’ve been fascinated by stereo cards since I was a boy and got one in a cereal packet. This is a fantastic early example and exciting because it’s one of the oldest family snaps taken at Stonehenge."

To see the stereo photos and read more, check out this link:

https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/19486242.stonehenge-photo-1860s-found-brian-mays-collection/
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Circles of Stone: Stonehenge and Prehistoric Japan: 30 September 2022 - August 2023 by Andy B on Friday, 30 September 2022
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Circles of Stone: Stonehenge and Prehistoric Japan is a new exhibition at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre which celebrates the rich culture of prehistoric Japan. Through a number of exquisite objects, some seen for the first time outside of Japan, the exhibition tells the story of Japanese settlements and stone circles of the middle and late Jomon periods, roughly the same time when Stonehenge was built and used.
Prehistoric Japan and Stonehenge

Although there was no contact between Japan and Britain in prehistory, there are surprising parallels between them. In both areas, people built stone circles, made elaborate pots and used flaked stone tools.

The astonishing Japanese stone circles at Ōyu, recently inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, bear striking similarities with stone circles and the practices of Neolithic people in Britain. The 8,500 river cobbles used to build the stone circles at Ōyu, each weighing between 20 and 200 kg, were carried about 7 km from the bed nearby River Akuya. Although not quite the same engineering feat as bringing the bluestones all the way from south-west Wales to form part of Stonehenge, this was still an incredible communal effort showing a desire to use particular types of stones and construct the circles at a specific location. These cobbles were arranged in clusters, sometimes arranged in small rings or other arrangements. Each cluster is likely to have originally covered a burial, with the circuits emerging slowly over time as more burials with their stone arrangements were added. At Stonehenge, the cremated remains of the dead were placed in and around the monuments. Finally, there is some evidence that the ‘sundial’ standing stones at the two stone circles at Oyu were aligned towards the midsummer solstice sunset and the midwinter solstice sunrise, much like the timber and stone circles in the Stonehenge landscape.

The star of the show the ‘Flame Pot’ is designated in Japan as a national treasure and is a highly decorated type of Jomon ceramic made in central Japan about 5,000 years ago. The Jomon period in Japan spanned the European Mesolithic, Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods put together and the pot’s fantastical shape evokes blazing flames, flowing water, or perhaps the crests of cockerels. This is the first time it has gone on display outside Japan. Also featured will be fragments of exquisite clay figurines, known as dogu in Japanese. These have been found at Jomon settlements and stone circles and it has been suggested they may have represented earth goddesses or spirits, for use in fertility or healing rituals. It is believed that many dogu were intentionally broken and scattered during ceremonies.
The exhibition also explores more recent connections between Stonehenge and Japan through the art of Japanese woodblock printer Yoshijiro Urushibara who worked in Britain in the 1920s and British archaeologist William Gowland. Gowland used the techniques he had learnt in Japan to influence the way in which he carried out excavations and interpreted the evidence at Stonehenge at the dawn of the 20th century.

Martin Allfrey, Senior Curator for English Heritage said: “Exploring what is happening elsewhere in the prehistoric world is key to understanding the significance of Stonehenge. It’s tantalising to look at what these extraordinary objects from Japan tell us about the similarities between these communities who, while thousands of miles apart, were perhaps ideologically closer than one might imagine. Equally intriguing is the fact that William Gowland’s experience working on archaeological sites in Japan at the end of the nineteenth century helped him to develop the first scientific study of Stonehenge and to formulate new theories about the building of Stonehenge and its alignment with the sun. We are thrilled to tell the story of this extraordinary place and time, and hope to bring a little bit of Japanese inspiration and wonder

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Re: Stonehenge: Route taken by Bluestones may be along Newly Discovered road by AngieLake on Monday, 06 June 2022
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From today's Daily Mail online:

Ancient Roman road discovered in Wales may follow the route taken by prehistoric people transporting the bluestones that built STONEHENGE, archaeologist claims
An ancient road has been discovered in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, Wales
It could have been the route used to take stones to the site of Stonehenge
An Oxford University archaeologist found it also connected ancient Roman villas
The 6.8 mile road may have been built to give Romans access to a silver mine.

Pictures, maps and plans on this Daily Mail link today:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10888907/Ancient-road-discovered-Wales-follows-route-taken-transport-bluestones-STONEHENGE.html
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    Re: Stonehenge: Route taken by Bluestones may be along Newly Discovered road by Andy B on Monday, 06 June 2022
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    Thanks - also a daft example of the vast gravitational pulling power of a small mention of the S word in an otherwise unconnected bit of archaeology. Mail Online have gone Stonehenge mad in their write-up.
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Stonehenge goes multi-coloured for Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee by Runemage on Monday, 30 May 2022
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In a magical merger of history and pageantry, English Heritage has illuminated Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain with eight images of the Queen’s 70-year reign, starting with her coronation in 1953, to mark the Platinum Jubilee.

The illuminated stone circle on Salisbury Plains, Wiltshire, included a black and white photograph of the now 96-year-old at her coronation in June 1953, when she was just 27.

The Queen’s love for animals was also celebrated within the photos, which include her riding a horse and walking her beloved corgis in the 1960s and 1980s.

More, including images https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10866411/Tribute-Queen-lights-ancient-monument-Stonehenge-goes-multi-coloured-Majesty.html


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Experts uncover series of Stonehenge mystery monuments by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 10 May 2022
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Prehistoric people created a vast network of monuments inside the sacred landscape’s bedrock - The Independent.

Archaeologists, investigating Stonehenge’s ancient prehistoric landscape, have discovered a series of previously unknown mystery monuments.

By using a special detection method to ‘x-ray’ the ground, they have, for the first time, revealed how prehistoric people were hacking vast circular holes in the Stonehenge landscape’s chalk bedrock.

Around a hundred of these mysterious newly-discovered rock-cut basins and pits were between four and six metres in diameter and in some cases, at least two metres deep.

Some of the holes would have required the systematic removal of at least 25 cubic metres (around 60 tonnes) of solid chalk – a time-consuming task for prehistoric people, equipped only with stone and wooden tools, deer antler pickaxes - and possibly fire (to help fracture the chalk).
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A New Story for Stonehenge in The New Yorker by Andy B on Friday, 18 March 2022
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A New Story for Stonehenge
Using innovative techniques, researchers are learning more about the monument’s origins and history.

A good overview of all the latest geo research, with thanks to Rob Ixer for the link
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/a-new-story-for-stonehenge
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History Extra Podcast: Stonehenge: everything you wanted to know (part one) by Andy B on Wednesday, 16 February 2022
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History Extra Podcast - Mike Pitts, archaeologist and editor of British Archaeology magazine answers listener questions on Britain’s most famous prehistoric monument, Stonehenge

In the first episode of a two-part special, archaeologist Mike Pitts answers listener questions on the most famous prehistoric site in Britain. Speaking to David Musgrove, he discusses how Stonehenge was built – and why.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/prehistoric/stonehenge-everything-you-wanted-to-know-podcast-mike-pitts/

Mike Pitts is the author of How to Build Stonehenge (Thames & Hudson, 2022)
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The World of Stonehenge exhibition, British Museum February 17th to July 17th 2022. by Andy B on Wednesday, 16 February 2022
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Just a note to direct you to our British Museum page for all the news on the new World of Stonehenge exhibition
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=6841#comments
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Re: Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2021 by AngieLake on Thursday, 23 December 2021
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Article with many photos here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10336303/Dawn-Stonehenge-revellers-celebrate-sunrise-Winter-Solstice.html
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Rock cakes? Stonehenge builders may have enjoyed mince pies by Runemage on Wednesday, 01 December 2021
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A festive article from the Guardian
"Archaeologists say neolithic version of energy bars may also have been eaten at midwinter feasts
After a day enduring midwinter winds whipping off Salisbury Plain, the ancient builders of Stonehenge may have warmed up with a prehistoric version of the mince pie, archaeologists have suggested.

The hardy engineers of the great Wiltshire monument might also have kept themselves going by nibbling on their version of energy bars made of berries, nuts and animal fat.

It has been established that midwinter was an important time of the year for the Stonehenge builders with ancient people bringing cows and pigs from as far afield as Scotland to take part in feasts at the site around the time of the winter solstice.

Archaeologists have also found evidence of the collecting and cooking of hazelnuts, sloes and crab apples and other fruit, with remnants of charred plant remains discovered at Durrington Walls, the settlement inhabited by the builders of Stonehenge in about 2500BC. They knew how to grow cereal crops, so could have made pastry out of wheat, hazelnut or acorn flour.

English Heritage, which manages Stonehenge, concedes it is a bit of leap, but it is putting forward the festive theory that the engineers could have combined the two into a version of the mince pie, possibly baked using a flat stone or ceramic pot heated in the embers of a fire, rather like a Welsh cake.
Read more here https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/01/stonehenge-builders-may-have-enjoyed-mince-pies
Visitors will be in for a tasty treat soon and if you can't make it, there's a recipe so you can recreate your own. "English Heritage volunteers will be baking Neolithic mince pies around the hearth in the recreations of Neolithic houses at Stonehenge every Monday in December, and mince pies inspired by the period will be on the menu in the cafe. The charity has also produced a recipe so that anyone can have a go at producing a Neolithic-style mince pie. Recipe: Neolithic-inspired mince pies (makes 6) To make these vegetarian, simply swap the lard for a vegan or vegetarian fat product. Ingredients: For the pastry: 2 x handfuls of emmer flour ½ handful of hazelnut flour Knob of lard A few drops of water For the filling: Four crab apples or small sour apples A few blackberries A few sloes Pureed rose hips (about a spoonful) A spoonful of honey Plus: A handful of whole berries A couple of crushed hazelnuts For the decoration: Some linseeds and a drizzle of honey for the tops Method: 1. Preheat your oven to 210C electric /190C fan/gas mark 5. Cut up your compote filling ingredients and put them in a saucepan on a medium heat, stew until tender. 2. Mix the flours with the lard and a few drops of water until you have a firm dough. 3. Create six circles for the pie bottoms, and six slightly smaller circles for the tops. Place the bases into cases in a muffin tin and spoon in cooked compote. 4. Take lids and brush one side with water and place water-side down, pressing the edges to seal. 5. Once all of the lids are on, brush their tops with water and sprinkle with honey, linseeds and crushed hazelnuts. 6. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch. Seasonal thanks to David Taylor and NEReaders for the link :-)
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Stonehenge - Metal Detectorist Arrested by Runemage on Friday, 15 October 2021
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It's hard to say exactly where this offence took place, it's intimated it happened within the circle but until further details are released, no-one knows.
Article from the Daily Mail follows.
Metal detectorist, 30, is arrested 'for digging up buried treasure at Stonehenge and possessing explosives'

* The unnamed man, aged 30, arrested at his home in Bradford, in West Yorkshire
* He boasted online about his finds at ancient site, according to Wiltshire police
* It is not clear if the explosives had anything to do with the man's treasure hunting

A metal detectorist has been arrested after bragging on social media about digging up buried treasure at Stonehenge - before allegedly being found in possession of explosives. Wiltshire Police said the unnamed man, 30, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, was snared after he could not resist boasting about his 'finds and the location'.

He was held on suspicion of damaging the 5,000-year-old stone circle, an officially protected World Heritage Site, as well as for illegally using a metal detector there and possessing explosives without a permit. It's not clear whether the explosives formed part of his treasure-hunting antics at the site on Salisbury Plain or if he had them for other purposes.

The offences allegedly happened between August and September, Wiltshire Police said. He has since been released under investigation.

Precisely what his 'finds' consisted of has not been revealed but it's thought he posted photos of them on social media - leading to a police tip off. The four offences include damaging a protected monument, using a metal detector in a protected place without consent, removing an [item of?] archaeological or historical interest without consent and possession of explosives without a permit. West Yorkshire Police also cautioned the man for possession of Class B drugs.

more at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10091863/Metal-detectorist-30-arrested-digging-treasure-Stonehenge-possessing-explosives.html
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Re: Stonehenge Restoration Work - First major repairs in 60 years by AngieLake on Tuesday, 14 September 2021
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Article here, with photos, from Daily Mail online:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9988679/Stonehenge-restoration-work-begins-Scaffolding-erected-famed-monument.html
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Stonehenge Summer Solstice Sunrise 2021 by Runemage on Monday, 21 June 2021
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Summer solstice: Hundreds attend Stonehenge despite advice.

"Hundreds of people attended the summer solstice at Stonehenge despite official advice asking them not to travel to the site in line with Covid restrictions.

As a result English Heritage pulled a live feed of the sunrise at the neolithic monument in Wiltshire at 04:52 BST due to safety concerns.

People were seen climbing over a low fence to access the stones.

Wiltshire Police said the event was peaceful but added the number of people at nearby Avebury had caused issues."
More information https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-57550606
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Re: Stonehenge Origins discovered at Wales' Waun Mawn site by AngieLake on Friday, 12 February 2021
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Saw this article tonight:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9249953/Archaeologists-unearth-remains-stone-circle-Stonehenge.html
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EH Research Reports arising from the Stonehenge WHS Landscape Project by Andy B on Wednesday, 25 November 2020
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EH Research Reports arising from the Stonehenge WHS Landscape Project

Readers requiring more information on the details recorded during the course of the project are referred to the following English Heritage Research Reports, which are available as PDFs to download, free of charge, from the Historic England website - http://research.historicengland.org.uk/
Note: in 2012 the Research Department Report Series became the Research Report Series

RDRS 40-2009 D Field Airman’s Corner, Winterbourne Stoke, Wiltshire: investigation of earthworks
RRS 32-2012 M Abbott and H Anderson-Whymark Stonehenge Laser Scan: Archaeological Analysis Report: EH Project 6457
RRS 34-2012 N Linford, P Linford and A Payne Stonehenge Monument Field and Barrows, Wiltshire: Report on Geophysical Surveys, September 2010, April and July 2011
RRS 6-2014 M Barber ‘Restoring’ Stonehenge 1881-1939
RRS 7-2014 M Barber Stonehenge Aerodrome and the Stonehenge Landscape

All the following titles are prefaced by Stonehenge World Heritage Site Landscape Project
RDRS 85-2010 L Amadio and S Bishop The Cursus Barrows & Surrounding Area
RDRS 86-2010 S Bishop Durrington Firs
RDRS 90-2010 K Barrett and M Bowden Normanton Down
RDRS 95-2010 A Komar Lake Down, Wilsford-cum-Lake
RDRS 96-2010 A Komar and S Bishop Fargo South
RDRS 107-2010 S Bax, M Bowden, A Komar and S Newsome Winterbourne Stoke Crossroads
RDRS 108-2010 M Bowden Wilsford Barrows
RDRS 109-2010 D Field and T Pearson Stonehenge, Amesbury, Wiltshire
RDRS 42-2011 R Lane Stonehenge, Amesbury, Wiltshire: Architectural Assessment
RDRS 82-2011 S Bishop Level 1 Field Investigations
RDRS 83-2011 S Bishop King Barrow Ridge
RDRS 92-2011 M Bowden Earthworks at Lake and West Amesbury
RDRS 103-2011 T Pearson and D Field Stonehenge Cursus, Amesbury, Wiltshire
RDRS 105-2011 D Field and T Pearson Stonehenge Down and The Triangle
RRS 3-2012 S Soutar Larkhill Barrows, Durrington
RRS 29-2012 M Bowden, D Field and S Soutar Lake Barrows, The Diamond and Normanton Gorse
RRS 31-2012 D Field, M Bowden and S Soutar The Avenue and Stonehenge Bottom
RRS 35-2012 A Komar and D Field A344 Corridor: Level 1 Survey
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    Re: EH Research Reports arising from the Stonehenge WHS Landscape Project by Andy B on Wednesday, 25 November 2020
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    The Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS) Landscape Project, started in 2009 by the then English Heritage Archaeological Survey & Investigation Team, was set up to ensure that there is a full and up-to-date record and understanding of all upstanding archaeological monuments within the WHS. Neither the earthworks of Stonehenge itself nor many of the surrounding upstanding monuments had previously been surveyed by archaeologists to modern standards. With the opportunity to re-present this unique monument and its environs to a global audience through the new visitor centre, it was considered vital that this situation was rectified.

    The project included surveys of Stonehenge itself, the Avenue, the Greater Cursus, all the principal barrow cemeteries and several sites of later date within the WHS in detail; this amounts to just over 15 per cent of the total area of the WHS and includes nearly half of the known or suspected round barrows (ie nearly all of those surviving as earthworks). A range of non-invasive techniques was employed – earthwork, aerial and geophysical surveys and documentary research. At the same time historic buildings within the WHS were assessed, a laser scan of the stones of Stonehenge was commissioned and new photography of the surrounding landscape was undertaken. The project involved colleagues from numerous teams within EH and external contractors, and has provided training opportunities for a number of placements. This project has run alongside several university-based projects that have been studying aspects of Stonehenge and its landscape simultaneously – notably the Stonehenge Riverside Project, the Bournemouth University/Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Project, and the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, as well as the recent chronological modelling programme.

    A number of important discoveries have resulted from this project. At Stonehenge itself, the possibility that the so-called ‘North Barrow’ may be a small henge enclosure and one of the earliest elements of the site has perhaps been one of the most significant observations, but there is also a slight, previously unrecorded mound beneath the south-eastern quadrant of the stone settings. It has been possible to demonstrate that this mound is unlikely to be the result of recent disturbance but its significance remains a matter for debate. High resolution magnetic and GPR survey within the Stonehenge Triangle complements the existing geophysical data and the new earthwork survey. It has added significant evidence for the existence of small henge-like monuments under the barrows immediately to the west of the stones, on Stonehenge Down, similar to those simultaneously recognised further away under Amesbury 50. Surveys of the barrow cemeteries have revealed details of chronological development, both of individual mounds and of the cemeteries. At the Wilsford Barrow Group, for instance, one of the least-studied of the Stonehenge cemeteries, it has proved possible, using a combination of antiquarian, field and aerial photographic evidence, to construct a fairly detailed chronology, though many of the individual mounds have been extensively levelled by modern ploughing. Indeed, one of the more distressing (though not unexpected) discoveries has been the extent to which so much of the chalk downland, which had survived as pasture for centuries or millennia, was damaged by the plough in the mid-20th century, with scant respect shown for the ancient monuments. Happily, there have been significant improvements to the management regime in some of these areas over the last few decades. More land is being returned to grass through Environmental Stewardship agreements (agri-environment schemes) and other barrows surviving in woodland are being cleared of trees and scrub.

    The later history of this landscape, so often neglected – understandably, given the pre-eminence of its Neolithic and Bronze Age remains – has been a particular focus of the Project. The medieval village remains at La

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Re: Stonehenge - the Latest Theory on Origin of the Sarsens by AngieLake on Thursday, 30 July 2020
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It's on the national TV news tonight [29th July], and Daily Mail online has it's own report here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8572377/Most-Stonehenges-sandstone-boulders-transported-just-15-miles-north.html
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Re: Stonehenge & Comet Neowise Photos by AngieLake on Sunday, 12 July 2020
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Just seen these stunning photos on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/stonehengedronescapes
The noctilucent clouds make it even more beautiful.
Scrolling down his FB page, there are some amazing compositions. Well worth a look.
(Is it one of our contributors?? Don't recall the pics on here.)
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Re: Stonehenge Altar Stone matched to rocks near Abergavenny by AngieLake on Thursday, 02 July 2020
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In today's D.Mail online:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8481339/Stonehenges-huge-blocks-DID-arrive-land-archaeologists-debunk-contesting-theory.html

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Re: Stonehenge. by SteveC on Sunday, 21 June 2020
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Hi all, Flew down at Stonehenge the other day at sunrise. Very misty and sunny but turned out to be glorious. Video available to view here: Thanks for looking. Steve
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Re: Stonehenge Summer Solstice by AngieLake on Saturday, 20 June 2020
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An article today in DMail online:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8442343/Security-guards-patrol-Stonehenge-revellers-away-druids-prepare-watch-virtual-sunrise.html
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Re: Stonehenge. by PastMaster on Tuesday, 09 June 2020
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Closed for the Summer Solstice 2020, but EH are live-streaming sunset on the 20th June and sunrise on the 21st.
But this year the Solstice occurs on the 20th, so maybe they have the date wrong? Or are they going to let the Druids in on the morning of the 20th, while no-one is looking? Conspiracy theorists sign up here...
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Re: Stonehenge Summer Solstice to be Live-streamed by AngieLake on Tuesday, 19 May 2020
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Article here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8335661/Stonehenge-livestream-sunrise-summer-solstice.html

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Re: Stonehenge Skyscape by AngieLake on Monday, 18 May 2020
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Found this on Facebook:
https://stonehengeskyscape.co.uk/?fbclid=IwAR3l2QzDTa_iYev5q48q53jwh8j-Z2Eb0jC-CJPpPvUFkyPAomPnkAp76bA
Falguni Patel wrote:
"Stonehenge has a live camera which films all day and night. It's absolutely amazing. You can see sunrise and sunset. Watch it on your laptop/pc for a better experience. You can select different times of the day too, and different modes.
Tilt the camera towards the sky and you can see all the stars and planets."
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Recent research into the Altar Stone by Rob Ixer et al by Andy B on Friday, 01 May 2020
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A couple of recent papers of recent research into the Altar Stone, by Rob Ixer et al

‘No provenance is better than wrong provenance’: Milford Haven and the Stonehenge sandstones
by Rob A. Ixer, Richard E. Bevins, Duncan Pirrie, Peter Turner and Matthew Power

Milford Haven and the Stonehenge Sandstones. For over 70 years there has been confusion within the archaeological literature between the Stonehenge 'Old Red Sandstone' Altar Stone, the Stonehenge Ordovician-Silurian Lower Palaeozoic Sandstone debitage, and the previously postulated source rocks, the Old Red Sandstone (Devonian) Cosheston Group sandstones. However, petrographic data show that all three are very different lithologies with separate geographical origins. The Altar Stone is most likely to be from eastern Wales and the Lower Palaeozoic Sandstone from west or central Wales, north and east of the Mynydd Preseli; neither of these two Stonehenge-related sandstones is from Mill Bay, Milford Haven as has been suggested. The revised provenance determinations do not support the theory that the Stonehenge bluestones were shipped over sea from the Milford Haven area along the Bristol Channel.

https://www.academia.edu/41105834/Mill_Bay_Milford_Haven_and_Stonehenge

Alternative Altar Stones? Carbonate-cemented micaceous sandstones from the Stonehenge Landscape

https://www.academia.edu/37882770/Alternative_Altar_Stones_Carbonate-cemented_micaceous_sandstones_from_the_Stonehenge_Landscape
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Re: Stonehenge. by Blingo_von_Trumpenstein on Saturday, 21 March 2020
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Wishing all you lovely Portallers a peaceful Equinox. Take a moment to consider the wheel turning. We are as one.
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Re: Stonehenge Spring Equinox 2020 closure by AngieLake on Friday, 20 March 2020
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Daily Mail report on Equinox closure here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8135479/Security-guards-patrol-Stonehenge-druids-pagans.html
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    Re: Stonehenge Spring Equinox 2020 closure by Andy B on Friday, 20 March 2020
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    Thanks Angie “Since 2000, officials have allowed groups of druids the congregate amid the stones as they have for 5,000 years.”
    Oh dear.
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Re: Stonehenge. by Sunny100 on Sunday, 01 March 2020
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There was a very good programme on DMAX (Freeview Ch 37) tonight at 10.00pm, with Megan Fox, and an assortment of archaeologists and writers, including Timothy Darvil. It was a bit "Americanised" maybe, but quite good. Megan also visited Wessex Archaeology, Averbury and Presilli Hills, in west Wales. Looking forward to next Sunday's programme.
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Re: Stonehenge. by cliffrich on Thursday, 02 January 2020
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Wiltshire is packed full of Stone-Age/Bronze-Age monuments and you'd need a good couple weeks or more to explore them all!

Stonehenge is part of a much larger complex including Woodhenge, Burrington Walls, the Curcus, and innumerable round barrows, amongst other monuments.

Woodhenge and Stonehenge are both well worth a visit but allow the best part of a day for each to take full advantage of the numerous walks to barrows etc.

Old Sarum is close-by but of a later era.
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Re: Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2019 by AngieLake on Monday, 23 December 2019
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An article tonight from D.Mail about this morning's gathering at the stones (sorry, yesterdays'! ... it is past midnight now!):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7819329/Heathens-greetings-Drum-banging-druids-join-thousands-marking-Winter-Solstice-Stonehenge.html
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Stonehenge in family photographs by Andy B on Sunday, 22 December 2019
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Posted by Smithsonian is an article about photos of Stonehange over last 150 years at

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/150-years-stonehenge-family-photos-come-together-new-exhibition-180973782/

With thanks to Cosmic for the link
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Retracing the footsteps of HH Thomas: a review of his bluestone provenancing study by Andy B on Monday, 26 August 2019
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Retracing the footsteps of H.H. Thomas: a review of his Stonehenge bluestone provenancing study - Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer

The long-distance transport of the Stonehenge bluestones from the Mynydd Preseli area of orth Pembrokeshire was first proposed by geologist H.H. Thomas in 1923. For over 80 years, his work on the provenancing of the Stonehenge bluestones from locations in Mynydd Preseli in south Wales has been accepted at face value. New analytical techniques, alongside transmitted and reflected light microscopy, have recently prompted renewed scrutiny of Thomas’s work. While respectable for its time, the results of these new analyses, combined with a thorough checking of the archived samples consulted by Thomas, reveal that key locations long believed to be sources for the Stonehenge bluestones can be discounted in favour of newly identified locations at Craig-Rhos-y- felin and Carn Goedog.

PDF download - free registration required

https://www.academia.edu/40175575/
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Re: Stonehenge: Car stolen in Devon crashes nr SH(some nice pics of SH) by AngieLake on Tuesday, 06 August 2019
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Just reading tonight's online news in Devon, and found this item with a couple of nice photos of Stonehenge:
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/car-stolen-devon-crashes-near-3176529
(Expect the driver was distracted by the views!)
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Re: Stonehenge. by Anonymous on Friday, 19 July 2019
Stonehenge is in alignment between Avebury Henge & Le Mont St. Michel in Normandy. The line also includes, W-Kennet barrow, Pewsey Downs, Old Sarum etc. This alignment is part of a triangular alignment from St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall - Avebury Henge -Lle Mont St. Michel. The alignment is studied & followed by satellite in the following link;

https://ancientwhisperspenwith.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-st-michael-triangle-duke-line.html
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The bluestones of Stonehenge, Robert Ixer and Richard Bevins by Andy B on Tuesday, 11 September 2018
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The bluestones of Stonehenge, Robert Ixer and Richard Bevins

How and why the bluestones arrived at Stonehenge, the UK's most revered ancient monument, has long held people's imagination. The key to understanding these questions relies heavily on the location of their sources. Following early studies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which proposed various places but in particular southwest England, H.H. Thomas, in 1923, suggested that they came from the Mynydd Preseli, in north Pembrokeshire, Wales. Thomas proposed a number of key locations for the geographical origin of the stones. However, recent investigations have called those locations into question, identifying different sources albeit from the same broad area in north Pembrokeshire. Identification of these proposed new sites has led to archaeological excavations and important new discoveries including new suggested routes for the transport of the bluestones from the Preseli Hills to Stonehenge some 230 km away.

Article in Geology Today
https://www.academia.edu/37217831/The_bluestones_of_Stonehenge
(free registration required)
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Re: Ancient Welshmen helped build Stonehenge by AngieLake on Friday, 03 August 2018
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The latest article from the Daily Mail about the Oxford University study, with photos (including pieces of ancient skulls) and an interpretation of 'Bluehenge'...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6018799/Ancient-WELSHMEN-helped-build-Stonehenge-5-000-years-ago-using-vast-bluestones.html
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Re: Stonehenge by TheCaptain on Thursday, 05 July 2018
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Dry spell at Stonehenge reveals secret that has eluded archaeologists.

Brown patches of grass left by short hosepipe lead to 'lightbulb moment' that may confirm monument was once a perfect circle

See report in the Guardian newspaper
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    Re: Stonehenge by Anonymous on Thursday, 05 July 2018
    Old news, Captain - first published on Mon 1 Sep 2014.
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Tim Daw has all the latest on the tunnel by Andy B on Tuesday, 03 July 2018
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Tim Daw has all the latest on the tunnel at
http://www.sarsen.org/

A303 Scientific Committee Archaeology Reports June 2018
http://www.sarsen.org/2018/06/a303-scientific-committee-archaeology.html

Parliamentary Debate on The Stonehenge Road Alterations
Stonehenge: Proposed Road Alterations 05 June 2018
UK Parliament Westminster Hall Debate
http://www.sarsen.org/2018/06/parliamentary-debate-on-stonehenge-road.html

etc
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Please respond to the Highways England A303 Stonehenge Consultation - Closes 23rd Apr by Andy B on Wednesday, 18 April 2018
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Please respond to the consultation before it closes on 23 April - you can use your own words of course, or be guided by the response from the Stonehenge Alliance.
http://stonehengealliance.org.uk/a303-stonehenge-consultation-2018/write-to-highways-england/

You can also respond to Highways England’s online form with the help of the notes from here
http://stonehengealliance.org.uk/act-now/a303-consultation/

Stonehenge World Heritage Site (WHS) is this country’s most important prehistoric landscape, valued the world over for its outstanding complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments and buried archaeology. The recently-discovered Mesolithic site of Blick Mead dates back over eight millennia. The landscape inspires spiritual celebrations, artists, writers, historians and people from all walks of life to this day.

Despite the importance of this WHS, the UK Government plans to build a vast dual carriageway across the landscape, with massive tunnel portals emerging into deep cuttings for around a mile of new roads. Slip roads to a double interchange would destroy the western setting of the WHS. Irreparable damage would be inflicted upon this remarkable place.

More here
http://stonehengealliance.org.uk/a303-stonehenge-consultation-2018/write-to-highways-england/
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    Confusing messages in the CBA’s Stonehenge Special report by Andy B on Wednesday, 18 April 2018
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    The Stonehenge Alliance write: The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) has commissioned a special edition of its members’ magazine British Archaeology “designed to inform debate about the proposed road tunnel at Stonehenge”. Unfortunately for the CBA, it sends some confusing messages. Although the writer states that the views expressed are his own and not about the tunnel, the narrative ends with his idiosyncratic views about the road scheme which includes a c.3km tunnel.
    http://new.archaeologyuk.org/news/stonehenge-special-report

    The author’s account of new fieldwork and discoveries within the World Heritage Site and beyond its boundaries is helpful as far as it goes. But there is more than one side to a debate and significant information is missing since, in his dismissive approach towards those campaigning against the A303 widening scheme, he fails to explain their reasons.

    In highlighting the obvious fact that significant archaeology continues beyond the boundary of the WHS, the author neglects to acknowledge that the Government is obliged, under the terms of the World Heritage Convention, notably at Article 4, to ensure “the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations” of its designated World Heritage properties. Also omitted from his account are references to Government planning guidance and policy designed to honour those commitments in relation to our WHSs and their settings. The boundaries of WHSs may be extended via a complicated process to include new finds but the existing boundaries must include all those attributes for which the WHS was designated. Stonehenge lacks a “buffer zone”, now a UNESCO requirement for all WHSs: another cause for concern about the proposed A303 scheme.

    Read more here
    http://stonehengealliance.org.uk/confusing-messages-in-the-cbas-stonehenge-special/
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Re: Stonehenge Mike Pitts - Stone 16 and the Heel Stone WERE original stones by AngieLake on Monday, 09 April 2018
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I TOLD YOU SO! XX
Mike Pitts says Stone 16 and the Heel Stone were the original stones at the site:

Summary of article today:

Stonehenge's massive pillars were 'in place long before humans arrived' and prehistoric architects built around the mystery monoliths
Mike Pitts specialises in British pre-history and has excavated at Stonehenge
He says the largest and most important sarsen stones site gave it its significance
Unlike other rocks at Stonehenge they were already in place on Salisbury Plain
Their coincidental alignment with the sun prompted people to build Stonehenge
By TIM COLLINS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 09:59, 9 April 2018 | UPDATED: 10:08, 9 April 2018

The mystery of why Stonehenge was built on the unremarkable chalk plateau of Salisbury Plain may have finally been solved.

An expert claims two of Stonehenge's largest stones had been in place at the site for millions of years before Neolithic people built the monument.

Their coincidental alignment with the sunrise and sunset on the longest and shortest days of the year prompted ancient people to construct Stonehenge around them.

Two of Stonehenge's (pictured) largest stones had been in place for millions of years before neolithic people built the monument, experts say. Archaeologists uncovered evidence that the largest and most important of the sarsen stones at the site gave it its importance

Mike Pitts specialises in British pre-history and is one of a small number of scientists who have excavated on the site of the ancient monument.

In a paper published in the journal British Archaeology, the freelance archaeologist describes uncovering a pit, around six metres (20 feet) in diameter, beside the heel stone in 1979.

The heel stone is 75 metres (250 feet) from the centre of the stone circle, weighs around 60 tonnes and has not been shaped or dressed, unlike the other sarsens.

It is the point at which the sun rises and falls below the horizon at midsummer and midwinter, from the perspective of those looking towards it from inside Stonehenge.

Mr Pitts believes the hole, rather than being a socket dug for a missing standing stone, was once home to huge heel stone.

A second undressed stone in the centre of the circle lines up with the heel stone and sun at the winter and summer solstice.

XX This rock, known as stone 16, also has a pit next to it, suggesting it too originated at the site of Stonehenge. XX

Speaking to The Times, Mr Pitts said: 'The assumption used to be that all the sarsens at Stonehenge had come from the Marlborough Downs more than 20 miles away.

The heel stone is 75 metres (250 feet) from the centre of the stone circle, weighs around 60 tonnes. It is the point at which the sun rises and falls below the horizon a midsummer and midwinter, from the perspective of those looking towards it from inside Stonehenge.

Work on Stonehenge could have been used to show outsiders the power of the small community building it. The theory may explain why some of the Wiltshire site's stones were transported 140 miles (225km) from south Wales, experts said

Susan Greaney, a senior historian at English Heritage, said: 'In contemporary Western culture, we are always striving to make things as easy and quick as possible, but we believe that for the builders of Stonehenge this may not have been the case.

'Drawing a large number of people from far and wide to take part in the process of building was potentially a powerful tool in demonstrating the strength of the community to outsiders.

'Being able to welcome and reward these people who had travelled far, perhaps as a kind of pilgrimage, with ceremonial feasts, could be a further expression of the power and position of the community.'

The theory follows English Herit

Read the rest of this post...
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    Re: Stonehenge Mike Pitts - Stone 16 and the Heel Stone WERE original stones by Anonymous on Thursday, 19 April 2018
    Could this stone have been left by the retreating ice, and could the abrasion it and the ice caused be what created the avenue?
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Re: Stonehenge by AngieLake on Friday, 09 March 2018
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Yet another article online with theories and illustrations of Stonehenge:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5478267/Act-building-Stonehenge-scared-ceremony.html

Titles:
Bonding and booze secrets of Stonehenge exposed: Construction work on ancient monument 5,000 years ago brought people together
Construction of the 5,000-year-old monument drew people from long distances
Outsiders travelled to take part in the build and were treated to lavish feasts
This could have shown outsiders the power of the small community building it
Theory may explain why some of Stonehenge's monoliths were sourced in Wales


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Re: Stonehenge - Proposed New Tunnelled Bypass, 2018 version by AngieLake on Friday, 09 February 2018
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Article in today's online Mail, with photos maps and graphics, regarding the plans:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5365365/Plans-1-6bn-two-mile-road-tunnel-Stonehenge.html

Revealed: Plans for £1.6bn two-mile road tunnel that will restore tranquillity to Stonehenge by 'brutally intruding' beneath the sacred site

Tunnel aims to restore tranquillity of site by removing sight and sound of road
It will feature a grass covered canopy at one end to help it blend into landscape
Time Team host Tony Robinson previously labelling tunnel a 'brutal intrusion'

(The title of the piece is a bit misleading: "..beneath the site.." might at first make readers believe it literally goes under the circle!)
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Researching Stonehenge: Theories Past and Present - Mike Parker Pearson by Andy B on Friday, 29 December 2017
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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 current state of research.

Parker Pearson, M., (2013). Researching Stonehenge: Theories Past and Present. Archaeology International. 16, pp.72–83. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ai.1601

https://www.ai-journal.com/articles/10.5334/ai.1601/
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Walking Through History Guide: The Path to Stonehenge, 45 mile walk by Andy B on Monday, 18 December 2017
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The download includes full day by day walking instructions with accompanying history guide.

Wiltshire is home to arguably the greatest concentration of prehistoric monuments in Europe, if not the world! The 45 mile route begins at Windmill Hill before heading south to spend the first day walking amongst the stone circles of Avebury.

Discover how the famous monuments of the area are connected and what they can tell us about life, and death, in Neolithic Britain. The walk takes us across some of the most beautiful landscape in the south west, as we uncover the actions of our ancestors here between 4000 and 2000BC.

DOWNLOAD: The Path to Stonehenge walking guide (PDF 883kb)
http://www.channel4.com/microsites/W/Walking-Through-History/Walking-Through-History2-Stonehenge.pdf
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Re: Stonehenge's Phallic Shadows by AngieLake on Sunday, 10 December 2017
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More here on Terence Meaden's findings at Stonehenge:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5163629/Was-Stonehenge-constructed-fertility-cult.html
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Stonehenge and Avebury: Megalithic shadow casting at the solstices at sunrise by Andy B on Saturday, 25 November 2017
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Stonehenge and Avebury: Megalithic shadow casting at the solstices at sunrise - G. Terence Meaden Oxford University Department of Continuing Education (Archaeology), Kellogg College, Oxford University

The paper examines how specific megaliths at Stonehenge and Avebury were positioned relative to others and to particular sunrises such as to produce watchable effects arising from solar movement and resulting lithic shadows. At Stonehenge and environs numerous research expeditions (exceeding 120 that started in 1981) combined with accurate compass analysis, photography and studies of the best plans of the sarsen-stone and bluestone phases have led to explanations for apparent anomalies of stone positioning that have not been clarified before.

Firstly, at the summer solstice in the Late Neolithic the Altar Stone was illuminated by sunshine for the first three or four minutes of the day, following which the shadow of the round-topped Heel Stone was cast into the middle of Stonehenge toreach the Altar Stone. This circumstance continues to be witnessed today. It is a consequence of the Heel Stone being deliberately offset from the Stonehenge axis of symmetry.

Again, there is the offset positioning of the anomalous half-height, half-width, Stone 11 that disrupts the otherwise regular arc of the lintelled sarsen circle. It is also a fact that the Altar Stone, although on the midsummer sunrise axis and bisected by it, does not lie perpendicular to the monument’s axis but is instead angled lengthways in the direction of the winter solstice sunrise. The same is true of the orientation of the Great Trilithon (as recently discussed by T. Daw).

This suggests that the Altar Stone and the Great Trilithon were deliberately positioned this way in order to respect and emphasise an older arrangement in which a midwinter sunrise megalithic setting had been important. Such an arrangement involving the winter solstice sunrise still exists because the shadow of the short round-topped Stone 11 at sunrise appears aimed at the rhyolite ignimbrite Bluestones 40 and 38-both of which are damaged, fallen and possibly parts of a single original.

In similar manner the site of Hole G could indicate the former position of an ancestral stone with regard to equinoctial sunrises. Thus, these shadow-casting experiences for sunrise at Stonehenge may have affinities with the proven stone-to-stone casting of shadows for the same significant calendar dates at the carefully examined Drombeg Stone Circle.

At Avebury the stones of the Cove in the northern circle together with Avebury’s Stone F harmonize likewise at the summer solstice sunrise. Two surviving megaliths in Avebury’s southern circle behave similarly. It is discussed whether an explanation in terms of the ancient worldview of the hieros gamosbetween Sky and Earth may be appropriate for Stonehenge and Avebury as it could also be at Drombeg.

From Advances in Understanding Megaliths and Related Prehistoric Lithic Monuments
Journal of Lithic Studies. (2017) Volume 4, Number 3.

Issue dedicated to the session "Standing Stones and Megalithic Monuments in Context" XVII UISPP World Congress, Burgos, 1-7 September 2014
With guest editor Terence Meaden.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/jls.v4i3

http://journals.ed.ac.uk/lithicstudies/article/view/1920/2558
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Quirky guide to books about Stonehenge by Andy B on Tuesday, 21 November 2017
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By Dean Talboys, who writes: You can find most for sale secondhand on eBay or Amazon. Some of the very old texts are available online through specialist web sites including Project Gutenberg and The Internet Sacred Text Archive. It's also worth checking Google Books and Amazon for digitized versions.

https://web.archive.org/web/20151029165730fw_/http://www.louistalboys.com/stonehenge/biblio.htm
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Through the dark vale: interpreting the Stonehenge Palisade by Andy B on Tuesday, 21 November 2017
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Through the dark vale: interpreting the Stonehenge Palisade through inter-disciplinary convergence - Lionel Sims and David Fisher

The Stonehenge Palisade was a nearly two kilometre long fence of timber posts running from close to the Great Cursus in the north, butting onto the ‘elbow’ turn of the Avenue approach to Stonehenge and then gradually diverging from the Avenue to the south west. In the most recent excavations of this feature Mike Parker Pearson found no dating evidence and inferred a mid-Bronze Age date for the structure on grounds of its later utilisation as a Middle Bronze Age field boundary which, he suggests, ‘makes it pretty likely that it’s only a little bit earlier...’.

From his Stonehenge Riverside Project excavations ‘…[t]here was no trace of any Neolithic activity so the density of flints recovered on the surface was indicative mostly of later activity from the middle and end of the second mill ennium BC’ (Parker Pearson 2012: 236).

There are a number of grounds to question this inference.
First ‘Neolithic activity’ has been found associated with the Palisade. A chalk
disc was found in the base of the Palisade ditch at the terminal by the old Visitor Centre. Chalk discs are associated with Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age henges and causewayed enclosures, just as another was found in primary contexts in the Stonehenge Ditch (Cleal 1995: 161, 405).

More at
Through the dark vale: interpreting the Stonehenge Palisade through inter-disciplinary convergence
https://www.academia.edu/29068616/
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A New Look at the Astronomy and Geometry of Stonehenge - Euan MacKie (2012) by Andy B on Saturday, 21 October 2017
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Recent authoritative work by Ruggles on whether there were significant astronomical and calendrical alignments built into Stonehenge in the third millennium BCE has concluded that the evidence for accurate alignments is minimal and that there is none for sophisticated astronomical practices, nor for any kind of calendar. Whether sophisticated geometry was used in designing the site is not discussed. I will review the relevant evidence – previously discussed by Hawkins, Thom and Atkinson – in the light of both Atkinson’s accurate on-site surveys in 1978 and Hawkins’ photogrammetric survey. It will be argued that these data allow us to infer that important lunar and solar alignments were built into the rectangular formation of the Station Stones, and into the main axis of the site. Moreover, geometrical constructions – and the use of at least one standard length unit – have been postulated for the Station Stones and the sarsen circle these ideas too are investigated. It seems that these two aspects of
prehistoric intellectual skills – astronomy and the calendar, and geometry – are
closely interwoven at this site, and that this emerging picture has broad implications for our understanding of Neolithic society.

This paper enquires whether Stonehenge – one of the most famous prehistoric sacred sites in Europe – was built in a more sophisticated way, and for more sophisticated purposes, than those usually suggested in archaeological textbooks. Was it laid out according to advanced geometrical principles and with the aid of skilled surveying? Were sight lines built into it which pointed at the risings and settings of the sun and moon at important stages in their calendars? Or is it a primitive structure remarkable mainly for the size and weight of its component standing stones, their skilful dressing and shaping, and for the ingenuity and effort which must have been involved in raising them into their final positions?

These questions are seldom asked in modern British archaeology.

http://www.cultureandcosmos.org/pdfs/16/MacKie_INSAPVII_Stonehenge.pdf

Source: Culture and Cosmos Vol 16 (2012) - special issue containing forty papers from the Seventh Conference on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (INSAPVII) held at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath, 24-29 October 2010.
http://www.cultureandcosmos.org/issues/vol16.php
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The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project (Short Report) by Andy B on Saturday, 12 August 2017
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Over the centuries many archaeologists have investigated the site of Stonehenge and we now know a great deal about the phasing and nature of the site. However, the area around the henge, while containing many symbolic and ritual elements, is curiously ‘blank’. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project aims to place the site and its development through time within a landscape context using fast and accurate ground-based geophysical techniques. The project has developed a rapid strategy to map, visualize and interpret landscape-scale data and is applying the strategy to the area known as the Stonehenge ‘envelope’. The data are interpreted within a data rich three-dimensional data cube that has provided new insights regarding the apparent blank areas surrounding Stonehenge. It is an aim of the project to discover more about Stonehenge by looking out from the site rather than looking at it.

https://www.academia.edu/1751987/The_Stonehenge_Hidden_Landscapes_Project
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Science and Stonehenge (1997) edited by Barry Cunliffe & Colin Renfrew by Andy B on Sunday, 02 July 2017
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Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 92
Science and Stonehenge edited by Barry Cunliffe & Colin Renfrew
Volume published 1997

All papers Open Access from
http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/proc/volumes/pba92.html

Barry Cunliffe & Colin Renfrew Introduction

Colin Renfrew Setting the Scene: Stonehenge in the Round

Andrew J Lawson The Structural History of Stonehenge

A Bayliss, C Bronk Ramsey & F G McCormac Dating Stonehenge

Dave Batchelor Mapping the Stonehenge World Heritage Site

A David & A Payne Geophysical Surveys within the Stonehenge Landscape: A Review of Past Endeavour and Future Potential

Michael J Allen Environment and Land-use; The Economic Development of the Communities who Built Stonehenge (an Economy to Support the Stones)

Alasdair Whittle Remembered and Imagined Belongings: Stonehenge in its Traditions and Structures of Meaning

Timothy Darvill Ever Increasing Circles: The Sacred Geographies of Stonehenge and its Landscape

Clive Ruggles Astronomy and Stonehenge

Julian Richards & Mark Whitby The Engineering of Stonehenge

C P Green The Provenance of Rocks used in the Construction of Stonehenge

J D Scourse Transport of the Stonehenge Bluestones: Testing the Glacial Hypothesis

O Williams-Thorpe, C P Green & J D Scourse The Stonehenge Bluestones: Discussion

George Eogan Stonehenge in its Wider Context

G J Wainwright Future Directions for the Study of Stonehenge and its Landscape

All papers Open Access from
http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/proc/volumes/pba92.html
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Video Talk: Rewriting Stonehenge's history (UCL) by Andy B on Friday, 12 May 2017
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Professor Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Archaeology) re-evaluates the timeline of Stonehenge's construction and sheds light on how it was used. The first Stonehenge began life as a cemetery with the original stone circle built 500 years before the version that we know today.

Professor Parker Pearson and his team also discovered that the second stage of Stonehenge (the iconic sarsen stone circle) was built 200 years earlier than thought, about 2500 BCE. Published on 21 Mar 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvScpdMhQNk
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Re: The Amazing pop-up Stonehenge! by AngieLake on Sunday, 26 March 2017
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I found this super kids' book on Stonehenge yesterday in a charity shop (only £1.50, though I see it isn't expensive on Amazon either):
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=The+amazing+pop+up+stonehenge&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-qayI8PPSAhXoBsAKHSrbAA4QsAQIKw&biw=1280&bih=918&dpr=1
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Re: Stonehenge - Spring Equinox 2017 by AngieLake on Wednesday, 22 March 2017
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Found this link:
https://blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/category/stonehenge-spring-equinox-2017/
Did anyone go and take photos this year?
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    Re: Stonehenge - Spring Equinox 2017 by Orpbit on Friday, 24 March 2017
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    Yes, but I haven't had a chance to archive the images and videos as yet! I guess there were something like 300 people around the stones and more walking about generally. There's a few videos on youtube and Megalithomania has the full ceremony.
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Re: Stonehenge Bench Marks by AngieLake on Sunday, 05 March 2017
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This is very interesting:
https://blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/2016/11/18/ordnance-survey-benchmarks-at-stonehenge/
I'd noticed something regarding a bench mark on Stone 16 in something I've read on Megalithic Portal but forgotten where, so I Googled for it. I hope I'm not repeating this news.
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Re: Stonehenge and the A303 by Jansold on Saturday, 25 February 2017
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Highways England has a website publishing their proposals to build a 1.8 mile (2.9 kilometre) tunnel under the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. Details of the proposed routes can be found online at

http://www.highways.gov.uk/a303stonehenge/consultation

The consultation closes on 5th March.

National Trust, Historic England and English Heritage support the proposals, although the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society have objected to the scheme pointing out that the tunnel portal location is close to the alignment of the Winter solstice when seen from the Avenue and Stonehenge and prefer a longer overland route that would take the A303 south of the World Heritage site altogether. The Stonehenge Alliance (stonehengealliance.org.uk) have objected to the scheme because the tunnel is too short (The World Heritage Site is 5.4km/3.4 miles wide, whereas the tunnel is 2.9km/1.8 miles long), and because of serious damage to archaeology and landscape.

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Stonehenge Chronological Modelling Scientific Dating Report by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2016
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1/2012 - Stonehenge, Amesbury, Wiltshire: Chronological Modelling by Timothy Darvill, Peter Marshall, Mike Parker Pearson and Geoff Wainwright
This report contains details of all the radiocarbon determinations obtained on samples dated from Stonehenge up to the end of 2011. A series of chronological models based on different readings of the archaeology are presented for the monument as a way of exploring how these interpretations influence our understanding of its chronology.

http://services.english-heritage.org.uk/ResearchReportsPdfs/001_2012WEB.pdf
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Stonehenge Monument Field and Barrows,Wiltshire: Report on Geophysical Surveys by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2016
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Stonehenge Monument Field and Barrows,Wiltshire: Report on Geophysical Surveys, September 2010, April and July 2011

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey was conducted over an area of approximately 1.5ha centred on the stone circle at Stonehenge, Wiltshire (AMIE SU 14 SW4). The field work was undertaken to complement earlier geophysical survey coverage and a more recent earth work survey of the monument. In addition, three barrow groups (AMIE SU 14 SW397-401, SW89 and SW421-422) were surveyed with both GPR (2.0ha) and magnetic (2.8ha) techniques.

The results from the GPR survey over the monument recorded responses to many known, recent interventions at the site such as the course of former track-ways recorded on historic aerial photographs. However, some new anomalies were also identified that enhance the existing geophysical record of the site and may well prove to be of archaeological significance. The survey of the barrow groups demonstrated the advantages of applying high sample density magnetic survey to complement existing coverage and the complexity of the GPR response over such features.

http://services.english-heritage.org.uk/ResearchReportsPdfs/034_2012WEB.pdf
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Stonehenge Laser Scan 2012: Archaeological Analysis by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2016
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Stonehenge Laser Scan: Archaeological Analysis by Marcus Abbott and Hugo Anderson-Whymark, with contributions from Dave Aspden, Anna Badcock, Tudur Davies, Mags Felter, Rob Ixer, Mike Parker Pearson and Colin Richards

From May to August 2012, ArcHeritage, in collaboration with Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, undertook the archaeological analysis of laser scan data of Stonehenge, collected by the Greenhatch Group in March 2011. The results of the project were beyond all expectations. The investigation identified traces of stone-working on virtually every stone, revealing significant new evidence for how Stonehenge was built. In addition, all of the known prehistoric carvings were identified and examined, and numerous new carvings of axe-heads and a possible dagger were revealed.

The number of prehistoric axe-head carvings on Stonehenge has increased from 44 to 115; this doubles the number of Early Bronze Age axe-head carvings known in Britain. Differences in patterns of tooling across Stonehenge were also identified that reveal significant new evidence for how, and potentially when, different elements of the monument were constructed. The analysis revealed that the Sarsen Circle was built and dressed with an apparent emphasis on the NE-SW solstitial axis.

The study also presents new evidence allowing the question of the non-completion of the Sarsen Circle to be explored. The project, funded by English Heritage, recorded all visible graffiti, damage, weathering and restoration. This revealed considerable evidence for the removal of stones from Stonehenge, and documented extensive damage from past visitors.

http://services.english-heritage.org.uk/ResearchReportsPdfs/032_2012WEB.pdf
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Re: Stonehenge - Helpful Visitors' Tips by AngieLake on Monday, 15 August 2016
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Found this helpful and witty list of tips for visitors to Stonehenge in my Google Search 'Stonehenge' inbox:
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2016/08/14/lifestyle/travel/974601.txt
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Interactive map of Stonehenge Research Reports from Historic England by Andy B on Friday, 05 February 2016
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A new way to search the relevant Historic England Research Reports Series volumes for the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, via an interactive map.
http://services.historicengland.org.uk/rrstonehenge/

Historic England (formerly English Heritage) write: We are committed to making as our research available to as wider audience as possible. Our Research Report series includes research carried out by, as well as work we have funded other organisations to carry out on our behalf. You can search the reports through the dedicated search page:
http://research.historicengland.org.uk/

Download all 20 reports from our recent research using the new interactive map of the Stonehenge landscape. You can also buy the Stonehenge Landscape book from their online bookshop.

Together with the book, these reports represent an up-to-date synthesis of this iconic monument and surrounding area; the results of several years' fieldwork and research.

The reports provide accurate, detailed information on the location, surviving shape and size of the monuments in the World Heritage Site; from the prehistoric barrows to the more recent monuments, such as the early 20th-century Air Ministry markers

More at
https://historicengland.org.uk/research/research-results/research-reports/
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Stonehenge burials show 'surprising degree' of gender equality by davidmorgan on Thursday, 04 February 2016
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A new study of prehistoric bones discovered at Stonehenge has found around half belonged to women.

In 2008 archaeologists first explored the site in Wiltshire examining the cremated remains of some 200 adults.

Researchers said their findings showed a "surprising degree of gender equality" despite artists portraying prehistoric man as in charge of the site "with barely a woman in sight".

The findings are reported in the magazine British Archaeology.

The study showed the findings are important because burial at Stonehenge was likely to have been reserved for selected people of higher status.
It also contrasts with the evidence from older Neolithic tombs in southern Britain, with their higher ratios of adult males to females.

Christie Willis, a PhD student at University College London and an expert on human remains, sorted through some 45kg (99lbs) of bone fragments.
Her task was to identify which part of the skeleton each fragment came from and to then establish the age and sex of the remains.
She identified 14 females and nine males - some of them children.

Ms Willis said the samples had originally been place in a series of Aubrey Holes around the periphery of the site - which were originally excavated in the 1920s by William Hawley.
"These were dug up and reburied in Aubrey Hole seven with the hope that one day there would be a breakthrough to allow them to be analysed.
"Because of this the fragments have become co-mingled - or mixed up - which is why the work has taken so long."

The fragments were also sent to universities in Oxford and Glasgow to be radiocarbon-dated.

Researchers at Teeside University also looked at how hot the cremation fires were, and how long the bones were in there for.

Source: BBC
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The Stones of Stonehenge (a page for every stone) by Andy B on Wednesday, 04 November 2015
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Feanor writes: A site with a page devoted to each stone at Stonehenge. Some extremely impressive info and 360-degree images of every visible Stone.
Simon Banton has spent well over a year collating this information and it's swiftly becoming a touchstone watershed for many researchers. Some of the upper surface pictures are contributed by Adam Stanford.
General above-ground mass for many of the Stones is given.

http://www.stonesofstonehenge.org.uk/
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Re: Bustard at Stonehenge by Aluta on Thursday, 18 June 2015
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I have more photos of the bustard at Stonehenge. If anyone is interested, just let me know.
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Re: Stonehenge - New Exhibition 'Wish You Were Here' by AngieLake on Friday, 01 May 2015
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This looks like a better advert for the forthcoming exhibition and gives dates more clearly:
From the Guardian...

From 'druidical erection' to Spinal Tap: a history of Stonehenge as tourist site

New ‘Stonehengiana’ exhibition created by archeologist Julian Richards displays souvenirs and other ephemera charting history of site as tourist attraction since the 19th century.

Wish You Were Here opens on 1 May and runs until March 2016. Admission is included in the Stonehenge entry price.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/30/from-druidical-erection-to-spinal-tap-a-history-of-stonehenge-as-tourist-site
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Re: Stonehenge - New Exhibition with Postcards from the Past by AngieLake on Friday, 01 May 2015
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See report here:

Postcards from the past: Amazing old colour photos reveal how Stonehenge became one of the world's most recognisable landmarks

Stonehenge dates back as far as 3,000BC but its fortunes have varied
It was neglected for centuries before being resurrected as a major attraction for visitors around the world
New exhibition reveals different ways tourists have reacted to Stonehenge
Includes items from antique postcards to souvenir tat and novelty records


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3062295/How-Stonehenge-s-star-rose-again.html#ixzz3Yq811tnW
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Stonehenge Winter archaeology walk, 6th Dec 2014 by bat400 on Sunday, 23 November 2014
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Winter archaeology walk

Explore the wider Stonehenge World Heritage Site with a guide discovering hidden histories and ancient mysteries.

Enjoy a winter afternoon walk up on the downs learning about the ancient archaeology of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. On this 4 mile walk with views of the stone circle, we'll visit ancient earthworks that have revealed much about the people who once lived and celebrated here. Talking points include the Cursus, the many and varied barrows, and an ancient avenue connecting ceremonial centres.

More Information: Estate Office, 01980 664780, stonehenge@nationaltrust.org.uk
> Saturday, 06 December 2014 1pm - 3:30 pm Adult £5

Thanks to coldrum for the link. See
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/whats-on/find-an-event/?uuid=d195683f-7522-4ea3-bbde-590f9aac7368.
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Re: Stonehenge by TheCaptain on Saturday, 06 September 2014
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'How cool is this?' President Obama visits Stonehenge after NATO Summit and describes it as a highlight of his visit.

Report with video and photos can be seen here and here
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What Lies Beneath Stonehenge? by Andy B on Sunday, 24 August 2014
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A groundbreaking survey of the site has turned up tantalizing new clues to what really went on there.

We walked the Avenue, the ancient route along which the stones were first dragged from the River Avon. For centuries, this was the formal path to the great henge, but now the only hint of its existence was an indentation or two in the tall grass. It was a fine English summer’s day, with thin, fast clouds above, and as we passed through fields dotted with buttercups and daisies, cows and sheep, we could have been hikers anywhere, were it not for the ghostly monument in the near distance.

Faint as the Avenue was, Vince Gaffney hustled along as if it were illuminated by runway lights. A short, sprightly archaeologist of 56, from Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, he knows this landscape as well as anyone alive: has walked it, breathed it, studied it for uncounted hours. He has not lost his sense of wonder. Stopping to fix the monument in his eyeline, and reaching out toward the stones on the horizon, he said, “Look, it becomes cathedralesque.”

A full map of the project’s findings is to be presented September 9 at the British Science Festival in Birmingham, England

Read more in Smithsonian Magazine
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-lies-beneath-Stonehenge-180952437/



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Re: Stonehenge by Alta-Falisa on Monday, 14 April 2014
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I suppose all these historical photos come from a paper.
Is this paper available on the Portal ? Otherwise, what are its references ?
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Visitor Centre Opens by Runemage on Tuesday, 17 December 2013
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Some good photographs in this article, I especially like the facial reconstruction of a nearby barrow's occupant. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2525035/New-27million-Stonehenge-visitor-centre-opens-reconstruction-Neolithic-man.html Video http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25412430
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Summer 2013 discoveries at Stonehenge and 'Interesting' theories by Andy B on Tuesday, 10 September 2013
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Two ditches belonging to the Stonehenge Avenue buried beneath the modern roadbed of the A344 have been uncovered during works to decommission the road as part of English Heritage's project to transform the setting and visitor experience of Stonehenge.

The two ditches represent either side of The Avenue, a long linear feature to the north-east of Stonehenge linking it with the River Avon. It has long been considered as the formal processional approach to the monument and is aligned with the solstice axis of Stonehenge. But its connection with Stonehenge had been severed by the A344 for centuries as the road cut through the delicate earthwork at an almost perpendicular angle.

Lots more info and links here
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146414161
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Saxon skeletons unearthed near Stonehenge by coldrum on Monday, 20 May 2013
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Archaeologists have discovered six pagan Saxon skeletons dating back over 1,000 years on a housing development site just a few miles from Stonehenge.

The discoveries, which also include round barrows dating back to the Bronze Age 4,000 years ago, were unearthed at a redundant brownfield development site in Amesbury, Wiltshire, which is also famous for the Amesbury Archer – an early Bronze Age man found buried among arrowheads.

The remains are thought to be those of adolescent to mature males and females. Five skeletons were arrayed around a small circular ditch, with the grave of a sixth skeleton in the centre. Two lots of beads, a shale bracelet and other grave goods were also found, which suggest the findings are Pagan.

The site is now being excavated for other artefacts by Wessex Archaeology, led by Phil Harding, known for his work on Channel 4’s Time Team, while colleagues back at the unit’s laboratory examine the remains and jewellery, which have already been removed.

Phil said: “Given that the Stonehenge area is a well-known prehistoric burial site, it was always very likely some interesting discoveries would be made here. The fact that these round barrows were previously unknown makes this particularly exciting.

“Finding the skeletons also helps us to get a clearer picture of the history of this area. To my knowledge these are the first Pagan Saxon burials to be excavated scientifically in Amesbury. “

Landowner Aster Group is building 14 affordable homes at the redundant brownfield site, which will be available to rent from 2014.

Anna Kear, Aster’s regional development director for Hampshire and Wiltshire, said: “Wiltshire is a treasure trove of archaeology, drawing people from across the world.

"Discovering a burial site in this beautiful county is always a possibility when building affordable homes. We’re working with everyone involved to ensure Phil and his team can investigate this exciting find while the build continues.”

Contractor Mansell, a Balfour Beatty brand, was preparing the site for the build when it made the discovery.

Site manager Brian Whitchurch-Bennett, of Mansell, said: “When we’re working in an area of historical importance we always undertake archaeological investigations to make sure that our construction works don’t damage hidden remains or artefacts. The findings within this particular site really are a one off, we’ve been amazed by the number of discoveries and the level of preservation. It’s certainly a project to remember.”

The archaeologists are expected to be on site for six weeks in total. Footage from the site may also be included in an archaeological production for ITV’s History Channel, due to be aired in January 2014.


http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/saxon-skeletons-unearthed-near.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+%28The+Archaeology+News+Network%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail#.UZo8yspUVbo
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Re: Stonehenge and its landscape from satellite by AngieLake on Thursday, 02 May 2013
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Click on this Daily Mail article to see a great satellite view of Stonehenge and the Cursus and all surrounding barrows :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2317119/Machu-Picchu-Stonehenge-Worlds-incredible-ancient-ruins-seen-space.html

The article also includes many other famous sites around the world.
Title:
"What the world's most wondrous ruins look like from the heavens
Collection captured by Earth-observing satellites shows just how incredible these ancient feats of engineering are"



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Re: Stonehenge by Sunny100 on Saturday, 20 April 2013
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Stonehenge occupied 5,000 years earlier than thought. BBC News Wiltshire Video/photos http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-22183130
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Re: Stonehenge Virtual 360-degree Cinema by AngieLake on Tuesday, 26 March 2013
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The latest on Daily Mail website about this new feature in the visitor centre. I have a feeling it'll only satisfy a minority of people, the real Stonehenge lovers want to get up close and personal with the monument.
Link to story here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2298923/Panoramic-virtual-views-Stonehenge-wow-visitors-32ft-landscape-wall.html
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Stonehenge remains a mystery as scientists ask: was it a health spa, or a cemetary by Sunny100 on Saturday, 16 March 2013
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Stonehenge remains a mystery as scientists ask: was it a health spa, or a cemetery?

Archaeologists back conflicting theories on Britain's greatest prehistoric monument

Robin McKie

The Observer, Saturday 16 March 2013 13.49 GMT

Stonehenge, the prehistoric site whose purpose is still not fully understood by archaeologists. Photograph: Steve Allen/Getty Images


It already attracts more than a million visitors a year. Yet these numbers could be dwarfed once Stonehenge, one of the world's greatest prehistoric monuments, completes its radical facelift.

Over the next year, the nearby A344 will be closed and grassed over. A new visitor centre will be built a mile and a half from the monument and tourists will be encouraged to explore the ancient landscape around the 5,000-year-old complex.

The makeover falls short of plans, since scrapped, that would have seen all major thoroughfares in the area diverted through tunnels. Nevertheless Stonehenge should be returned to something like its past glory, it is hoped, and then attract even greater numbers of visitors seeking to understand the purpose of this vast, enigmatic edifice.

For centuries, historians and archaeologists have speculated about the reason for the monument's construction. Suggestions have ranged from the proposal that it was built by Merlin to commemorate knights slain in a battle against Saxon invaders to the idea that Stonehenge was a highly sophisticated astronomical observatory.

Earlier this month, the latest salvo in the debate was fired by archaeologists, led by Professor Michael Parker Pearson, of University College London, who published research indicating that the original Stonehenge was a graveyard for a community of elite families. "This was a place for the dead," Parker Pearson said.

The notion – that Stonehenge is essentially a large funerary temple created between 3000 and 2500BC – does not find favour with every scientist, however. Indeed, the other main group of UK researchers investigating the site – archaeologists led by Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University – believe the place was an ancient Lourdes. The sick and wounded would come here for cures from the monument's great bluestones, which had been dragged from Wales to Wiltshire because of their magical healing properties. "This was a place for the living," Darvill said.

Such divergence of views would seem to suggest we are as far from understanding the purpose of Stonehenge as we have ever been. English Heritage historian Susan Greaney counselled caution, however. We should not place too much emphasis on our ignorance about the monument, she said. "We know who built it and when they built it and have a good idea how they built it. It is only its ultimate purpose that still remains unresolved," she said.

Detailed radiocarbon dating of Stonehenge has shown that work on its construction probably began with the huge circular ditch that still surrounds the monument. Inside several dozen bluestones were erected along with various timber posts and other structures. It was a relatively modest construction by the standards of the remains we can see today. Then, around 2600BC, the site was transformed. A ring of giant upright stones called sarsens were erected and capped with huge rock lintels. Inside five huge trilithons – pairs of rock columns capped with a single slab – were erected and many of the magical bluestones from Wales that had been erected near the edge of the monument were moved inside this inner sanctum. Crucially, the rays of the setting midwinter sun and the rising midsummer sun would shine through the heart of the monument and down the avenue that leads into it.

Over succeeding centuries, the bluestones were rearranged for purposes that still mystify scientists. In short, Stonehenge is not one monument, built at one moment in history, but many built and rebuilt over many centuries. By that definition, it had

Read the rest of this post...
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Stonehenge may have been burial site for Stone Age elite, say archaeologists by Andy B on Monday, 11 March 2013
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More on this page
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146414139
and in our forum
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=5628&forum=1&start=0

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Re: Stonehenge on The One Show by AngieLake on Thursday, 21 February 2013
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On 20th February TV presenter Gyles Brandreth was at Stonehenge filming for an episode of The One Show.
I'm not sure if this was shown last evening as I didn't watch it all, just the bit on Tarr Steps.
If not, it might be worth watching the rest of this week's episodes.

Salisbury Journal has the news:
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/10239546.TV_presenter_Brandreth_at_Stonehenge/

To quote the newspaper:

"Brandreth was interviewing Ben Marshall from Salisbury-based chartered surveyors Woolley & Wallis about one of the biggest deals in the firm’s history – the sale of the iconic stones.

A hundred years ago landowner Cecil Chubb bought Stonehenge and donated it to the nation.

Former Amesbury mayor Andy Rhind-Tutt, whose great- grandfather was at the auction, was also interviewed."

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Re: Stonehenge - 'Cycle for Stonehenge' fundraiser by AngieLake on Tuesday, 05 February 2013
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"Cycle for Stonehenge" (From the Salisbury Journal)

http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/10204811.Cycle_for_Stonehenge/

"1:59pm Monday 4th February 2013 in News By Journal Reporter"

"CYCLISTS are being given the chance to pedal into history while raising funds to create a worthy visitor experience at Stonehenge.

English Heritage has launched its first ever fundraising event challenge, the Stonehenge Cycle Challenge.

The sponsored cycle ride will trace the original 170-mile journey of the Stonehenge bluestones from their source in the Preseli Mountains of Wales to the site where they still stand, 5,000 years later.

All the money that is raised will provide a much needed funding boost for the site, for which a new visitor centre is currently being constructed. "

Article continued on the above link.

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Re: Stonehenge - Updates on the Visitor Centre progress by AngieLake on Tuesday, 05 February 2013
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Here's a useful link to the progress being made on the new visitor centre and the alterations to road systems around the Longbarrow roundabout and Airman's Cross areas:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/our-plans/project-update/

From English Heritage:

"Stonehenge Project UpdateDecember 2012
As Stonehenge gears up for winter, we wanted to let you know we're making good progress with the new visitor centre at Airman's Corner. This time next year, work will have been completed and we'll be busy preparing for the opening." [cont]
Includes aerial photos.
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New Stonehenge Digital Model Film by Rupert_Till on Wednesday, 02 January 2013
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We have produced a new digital film experimental reconstruction of Stonehenge. We used LIDAR ground data; 1994 scan data of individual stones from English Heritage; recordings of a reconstruction of a bone fluter found in the nearby Wilsford shaft; reverberation convolutions generated by Odeon architectural acoustics software; rhythmic tempo from the echoes in the space; high powered computing cluster to render the images.

We would welcome any comments.

Video
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    Re: New Stonehenge Digital Model Film by tiompan on Wednesday, 02 January 2013
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    Rupert , in what way can the Lidar data and EH scan show a complete ring of lintelled trilithons when there in some cases there was nothing there for them to record ?

    George
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Re: Stonehenge by enjaytom on Wednesday, 12 December 2012
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Greetings All,
The several supposed axe heads found by the laser survey are not axes at all, they are representations of double sided harvesting tools designed to draw the stalks of cereals towards the reaper. Microliths were fixed to the draw cutting edge. The images were on the sarsen column that coincides with late July, harvest time, the third month of the sixteen month Sun calendar named Llew or Lugh. Summer is month one, "Summer" the middle day of 23 days is the 12 th day, midsummer solstice.
The archaeologist who suggested they were axes was wrong.
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    Re: Stonehenge by tiompan on Wednesday, 12 December 2012
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    Greetings enjay , we don’t know what calendar was used by the builders of the monument or more importantly the engravers of the axes . The axe engravings are found on five stones ,and there are also carvings of hilted daggers .The reason they are described as axes is not only because they look like unhafted Bronze Age axes with distinctive crescent shaped heads but also the fact that axes are one of the few representational engravings found in Britain and usually in funerary contexts .

    George
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    Re: Stonehenge by Anonymous on Wednesday, 12 December 2012
    "double sided harvesting tools designed to draw the stalks of cereals towards the reaper" - no need for it to be double sided.
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Latest research: The five prehistoric stages of Stonehenge by Andy B on Monday, 03 December 2012
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The December issue of Antiquity features an article by Tim Darvill, Pete Marshall, Mike Parker Pearson and Geoff Wainwright called “Stonehenge remodelled”. It’s designed to be the definitive summary of the current rethinking about the monument’s construction history. You can see an abstract here, though you need to subscribe to read the paper.
http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/086/ant0861021.htm

There is a much fuller study published by English Heritage available online (though not currently live).
http://research.english-heritage.org.uk/report/?15075

Read more, including a summary of the dates and stages at Mike Pitts' blog
http://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/stonehenge-in-five-easy-stages-or-perhaps-six/
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Herders, not farmers, built Stonehenge by bat400 on Monday, 26 November 2012
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The ancient builders of Stonehenge may have had a surprisingly meaty diet and mobile way of life. Although farming first reached the British Isles around 6,000 years ago, cultivation had given way to animal raising and herding by the time Stonehenge and other massive stone monuments began to dot the landscape, a new study finds.

Agriculture’s British debut occurred during a mild, wet period that enabled the introduction of Mediterranean crops such as emmer wheat, barley and grapes, say archaeobotanists Chris Stevens of Wessex Archaeology in Salisbury, England, and Dorian Fuller of University College London. Farming existed at first alongside foraging for wild fruits and nuts and limited cattle raising, but the rapid onset of cool, dry conditions in Britain about 5,300 years ago spurred a move to raising cattle, sheep and pigs, Stevens and Fuller propose in the September Antiquity.

With the return of a cultivation-friendly climate about 3,500 years ago, during Britain’s Bronze Age, crop growing came back strong, the scientists contend. Farming villages rapidly replaced a mobile, herding way of life.

Many researchers have posited that agriculture either took hold quickly in Britain around 6,000 years ago or steadily rose to prominence by 4,000 years ago. In either case, farmers probably would have assembled Stonehenge, where initial work began as early as 5,500 years ago, with large stones hauled in around 4,400 years ago.

But if Stevens and Fuller’s scenario of British agriculture’s ancient rise, demise and rebirth holds up, then small groups of roaming pastoralists collaborated to build massive, circular stone and wood structures, including Stonehenge. Shifts from farming to pastoralism, sometimes accompanied by construction of stone monuments, occurred around the same time in parts of Africa and Asia, the researchers say.

“Part of the reason why pastoralists built monuments such as Stonehenge lies in the importance of periodic large gatherings for dispersed, mobile groups,” Fuller says. Collective meeting spots allowed different groups to arrange alliance-building marriages, crossbreed herds to boost the animals’ health and genetic diversity and hold ritual feasts. At these locations, large numbers of people could be mobilized for big construction projects, Fuller suggests.

“A predominantly pastoralist economy in the third millennium B.C. accords well with available evidence and provides a suitable backdrop to the early development of Stonehenge,” says archaeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University in England. But he believes many large stones were brought to Stonehenge during a later upswing in cereal cultivation, as pastoralism receded in importance.

Stevens and Fuller compiled data on more than 700 cultivated and wild food remains from 198 sites across the British Isles whose ages had been previously calculated by radiocarbon dating. A statistical analysis of these dates and associated climate and environmental trends suggested that agriculture spread rapidly starting 6,000 years ago. About 700 years later, wild foods surged in popularity and cultivated grub became rare.

Thanks to neolithique02 for the link. For more, see http://www.sciencenews.org.
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Re: Stonehenge by neolithique02 on Thursday, 27 September 2012
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For those who missed the movie "Secrets of Stonehenge", I just added the full video on Youtube (75 mn, HD Quality) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gcV50x_RRg&feature=plcp

I really would like to meet Mike Parker Pearson...

Emmanuel
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Re: Stonehenge - artist Mark Anstee draws the stones by AngieLake on Tuesday, 07 August 2012
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This video shows close-ups of some of the stones in the monument as Mark Anstee, a British artist, crouches by the public footpath with pad and pencil drawing the stones:
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=294&sid=21577023
The video and article can be accessed on the above link.
(I watched without sound, but the text sums up his thoughts on the mysteries of Stonehenge.)
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Re: Stonehenge by TheCaptain on Tuesday, 31 July 2012
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Nice to see an interpretation of Stonehenge currently in use as a triple combination fence at Greenwich Park, for the Nag Hopping round in the Olympic eventing competition.

When pictures available, I think it deserves a sitepage of its own, even if it will be short lived.
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Re: Stonehenge 'Fire Garden' to mark 2012 Olympics by AngieLake on Thursday, 12 July 2012
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The dramatic 'Fire Garden' is well illustrated in this 11th July article from Daily Mail website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2171876/London-2012-Olympics-Stonehenge-transformed-glowing-fairytale-Fire-Garden.html

Article's opening quote:

"It is better known for being aligned with the rising and setting of the sun but Stonehenge has been transformed into something a lot more fiery.
As the sun set last night, the World Heritage site was illuminated with fire sculptures and candle-lit paths to mark the London 2012 Olympic Games.
The Fire Garden has transformed the ancient site into a 'glowing fairytale environment' with 'mysterious fiery engines', flaming fire pots and 'cascades of candles'."
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Stonehenge built to unify Britain by Runemage on Friday, 22 June 2012
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Teams working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project believe the circle was built after a long period of conflict between east and west Britain.

Researchers also believe the stones, from southern England and west Wales, symbolize different communities.

Prof Mike Parker Pearson said building Stonehenge required everyone "to pull together" in "an act of unification".

Full article here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-18550513

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    Stonehenge Riverside Project think site was monument marking unification of Britain by Andy B on Friday, 29 June 2012
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    After 10 years of archaeological investigations, researchers have concluded that Stonehenge was built as a monument to unify the peoples of Britain, after a long period of conflict and regional difference between eastern and western Britain.

    Its stones are thought to have symbolized the ancestors of different groups of earliest farming communities in Britain, with some stones coming from southern England and others from west Wales.

    The teams, from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Bournemouth and University College London, all working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP), explored not just Stonehenge and its landscape but also the wider social and economic context of the monument’s main stages of construction around 3,000 BC and 2,500 BC.

    “When Stonehenge was built”, said Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, “there was a growing island-wide culture – the same styles of houses, pottery and other material forms were used from Orkney to the south coast. This was very different to the regionalism of previous centuries. Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labour of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them. Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification.”

    Stonehenge may have been built in a place that already had special significance for prehistoric Britons. The SRP team have found that its solstice-aligned Avenue sits upon a series of natural landforms that, by chance, form an axis between the directions of midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.

    Professor Parker Pearson continued: “When we stumbled across this extraordinary natural arrangement of the sun’s path being marked in the land, we realized that prehistoric people selected this place to build Stonehenge because of its pre-ordained significance. This might explain why there are eight monuments in the Stonehenge area with solstitial alignments, a number unmatched anywhere else. Perhaps they saw this place as the centre of the world”.

    Full press release
    http://www.shef.ac.uk/news/nr/stonehenge-monument-unification-britain-1.188608

    with thanks to Jackdaw1 for the link

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Re: Stonehenge by Calcitestar on Wednesday, 18 January 2012
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I went here in 1976 and sat on the stones to eat my sandwiches with my parents! Now unless you go on a special day it is only viewable from further away and much further away if you dont want to pay!

The stones have a tired sad aura, as though they are sleeping. They wake up a little during the solstices but they need a lot more love than they get to really zing!
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Stonehenge Landscape Events by coldrum on Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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Stonehenge Autumn archaeology walk,
Autumn archaeology walk

Enjoy an autumn afternoon walk up on the downs learning about the ancient archaeology of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site and the area's varied wildlife. On this three mile walk with views of the stone circle, we'll visit ancient earthworks that have revealed much about the people who once lived and celebrated here. Talking points include the Cursus, the many and varied barrows, and an ancient avenue connecting ceremonial centres.

More Information: Lucy Evershed, 01980 664780, stonehenge@nationaltrust.org.uk






Saturday, 22 October 2011 2pm - 4:30 pm Adult £3

Saturday, 19 November 2011 2pm - 4:30 pm Adult £3

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-events/w-events-find_event.htm?propertyID=323


Stonehenge,Really wild night walk, 21st October 2011

Really wild night walk

A wild night of family fun with storytelling, stars, games, trails, lantern making and much more! Ideal for ages 7-11, all ages invited to join in.

More Information: Lucy Evershed, 01980 664780, stonehenge@nationaltrust.org.uk

Friday, 21 October 2011 5pm - 7pm Child £3

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-events/w-events-find_event.htm?propertyID=323

Walk with an archaeologist, Stonehenge Landscape,27th October 2011

Walk with an archaeologist

Join Neolithic expert and National Trust archaeologist Dr. Nick Snashall on this half day exploration of the Stonehenge landscape and find out about the latest exciting discoveries.

More Information: Lucy Evershed, 01980 664780, stonehenge@nationaltrust.org.uk

Thursday, 27 October 2011 10am - 1pm All Tickets £15

Stonehenge Landscape, Autumnal tales in the , 12th November 2011

Autumnal tales in the landscape

Join in with our storyteller for a fun family adventure to explore the Stonehenge landscape in late autumn. Hot drinks provided. Ideal for ages 7 and up.

More Information: Lucy Evershed, 01980 664780, stonehenge@nationaltrust.org.uk

Saturday, 12 November 2011 2pm - 3:30 pm Adult £4

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-events/w-events-find_event.htm?regionid=1

Stonehenge Landscape, Beowulf and other monster tales, 10th December 2011

Beowulf and other monster tales

On the day of the lunar eclipse, storyteller Lizzie Bryant shares the action-packed story of Beowulf, an Old English epic tale of monsters and heroes, on a walk amongst trees and ancient barrows. Bring a torch. Hot drinks and light refreshments provided. Ideal for ages 10 and up.



More Information: Lucy Evershed, 01980 664780, stonehenge@nationaltrust.org.uk


Saturday, 10 December 2011 2pm - 4:30 pm Adult £6


http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-events/w-events-find_event.htm?regionid=1

Stonehenge Landscape Midwinter walk, 18th December 2011

Stonehenge Landscape
Midwinter walk
Sunday, 18 Decembe

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Re: Stonehenge Paintings by neolithique02 on Tuesday, 11 October 2011
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More pics and videos here :
http://neolithique02.blog4ever.com/blog/photos-cat-65835-1948646798-visite_de_stonehenge_et_d_avebury__uk_.html
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Re: Stonehenge Paintings by Anonymous on Monday, 22 August 2011
It is my theory that Stonehenge serves as a portal to other planets. After all, the outer circle is built of "doorways." Stonehenge aligns with eight astronomical events--midsummer sunrise, midwinter sunrise, midsummer moonrise, midwinter sunset, midwinter moonset, and midsummer sunset. Perhaps each event activates a portal through which one could walk and be transported to another planet. Maybe Stonehenge was created to be a sort of interplanetery airport.
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Stonehenge Paintings by Runemage on Monday, 27 June 2011
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In case anyone's missed this on our General forum, http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=4638&forum=2
Mike Aitch has spotted this link to paintings of Stonehenge http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/search/tagged/stonehenge


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Re: Stonehenge by Anonymous on Wednesday, 01 June 2011
Great Post, Thought you might like my King Arthur's Summer Solstice at Stonehenge machinima film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wuNE5M01ME Bright Blessings, elf ~
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Help--Stonehenge experts! by Aluta on Monday, 28 February 2011
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I need help in finding distances between stones at Stonehenge. The manufacturer of a not yet released Stonehenge set in fine ceramic, Aedes Ars, from Spain, has asked me for the distances needed for placing the Altar stone, Heel stone, and Slaughter stone. They intend to include the extra stones with the set and with instructions as to placement (which is awesome, IMHO!). Could someone be so kind as to message me with the information? Thanks!

You can see the set as it is so before this addition here.
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Enya Evening falls by coldrum on Saturday, 19 February 2011
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Images of Stonehenge on Enya's Evening Falls video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P8Axizjn2k
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Echoes of the past: The sites and sounds of prehistory by Andy B on Saturday, 02 October 2010
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Did our ancient ancestors build to please the ears as well as the eyes? Trevor Cox pitches into the controversial claims of acoustic archaeologists. And in our web-only article Acoustic archaeology: The secret sounds of StonehengeSpeakerMovie Camera, he explains how the acoustic footprint of the world's most famous prehistoric monument was measured

"The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it... Overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They entered carefully beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors..."

This atmospheric description of a "temple of the winds" comes from the dramatic climax of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The setting is Stonehenge, arguably the most famous prehistoric monument of all. Its imposing ring of standing stones is visible for miles on Salisbury plain in southern England. On the day of the summer solstice its outlying "Heelstone" is exactly in line with rays of the rising sun. A more perfect example of the visual impact of an ancient monument would be hard to find.

Might we be missing here something that both Hardy and our prehistoric ancestors understood? Some archaeologists have begun to think so. They argue that sound effects were an important, perhaps even decisive, factor in how early humans chose and built their dwellings and sacred places. Caves that sing, Mayan temples that chirp, burial mounds that hum: they all add up to evidence that the aural, and not just the visual, determined the building codes of the past. But is that sound science?

Assessing the claims of "acoustic archaeology" rapidly encounters a fundamental problem: sound is ephemeral. Pottery fragments, coins, bones and bits of buildings can survive for centuries, waiting to be analysed, interpreted- and reinterpreted. The sounds of the past, by contrast, have long since died away. Where historical records make mention of acoustic intent in designing structures, the claims are often based on faulty science (see "Sound design?"). Going back into prehistory, we do not even have the luxury of knowing what our ancestors were thinking- or often a clear idea of the original layout and acoustic properties of the structures we are interpreting.

There is, however, a plausible argument that sound must have been important to our ancestors, perhaps more so than it is to us now. "Today we guzzle sounds and make a lot of noise," says UK archaeologist Paul Devereux, an advocate of the claims of acoustic archaeology. "We are visually very sophisticated, but acoustically very primitive." Our ancestors, by contrast, would have been "acoustically more calm and attentive in a much quieter world", he says. Without artificial light, listening intently would have been imperative to ward off night-time predators. In a time before writing, moreover, information was principally communicated orally. It seems reasonable that prehistoric humans would have paid more attention to their acoustic landscapes than we do today. "Senses as a whole were more fused," says Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, UK. "There wasn't the separation of vision from the other senses as there has been over the last few centuries. Nowadays we tend to prioritise vision."

More at
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727741.600-echoes-of-the-past-the-sites-and-sounds-of-prehistory.html

Trevor Cox is professor of acoustic engineering at the University of Salford and president of the UK Institute of Acoustics
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Acoustic archaeology: The secret sounds of Stonehenge by Andy B on Saturday, 02 October 2010
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Just after sunrise on a misty spring morning last year, my fellow acoustician at the University of Salford, Bruno Fazenda, and Rupert Till of the University of Huddersfield, UK, could be found wandering around Stonehenge popping balloons. This was not some bizarre pagan ritual. It was a serious attempt to capture the "impulse response" of the ancient southern English stone circle, and with it perhaps start to determine how Stonehenge might have sounded to our ancestors.

An impulse response characterises all the paths taken by the sound between its source – in this case a popping balloon – and a microphone positioned a few metres away. It is simply a plot of the sound pressure at the microphone in the seconds after the pop. The first, strongest peak on the plot represents the sound that travelled directly from the source to the microphone. Later, smaller peaks indicate the arrival of reflections off the stones. The recording and plot shows the impulse response Bruno and Rupert measured with a microphone positioned at the centre of Stonehenge and a popping balloon at the edge of the circle.

This impulse response represents an acoustic fingerprint of the stones. Back in the lab, it can be used to create a virtual rendition of any piece of music or speech as it would sound within the stone circle. All that is needed is an "anechoic" recording of the raw music or speech – a recording made in a reflection-free environment such as the open air or, better, a specialist anechoic chamber such as we have at Salford. The anechoic recording and the impulse response can then be combined using a mathematical operation called convolution.

We've done with with a recording of drumming: here is the anechoic original, and here it is convolved with the measured impulse response of Stonehenge. The difference is easily appreciable: there is more reverberation or ringing to the drumming sound thanks to the reflections off the stones. What's more, the tonal balance of the sound is entirely different: it has become much deeper, as if the treble has been turned down.
Replica henge

More at
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19276-acoustic-archaeology-the-secret-sounds-of-stonehenge.html
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Stonehenge and Avebury seminar at Devizes, May 2010 by Andy B on Monday, 21 June 2010
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Alex Down writes: For me, Colin Richards’ talk on “Wrapping up Stonehenge: a dermatological approach” was the most interesting, because it took a more conceptual, symbolic approach. He tries to understand if answering the question “what was it like to be Neolithic?” can help explain Stonehenge’s “peculiar architecture”.

He started with an anthropological viewpoint from Polynesia, where the “chants of Creation” help the people relate to their ancestors. Their use of tools (creation) gives birth to “things” so, conceptually, there is a relationship between genealogy and objects. He quoted MPP on Stonehenge: “… the living will have visited Stonehenge at certain times to meet the ancestors, and to communicate directly with them.” People need a relationship with the supernatural to use its power for sustaining life, and this gives rise to what he called an “economy of vitality”: the procreating power of the deity gives rise to more life that needs to be acknowledged and returned through sacrifice. The approach to the awesome power, normally a taboo, requires a graded approach – that is, a ritual – which activates a contextual relationship between living and supernatural and eventually results in a transaction with the deity.

At this point Richards introduced the concept of “wrapping” which, from its common and practical uses, can imply secrecy (and hence disclosure), protection for something (without or within), enclosure (and hence unification), and containment of something animated (and here he gave the example of a tattoo, which I confess I didn’t fully understand.) Richards, guided by his Polynesian experience, asserts the idea of animation is important, particularly in the context of animism: a belief that natural phenomena such as rocks, trees, or thunder have life or divinity. He wonders if, in Neolithic times, all things were considered living, or animate?

[As an aside, this idea is also very similar to the Australian aboriginals' idea of songlines, whereby their ancestry is defined through connections to different parts of their landscape along routes through their land. The hills, rocks and other features are equated to characteristics of the creator-spirit.]

So how does the idea of wrapping influence our view of Stonehenge? Richards believes that the monument was subject to constant wrapping and re-wrapping through modification and re-cutting of the ditches, containing depositions. And what was actually wrapped? The Altar Stone. There is more wrapping through the medium of the bluestones. We’ve already heard from Tim Darvill that the bluestones were in a constant state of flux – and Richards believes that the Y/Z holes too held bluestones in one incarnation of a wrap (Atkinson found rhyolite in some of the holes.)

He also believe that there was an even wider concept of wrapping that involves the whole landscape. It’s apparent from the remaining stones that there were two main types of stone, rhyolite and dolerite, undressed and dressed. I didn’t collect his argument fully, but the gist of it is that bluestone chips of rhyolite are found all round the Stonehenge landscape, especially at the end of the Cursus. His theory is that Stonehenge was originally “wrapped” in a number of bluestone henges, probably of rhyolite, surrounding dressed dolerite trilithons. Perhaps at some stage the wrapping was consolidated by bringing the wraps from outside to within the henge – we can see the remains of dolerite trilithons, with mortice recesses, within the monument today. And if you’re wondering why I’m so enthusiastic about Richards’ thesis, it’s because I suggested something very similar here earlier, proposing that Coneybury henge, Bluestonehenge and the Fargo henge/hengiform could all have been consolidated into one super-site, around the time when the sarsens arrived. It seems as though Colin Richards sees an even wider collection and consolidation.

More at

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Re: Stonehenge--what's it worth? by Aluta on Wednesday, 26 May 2010
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Anyone see this? Apparenty Stonehenge is valued at 51 million pounds, a little less than the Brighton Pavillion! Article in the Telegraph.

(We don't have pound sterling symbols on our keyboards over here.)
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Re: Stonehenge and the 'Spine' on Stone 16's outer face by AngieLake on Monday, 19 April 2010
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A photo of the monument on the Daily Mail website shows this feature quite clearly - (Stone 16 stands at the SW of the sarsen circle, next to its axis, at the lower centre right of photo, near the camera and outside, and in line with, the Great Trilithon).
It isn't always so apparent, but when it is, it is so striking I'm sure it was either the enhancement of a pre-existing shape, or carved from scratch, for a reason - possibly to receive the shadow of a post outside the circle to the SW, on Winter Solstice sunset.
After Summer Solstice sunrise in 2009, Alex Down watched while I dowsed for a possible post, and we took photos of the position where it was located. This also led us to follow a pathway I continued to dowse from that point, that led SW, WSW, W and WNW towards the drove road boundary of the Stonehenge 'Triangle'.
He has plotted this, and it does resemble the Avenue, only moving away in the opposite direction. (A bit like two of the legs of a 'swastika' shape [albeit more rounded], which was once a revered ancient sign before the Nazis added sinister connotations.)
I'm pretty sure it was more than just a track as there were pauses at regular intervals for a short feature of ritual movement, each one at alternate sides of the pathway.

The article with the photo is about the comparison of a recently-discovered ancient stone row on Dartmoor's Cut Hill, with Stonehenge:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266875/Row-ancient-stones-Dartmoor-older-Stonehenge.html
(Have posted link on Cut Hill site page, too.)

Here's one I posted up earlier, illustrating the 'Spine':
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&pid=36079
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Re: Walks in the Stonehenge Landscape March/April 2010 by Anonymous on Thursday, 18 March 2010
A very happy equinox to all fellow henge-heads.
I am willing on the sun for a sunrise of epic proportions on Saturday. Ra says yes !!
There will be telephone connections between Stonehenge and several important sacred sites on Saturday morning at sunrise and joy will be passed between us all.

Have a good one.
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Street View by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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View Larger Map
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Stonehenge's secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges by Andy B on Wednesday, 17 February 2010
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Survey of landscape suggests prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges.

The Monty Python knights who craved a shrubbery were not so far off the historical mark: archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of The Great Stonehenge Hedge.

Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric

banks. The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle.

Their findings are revealed tomorrow in British Archaeology magazine, whose editor, Mike Pitts, an archaeologist and expert on Stonehenge himself, said: "It is utterly surprising that this is the first survey for such a long time, but the results are fascinating. Stonehenge never fails to reveal more surprises."

"The time these two concentric hedges around the monument were planted is a matter of speculation, but it may well have been during the Bronze Age. The reason for planting them is enigmatic."

Pitts wonders if the hedges might have been to shelter the watchers from the power of the stones, as much as to ward off their impious gaze.

If the early Bronze Age date is correct, when the hedges were planted the Stonehenge monument already had the formation now familiar to millions of tourists, after centuries when the small bluestones from west Wales and the gigantic sarsens from the Stonehenge plain were continually rearranged.

The survey also found puzzling evidence that there may once have been a shallow mound among the stones, inside the circle. It was flattened long ago, but is shown in some 18th century watercolours though it was written off as artistic licence by artists trying to make the site look even more picturesque. The archaeologists wonder if the circle originally incorporated a mound which could have been a natural geological feature, or an even earlier monument.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/04/stonehenge-hedge-discovery
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Re: Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2009 is on the 22nd December by Anonymous on Tuesday, 09 February 2010
Radiocarbon dating and analysis of pollen in buried soils, has shown that the environment of lowland Britain changed around 4,250–4,000 BC. The change to a grassland environment from damp, heavy soils and expanses of dense forest was mostly brought about by farmers, probably through the use of slash and burn techniques, although environmental factors may also have made a contribution. Pollen is poorly preserved in the chalky soils found around Avebury, so the best evidence for the state of local environment at any time in the past comes from the study of the deposition of snail shells; different species of snail live in specific habitats so the presence of a certain species indicates what the area was like at a particular point in time.[6] The available evidence suggests that in the early Neolithic, Avebury and the surrounding hills were covered in dense oak woodland, and as the Neolithic progressed, the woodland around Avebury and the nearby monuments receded and was replaced by grassland.
350-001
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Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2009 is on the 22nd December by Andy B on Wednesday, 16 December 2009
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Note the open access event is the 22nd Dec this year as this is the closest sunrise to the actual time of the solstice. See this article for up to date information:

http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146413774
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Stonehenge on Google Streetview by AngieLake on Saturday, 05 December 2009
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Google's amazing Stonehenge 'Streetview' facility came into being a few days ago. View Larger Map
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Stonehenge site to get a £25 million facelift by coldrum on Monday, 12 October 2009
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A £25 million plan to revitalise the world-renowned Stonehenge site - including closing an adjacent main road - will be submitted today.

The English Heritage proposal for a new visitor centre at Airmen's Corner - 1.5 miles west of the current site near Amesbury in Wiltshire - and plans to close the A344 will be handed to Wiltshire Council.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1218201/Stonehenge-site-25-million-facelift.html#ixzz0TBjfyESm
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Druids’ delight at Stonehenge car ban by coldrum on Wednesday, 07 October 2009
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Druids’ delight at Stonehenge car ban

AFTER nearly three decades of disputes over cost and conservation, Stonehenge is to be freed from the traffic-clogged main road slicing through its historic setting.

Under a scheme to be put to planners tomorrow by English Heritage, which manages the 5,000-year-old monument, a 1.3-mile stretch of the A344 will be closed and a new visitors’ centre and car park will be built. The £28m plan is a scaled-down version of a £600m project to build a road tunnel.

Motorists may be saddened by the prospect of losing a free close-up view of a national icon. Conservationists, however, have long been angry about the failure to remove the polluting eyesore from the archeologically rich landscape around Stonehenge. The area has been designated a world heritage site by Unesco, which has expressed concern about its shabby surroundings.

English Heritage, the quango responsible for state-owned historic sites, hopes the simplified plan will be agreed by Wiltshire county council early next year. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport wants the project completed in time to receive visitors for the 2012 Olympics.

Under the scheme, funded by English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Highways Agency and the government, the closed section of the A344 will be grassed over and the visitors’ centre built 1½ miles west of the monument, at a site known as Airman’s Corner. Regular shuttles will take visitors to the monument. Through traffic will be diverted via the A303.

The single-storey centre, in glass and wood, is one of the most contentious parts of the project. English Heritage describes it as “sensitive to its ancient surroundings and having the lightest possible touch on the landscape”, but some critics, having seen mock-ups, have been harsh in their reaction.

Paul Sample, a local councillor and former mayor of Salisbury, has called it “cheap and nasty”, while Peter Alexander-Fitzgerald, a lawyer and member of the Unesco world heritage committee, likened it to “a derelict aircraft hangar”.

At present, most visitors — up to 900,000 a year — come to Stonehenge by car or coach and stop only a few hundred yards away in an unsightly parking area beside the A344. They then walk through an underpass to the monument.

The submission for planning comes as archeologists announced this weekend that they have discovered a mini-Stonehenge, a mile from the main site. The monument has been called Bluehenge after the 27 Welsh blue stones — made of Preseli dotted dolerite — which once formed it. Despite the 5,000-year age of the henge, all that is now left are the holes where the monoliths comprising the circle once stood.

Bluehenge, uncovered over the summer by Sheffield University archeologists, is at one end of the avenue connecting Stonehenge to the River Avon. It is thought it was built about the same time as Stonehenge with stones that would have been dragged 200 miles from the Preseli mountains in Wales. The find is already challenging conventional wisdom about how Stonehenge was built — and what it was used for. The two circles stood together for hundreds of years before Bluehenge was dismantled. Researchers believe its stones were used to enlarge Stonehenge during one of a number of redevelopments.

Professor Tim Darvill, a Stonehenge expert at Bournemouth University, said: “This adds to the richness of the story of Stonehenge. We thought we knew it all, but over the past few years we have discovered that something as familiar as Stonehenge is still a challenge to explore and understand. It wouldn’t surprise me if there weren’t more circles.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6860253.ece
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Re: Bluehenge unearthed by the River Avon by AngieLake on Saturday, 03 October 2009
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The latest news on the 'Bluehenge' found by the River Avon recently:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1217752/Henge-stones-Unearthed-site-monuments-little-sister.html
A friend worked on this dig voluntarily so I'd been looking forward to seeing the results.
Well done for your input Alex!

Btw: See my remark of 29 November 2005 on Meg P, regarding the transport of the dead to S.Henge:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=6501
[under 'Riverside Project']
I wrote to Mike Parker Pearson with that suggestion and he replied favourably.
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Stonehenge visitor centre looks 'cheap and nasty' by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
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Stonehenge visitor centre looks 'cheap and nasty'

Denton Corker Marshall’s designs for a £25 million Stonehenge visitor centre have been compared to an “immigration detention centre”, just weeks before the planning application is due to be submitted

Following local consultation over the summer, client English Heritage is hoping to submit plans to Wiltshire County Council by the end of this month. It aims to meet the government’s target of opening the temporary facility in time for the influx of tourists attracted by the London 2012 Olympics.

But in a sign that the 20-year Stonehenge visitor centre saga is set to continue, councillor Paul Sample, a former mayor of Salisbury, has attacked the scheme as a “cheap and nasty” addition to the World Heritage Site; while Peter Alexander-Fitzgerald, a member of the International Council on Monuments & Sites, claimed the centre resembled “a derelict aircraft hangar”.
A model of the proposed centre.
A model of the proposed centre.

Denton Corker Marshall had previously worked up plans for a £65 million scheme but this was dropped in 2007 on cost grounds by the then architecture minister, Margaret Hodge. She promised a “world class” alternative would be created.

Sample said: “It’s cheap and nasty and isn’t going to do justice to the site. It looks like an immigration detention centre. It’s not something that makes you feel part of something ancient and mystic.

“We should be building something to last. We should have had an international competition.”

Alexander-Fitzgerald commented: “This looks like an IT student’s first attempt at rendered graphics. It’s amateurish and causes one to wonder about the quality of the finished product.

“If you only get the detailed images at the time of the planning application you can’t give a balanced critical opinion on the suitability of the design. From this image that just has to be no.”

An EH spokesman said the visitor centre would “sit delicately on top of the landscape with minimal impact”.


http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3148497&channel=783&c=1&encCode=0000000001a18b02
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Stonehenge: an intimate portrait by Anonymous on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
The online gallery of Bill Bevan's photography work at Stonehenge.

Stonehenge an intimate portrait

Bill is working on a series of exhibitions related to Stonehenge. These include 'an intimate portrait' of the monument which draws the viewer closer and closer to the Stones, and a multimedia visual poem which approaches the place of Stonehenge in the modern cultural landscape and explores the people associated with the monument. The online exhibition comprises images for an intimate portrait and a small number of elemnts of the visual poem. The work is the result of a personal journey of discovery made at the Stones during one week in September 2007. i hope you enjoy. Bill 2009.
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Gateway to the infinite by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Gateway to the infinite

Nowhere evokes Britain's long-gone past so powerfully as Stonehenge. But was this really a place of sacrifice? Jonathan Jones explores.

There is a hollow in the fields to the north of Stonehenge where time stops. As sheep trot away from the intruder, their baas are barely interrupted by the distant rumble of traffic. On the crest of the slope that rises before you, the stones are black against the bright sky. You can't see people around them from this angle. Their setting is such that, behind them, the earth seems to vanish. Stonehenge: gateway to the infinite.

It is no accident that such a perfect view of Stonehenge rewards the walker at this spot. Where you're standing is in fact a turning point on an ancient route, formally marked out by earth banks, that seems to have been the sacred approach to the standing stone circle on Salisbury Plain. It has been called the Avenue since it was first noticed by 18th-century antiquarians. In spring it's almost impossible to see the lines of the Avenue in the new-grown green, but in a winter frost, the course of the ancient earthwork is far more visible.

At this point at the bottom of the prominence known as King Barrow Ridge, pilgrims in the Neolithic age would have turned to face Stonehenge and their hearts might have filled with awe at the final approach towards the most ambitious architectural structure in the northern Europe of their day. Despite all the modern mismanagement of Stonehenge - the roads, the car park, the shabby visitor centre far too close to the ruins - just by going for a walk near the ruins you can still experience something of this ancient wonder.

A walk in the vicinity of Stonehenge, like the 11km circuit you'll find overleaf, is not just a nice stroll in the country with a stone circle as backdrop. It's the best way to appreciate the mystery of Britain's greatest monument. By walking these largely National Trust-managed fields, studded with enigmatic barrows - earthen mounds containing tombs - of various shapes and sizes, arranged in eerie, crop circle-like patterns, you get a deeper and more evocative glimpse of the world that created Stonehenge than you do by a quick visit to the megalithic structure.

Companions ancient and modern can illuminate your walk. William Stukeley was an 18th-century visionary - or nutcase, depending on your point of view - who first created the modern myth that Stonehenge is a temple of the druids where human sacrifice was performed. In reality, it was built in different stages between about 3000BC and 1600BC. The druids emerged at least a thousand years after its latest construction phase. Stonehenge is the creation of remote and elusive people of the late stone age and the bronze age. They left no literary records, so everything that is known of Stonehenge is known through archaeology, the study of physical remains in their context. By walking near Stonehenge you can play at being an archaeologist for a day (but don't take that too literally ... no shovels please).

Eccentric as he was, Stukeley was a great observer of the British landscape. He marked out the course of the barely visible Avenue and, to its north and west, noticed an incredibly long, narrow earthwork arena named the Cursus. Walk along the low, fragmentary traces of this structure and you encounter some of the weird barrows that constellate around Stonehenge. The Cursus barrows are circular mounds arranged in a line parallel to the earthwork. It's quite eerie standing beside them in the long grass. Follow the Cursus still further, to its western end, and you find a solitary, regal-seeming barrow where it's easy to imagine a powerful chief lies interred.

More than two centuries on from Stukeley's haunting engravings of this landscape, it is among the barrows and earthworks of these fields that many modern archaeologists seek the meaning of Stonehenge, and as you walk the fields it becomes powerfully apparent that ancien

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British government plans $44-million makeover for Stonehenge by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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The British government has announced plans for major improvements at Stonehenge to be completed ahead of the 2012 Olympics, when hordes of visitors are expected.

The hotly debated plans call for one of the roads near the prehistoric monument to be closed and grassed over to make the site more tranquil and to link the mysterious stone circle to the rest of the site.

In addition, the antiquated visitor’s centre right next to the site will be shut down and replaced by a modern reception centre about 2.5 kilometres from the stones. Visitors will be able to use the centre and then take a bus to the site, officials said.

The plan is expected to cost about 25 million pounds ($44.3 million), officials said.

Stonehenge is a World Heritage Site that is one of the most visited monuments in Britain.

http://www.dcnonl.com/article/id33754

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Historic Stonehenge, Amesbury, Wiltshire: Walk by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Historic Stonehenge, Amesbury, Wiltshire: Walk ID 4755

Walk in a nutshell
This is a walk steeped in history that takes you through sweeping National Trust-protected downland, past a number of exceptional prehistoric sites and alongside the world-famous Stonehenge.
Walk ID 4755

1. Classification Moderate
2. Distance 11.3km (7 miles)
3. Typical duration 3 hours 30 minutes
4. Height gain 146m
5. Starting point Parish church of St Mary and St Melor, Amesbury
6. OS grid reference SU152413 (Explorer map 130)

Why it's special
The walk starts in the town of Amesbury, said to be where Arthur's queen Guinevere ended her days, and leads you through picturesque countryside littered with grassy ridges and mounds that are actually ancient burial chambers and mysterious earthworks. You'll pass through the King Barrows, a collection of round and long burial mounds situated on a prominent ridge and divided into two groups by what's known as the Stonehenge Avenue. By step 6 of the walk you'll be in the centre of the Cursus, a massive earthwork 3km long and 100m wide that's aligned with the equinox sunrise and is several hundred years older than the earliest phase of Stonehenge. Towards the end of the route you'll pass the Normanton Down Barrows, a cemetery of round burial mounds dating from 2600BC to 1600BC with a clear line of site to Stonehenge about a kilometre away.

Keep your eyes peeled for
The great bustard, extinct in the British Isles since 1832 and reintroduced to Salisbury Plain in 2004. The males have a wingspan of 2.5 metres.

But bear in mind
Access into the stone circle at Stonehenge is only possible if you book and pay in advance, and happens outside normal visiting hours.

Recover afterwards
Spitting distance from the end of the walk is the Antrobus Arms hotel, where you can grab a doorstop sandwich in the bar or fill up at the Sunday carvery.

If it's tipping down
Head 30km west to Longleat Safari Park. The lions and tigers may be soaking wet but you'll be nice and dry in the car. Or give up on the outside all together and explore the nooks and crannies of the house.
longleat.co.uk
How to get there

By car
Amesbury is on the A345, 8km north of Salisbury. There is a small public car park near the parish church.

By public transport
Buses run to Amesbury from Salisbury train station and take about 15 minutes.

1. With the parish church of St Mary and St Melor on the right, walk towards the bridge over the river Avon, then on a little further.

2. Round a bend, go along Stonehenge Road on a pavement passing Park Farm, then beside a dual carriageway (still on a pavement) for a short distance. Pass the thatched cottages and cross the road with care.

3. Take a footpath through a walkers' gate into a National Trust area where the New King Barrows stand on the right.

4. Turn left on a track signed to Cursus and Larkhill and walk beside a wooded area to a corner.

5. Turn left and take the stile ahead on a National Trust-permitted path to follow a fenceline in pastures. Cross a stile, then another, before bearing slightly left to head for a stile in the distance.

6. Climb over it and turn left, now at the centre of the Stonehenge Cursus. Walk on to pass the car park of Stonehenge, cross the road to continue on a track, Stonehenge just over to the left and the Normanton Barrows in view ahead.

7. Cross the road and take the track directly in front of you, walk along it for a short way and turn left at a signpost marked Amesbury across the field (at this point you are walking parallel with the A303). Cross this field to the next boundary and turn right.

8. Turn right on to a green track on a steady incline.

9. Turn left on a permissive path. Bear left from a marker

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Sacred stones: unravelling Stonehenge by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Stonehenge is one of the world's best known monuments. But why it was built remains a riddle – one that the first archaeological dig in 40 years sought to solve.

The druids arrived around 4 pm. Under a warm afternoon Sun, the group of eight walked slowly, to the beat of a single drum, snaking from the visitor's entrance toward the looming, majestic stone monument.

With the pounding of the drum growing louder, the retinue approached the outer circle of massive stone trilithon 'arches' – each made up of two huge pillars capped by a stone lintel – and passed through to the inner circle.

They were greeted by Timothy Darvill, professor of archaeology at Bournemouth University, and Geoffrey Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

For two weeks, the pair had been leading the first excavation in 44 years of the inner circle of Stonehenge – the best-known and most mysterious megalithic monument in the world. Now it was time to refill the pit they had dug. The Druids had come to offer their blessings, as they had done 14 days earlier before the first shovel went into the ground.

"At the beginning we warned the spirits of the land that this would be happening and not to feel invaded," said one of their number who gave his name only as Frank. "Now we're offering a big thank-you to the ancestors who we asked to give up knowledge to our generation."

The Druids tossed seven grains of wheat into the pit, one for each continent, and offered a prayer to provide food for the world's hungry. The gesture seemed fitting, given the nature of the excavation; while other experts have speculated that Stonehenge was a prehistoric observatory or a royal burial ground, Darvill and Wainwright are intent on proving it was primarily a sacred place of healing, where the sick came to be cured and the injured and infirm restored.

Darvill and Wainwright's theory rests on bluestones – unexceptional igneous rocks, such as dolerite and rhyolite – so called because they take on a bluish hue when wet or cut. Over the centuries, legends have endowed these stones with mystical properties. The British poet Layamon, inspired by the folkloric accounts of 12th-century cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote in 1215: The stones are great; And magic power they have; Men that are sick; Fare to that stone; And they wash that stone; And with that water bathe away their sickness.

We now know that Stonehenge was in the making for at least 400 years. The first phase, built around 3000 BC, was a simple circular earthwork enclosure similar to many 'henges' (sacred enclosures typically comprising a circular bank and a ditch) found throughout the British Isles. Around 2800 BC, timber posts were erected within the enclosure. Again, such posts are not unusual – Woodhenge, for example, which once consisted of tall posts arranged in a series of six concentric oval rings, lies only a few kilometres to the east.

Archaeologists have long believed that Stonehenge began to take on its modern form two centuries later, when large stones were brought to the site in the third and final stage of its construction. The first to be put in place were the 80 or so bluestones, which were arranged in a double circle with an entrance facing northeast. "Their arrival is when Stonehenge was transformed from a quite ordinary and typical monument into something unusual," says Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology, a not-for-profit organisation based in Salisbury.

The importance of the bluestones is underscored by the immense effort involved in moving them a long distance – some were as long as three metres and weighed four tonnes. Geological studies in the 1920s determined that they came from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales, 225 km from Stonehenge. Some geologists have argued that glaciers moved the stones, but most experts now believe that humans undertook the momentous task.

But how? Wainwright

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Stonehenge summer solstice will not be like G20, police pledge by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Stonehenge officers try to quell 'zero tolerance' fears
Sceptics say use of spy drones will ruin event


Police today tried to allay growing concern that a "zero tolerance" approach during the summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge could lead to serious trouble.

Officers maintained they would police the ancient site in a fair and sensitive manner and played down comparisons to the tense build-up to last month's G20 protests and to notorious clashes of the past such as the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, when police stopped a convoy of new age travellers who were hoping to get near the henge for the solstice.

At a meeting today between police, English Heritage, druids and others who attend the event, fears were expressed that trouble could be provoked if the police at the site in Wiltshire clamped down heavily on offences such as possession of cannabis and being drunk and disorderly.

There were also worries that the new police tactics, which include using an unmanned drone that will fly above the stones, and the reintroduction of police horses, could spoil one of the great English celebrations.

At the meeting in Salisbury, Chief Inspector Jon Tapper, of Wiltshire police, admitted that "tactics and methods" were changing. But he promised that policing of the solstice would be very different from the operation in London last month at the G20 protests.

Tapper said: "We are not looking for confrontation."

He said that the solstice would be policed by Wiltshire officers who would not attempt to hide their badges to avoid identification, as happened at the G20 demonstrations. The drone would be used to help make sure the 30,000 people who were expected to attend the celebrations were safe; and there would be only three police horses, also there for ­"public safety" reasons rather than any crowd control.

Asked whether it was "zero tolerance" policing, Tapper said officers would deal with people committing crimes or acting in an antisocial way at the solstice in the same way they would if offenders were causing trouble in Salisbury city centre on a Saturday night.

Not all were impressed. Arthur ­Pendragon, a prominent member of the druidic community, said: "The drone will be seen as a spy in the sky and the perception is that horses are used for crowd control."

Pendragon said he had heard that the chief constable, Brian Moore, wanted to see more arrests at the event. Tapper said he would prefer there to be no arrests at all because everyone had behaved well.

But Pendragon said: "You are not policing Salisbury, you are policing Stonehenge for the summer solstice."

He said many members of the pagan community had told him they were staying away from the solstice event because they were afraid there would be trouble.

However, others were reassured. Frank ­Somers said he had been horrified when he had looked at old clips of the Battle of the Beanfield. But he was feeling calmer after hearing what Tapper had said. He backed the police's stated aim of clamping down on antisocial behaviour, but added: ­"Stonehenge isn't the centre of Salisbury. It's even more special."

After the meeting, Peter Carson, head of Stonehenge for English Heritage, said the gathering showed that all those interested in the monument could work together. But there remained concern from some that the new tactics could lead to trouble and spoil the feel of the event.

Brian Viziondanz, for the group Infinite Possibility, which supports peaceful protest, said he took the police reassurances with a pinch of salt and added: "There's a shroud coming down on our freedom. There is more and more control over our lives. It's a monster coming into our society."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/07/stonehenge-police-g20-jo

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Re: Stonehenge centre gets go-ahead by Anonymous on Tuesday, 02 June 2009
Good Time Team last night. Seemed to give some good answers. Particularly interesting that the sarsens were finished a few hundred yards from the monument and that the chippings were left in situ. To me, this implies an effort to remember the work that had gone into shaping and raising of the stones. Also nice to confirm that there were about 1000 'houses' within Durrington. No mention of astronomical alignments apart from the obvious Solstice sunrises and sunsets. There are certainly many alignments at Stonehenge and it would have been nice to hear their views on them in relation to their recent digs.

Keep up the good work Tony and the Time Team
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Stonehenge centre gets go-ahead by Andy B on Thursday, 14 May 2009
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A £25m plan to revitalise the world-renowned Stonehenge in Wiltshire, including diverting a nearby road, has been announced by the government.

Also included in the plan from the Stonehenge Programme Board are proposals for a new visitor centre at nearby Airman's Corner.

The news means work can start on design, seeking planning permission and raising cash to deliver the project.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the project in the Commons.

Funding will be provided through a range of private and public sources, including English Heritage, Heritage Lottery Fund and the Highways Agency


Our vision for Stonehenge has always been a simple one: to restore a sense of dignity and wonder to its setting
English Heritage

The chosen site at Airman's Corner is about one-and-a-half miles (2.4km) west from the current visitor centre, at the edge of the World Heritage Site.

The announcement is still subject to a detailed business case, planning permission and funding.

A spokesman for English Heritage said its vision for Stonehenge has always been a simple one: to restore a sense of dignity and wonder to its setting, and provide visitors with a really high quality experience.

Stonehenge centre plans welcomed

"I believe the plans announced today will do this, and significantly improve what we have there at present."

In 2000, two projects were planned - to remove roads from around Stonehenge by placing the nearby A303 in a tunnel, and to relocate visitor facilities to a new centre, away from the stones.

But in 2007, the government announced it would not continue with a published scheme for an A303 tunnel in view of the estimated cost of around £500m.

The project board was re-convened and in December 2008, and following public consultation on the future of Stonehenge, two options for the location of a new visitor centre were proposed - Fargo Plantation and Airman's Corner.

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8047968.stm
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Re: Touching the stones. Also, replicas elsewhere. by Aluta on Friday, 08 May 2009
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Thanks, anonymous, for posting your post that leads to Clonehenge!
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Touching the stones. Also, replicas elsewhere. by Anonymous on Friday, 08 May 2009
There are times when it is permitted to go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, although English Heritage doesn't publicise this as much as they should:
Can you touch the stones at Stonehenge?

There are also various replica Stonehenges around the world:
Where can I visit a replica of Stonehenge?
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Re: Stonehenge tunnel & visitors centre update. by Anonymous on Tuesday, 14 April 2009
This is a great website I got all the info I needed.
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Re: Stonehenge tunnel & visitors centre update. by Anonymous on Friday, 13 March 2009
See you all at the equinox sunrise next Friday. camp fire music session thursday night up on Ridgeway - bring your instruments.

Happy equinox one and all
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Stonehenge tunnel & visitors centre update. by bat400 on Friday, 13 March 2009
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Submitted by graemefield:

Mention the "Stonehenge saga" and most people think of decades of frustrating delay, indecision and inactivity. But we're inclined to take a more cheerful view. It looks possible that an announcement is imminent that will mark an important stage - not the end of the discussions but an end, at least, to the worst of the threats to the monument.

There have been two. For a long time the "official" push was for a "short tunnel" involving building two miles of new roadway over the World Heritage Area in defiance of the wishes of UNESCO and practically every archaeological and heritage body. So much for public consultation! Thankfully, finance came to the monument's aid and the plan was abandoned.

Relief was short lived. Another "official threat" speedily replaced it. Following a public consultation on where the new Visitors Centre should be built it became clear that the "official" view was that it should be built at Fargo Plantation - not only in the middle of the World Heritage Area but close to the stones and terribly intrusive - once again in defiance of the wishes of UNESCO and practically every archaeological and heritage body. So much for public consultation - again!

Very fortunately, it seems that the National Trust has stuck its toes in and thanks to them it may now be built further away, somewhere near Airman's Cross.



For more, see this link.
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    Re: Stonehenge tunnel & visitors centre update. by AngieLake on Friday, 13 March 2009
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    Durrington WELLS ?!! Steve Connor from the Independent obviously hadn't done his homework properly!
    ...and this item is from a newspaper published in Sept 2008.
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    Angie Lake Comment by bat400 on Saturday, 14 March 2009
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    Can you help me here? I don't see any reference to "Durrington WELLS" or Steve Connor. The submitted article seems to be a January reprint from Heritage Action, discussing the plans as they stood following the end of the public comment period last year. Is the link taking you somewhere other than "Heritage Action"?
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    Re: Angie Lake Comment by AngieLake on Sunday, 15 March 2009
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    Sorry bat400, I added the comment to the wrong item! Going senile!!
    Should have been with the previous one you posted.
    'The Big Question: What do new discoveries tell us, etc...'
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The Big Question:What do new discoveries tell us about Stonehenge by bat400 on Friday, 13 March 2009
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Originally submitted by coldrum: a summary of recently proposed theories and discovered facts about Stonehenge.

Why are we asking this now?

Archaeologists have recently excavated a small area within Britain's most famous Stone Age site and found evidence to suggest that Stonehenge was once a centre of healing, where people would come from far and wide in the hope of being cured of their ills. The scientists have also been able to date the construction of the first stone circle to between 2600BC and 2400BC. This would mean that the ring's original bluestones, carried to the site on Salisbury Plain from a quarry in South Wales, were put up about 300 years later than previously thought.


What is the evidence that Stonehenge was a healing centre?

It is not very straightforward, but then again nothing ever is with this mysterious ancient monument. The two archaeologists, Professor Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright, first of all noted the abnormal number of corpses found in tombs nearby Stonehenge that display signs of serious physical injury or disease.

The two archaeologists also found that about three times as many stone chipping were taken from the bluestones compared to the Sarsen stones. "It could be that people were flaking off pieces of bluestones, in order to create little bit to take away... as lucky amulets," Prof Wainwright said.


Are there any other speculations about Stonehenge?

Lots, but we won't go into the more outlandish ones. What is obvious is that Stonehenge was built to celebrate or mark the summer and winter solstices. The alignment of the stones are designed to mark the two solstices, and hence the points at which summer and winter reach their mid-points. Some scholars have gone further to suggest that Stonehenge was a far more sophisticated astronomical instrument that could, for instance, be used to predict lunar eclipse. They believe that the inner "horseshoe" of 19 bluestones at the centre of the circle acted as a long-term calendar to calculate when the next lunar eclipse would occur.

Another theory is that Stonehenge was an elaborate burial site for important people. Professor Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at Sheffield University, believes that the stone structure was the "domain of the dead", whereas the nearby "wooden henge" structure at Durrington Wells a couple of miles away was the "domain of the living".


So was there more than one ancient structure in the vicinity?

Yes. In fact the stone circles came after an even earlier wooden structure which of course has not survived. But in addition to this, the Durrington Wells site nearby also had a wooden henge, a circular structure that also marked the solstices. Durrington Wells was also the site of a large, 300-house seasonal village, according to Prof Parker Pearson.

This would have made it one of the biggest settlement in north-west Europe at that time. No human burials have been found at Durrington Wells, although 29 cremation burials have been found at Stonehenge during excavations that took place in the 1920s. Some archaeologists believe there may have been 240 people buried at Stonehenge during prehistoric times and that they may be the descendents of a single family who over several generations were awarded the privilege of having their remains interred at the sacred site.

"I don't think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge," Prof Parker Pearson said. "It was clearly a special place at that time. One has to assume that anyone buried there had some good credentials. … Archaeologists have long speculated about whether Stonehenge was put up by prehistoric chiefs, perhaps even ancient royalty."


What else is known about the site?

It was almost certainly a gathering place for many years for people from all over southern Britain and possibly Europe. Jane Evans of the British Geological Survey has found evidence for instance that people brought thei

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Acoustics unlock clues to Stonehenge, lecturer says by coldrum on Friday, 30 January 2009
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Acoustics unlock clues to Stonehenge, lecturer says

A LECTURER from Huddersfield says he is slowly unravelling the truth behind Stonehenge by using an innovative approach.

Dr Rupert Till, an expert in music technology and acoustics, is using cutting-edge acoustic technology to try to decode the secrets of the stones and expose aspects of Neolithic culture previously only guessed at.

His research shows certain sounds would have been more easily produced and encouraged, which could give an insight into what kind of activities took place at the site.

Dr Till said: “There are two main theories about what Stonehenge was used for – one is that it was a healing space, the other that it was a place of the dead, both implying ritual activity.

“Our research shows that there are particular spots in the site that produce unusual particular acoustic effects, intimating that perhaps a priest or a shaman may have stood there, leading the ritual.”

He also said the study may tie the two main competing theories together as rhythms were discovered that point to a place of healing and of dead.

“Archaeologists have been able to gather evidence about the tools that were used and the way the stone was shaped, but everything is usually based on visual aspects of the site, and it’s important to look at other elements too,” he said.

“Stonehenge is unique now, but at the time there would not have been anything quite like it in Europe, and it had a very unusual sound.

“By simulating this sound we can hope to understand more about English culture from 5000 years ago, and perhaps better understand both our ancestors and our culture today.”

http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/headlines/3991539.Acoustics_unlock_clues_to_Stonehenge__lecturer_says/
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New row hits Stonehenge by coldrum on Friday, 30 January 2009
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New row hits Stonehenge

Heritage bodies' clash over site of visitor centre threatens to delay project beyond 2012

A last-gasp attempt to build a "world-class visitor centre at Stonehenge in time for the 2012 Olympics is in tatters because of a major row between the country's two leading heritage organisations over its location.

After spending £38 million of public money over almost 20 years on aborted schemes, including most recently one by Denton Corker Marshall, then architecture minister Margaret Hodge promised last December to have a £20 million temporary centre ready for the influx of tourists during the 2012 games.

But with little more than six months remaining before a planning application needs to be submitted, the project is in deadlock after the National Trust and English Heritage clashed over which site it should be built on.

A major announcement was expected from Hodge's successor Barbara Follett last week, but was postponed until January because several stakeholders, includingthe National Trust objected to the centre being built at the archaeologically significant Fargo Plantation.

The Fargo proposal is also controversial because it is in the world heritage site. Objectors want the centre further from the stones.

Local MP Robert Key, who with EH and the Department for Culture Media & Sport backs the Fargo site, said: "I met Barbara Follett last Wednesday. She had hoped to announce a decision [last week], but the National Trust would not agree to the proposals.

She is now banging heads together.

"This [the Fargo site] is the only game in town. If we want to make progress, it's the only option."

“The project is in deadlock after English Heritage and the National Trust clashed over which site should be chosen”

The National Trust, which owns much of the land around Stonehenge, would not comment on its objections to the Fargo site, but the Council for British Archaeology described it as "the least acceptable" option.

Director Mike Heyworth told BD: "There's a conspiracy to make the National Trust look isolated - It’s nonsense. Every archaeology body except EH opposes Fargo.”

One expert in heritage law has even claimed EH’s preferred site could breach international law.

Peter Alexander-Fitzgerald, a member of the International Council on Monuments & Sites (Icomos) world heritage committee, said: “Constructing the centre within the world heritage site is contrary to international law. The agreement the government entered into was that it would not encourage development within it.”

An EH spokeswoman said: “There are differences, but they’re not insurmountable. We’re aware of the tight deadline, and hope to come to an agreement in the new year.”

A DCMS spokesman strongly denied that development within the site was contrary to international law, adding that ministers would meet next month to decide on the “next steps”.

As BD revealed earlier this month, practices including Denton Corker Marshall, Edward Cullinan, White Design, Make and Bennetts Associates, have been shortlisted for the visitor centre.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3130343&c=1
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Stonehenge Partiers Came From Afar, Cattle Teeth Show by coldrum on Friday, 23 January 2009
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Prehistoric cattle remains found close to Stonehenge suggest that partying pilgrims brought the animals from afar, scientists report.

The remains support a theory that the megalithic monument near Salisbury, in southern England, drew ancient peoples from distant regions to celebrate important feast ceremonies. And the feasts, it seems, were movable.



Cattle slaughtered during ritual festivities at the site may have come from as far away as Wales, Jane Evans of the United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council announced this week at the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool.

The discovery is based on 4,500-year-old cattle teeth and bones recently unearthed at a late Stone Age village at Durrington Walls (learn more), less than two miles (three kilometers) from the famous stone circle.

"We are seeing physical evidence of the movement of populations into the [Stonehenge] area for the feasting," said Evans, a member of the research team.



Probably Wales

Researchers analyzed isotopes, or different varieties, of atoms of the chemical element strontium that was preserved in the animals' tooth enamel. These atoms provide a chemical insight into the geology of the region where the animal lived.

The findings indicate all but one of the cattle studied were raised beyond the chalky, limestone-rich lands that surround Stonehenge and define much of southern England, Evans said.

And teeth samples from two cattle suggest they came from outside England altogether.

"These animals were grazing on soils that developed on relatively old rocks," Evans said, adding that the nearest locations where such rocks are found are Wales and Scotland.

Wales is the likelier of the two, Evans said, because it is closer to Stonehenge and has other archaeological connections. For instance, the Stonehenge monument includes bluestones that were transported from southwest Wales.

The new findings, which have yet to be published, are based on the work of Sarah Viner, a graduate student who was working under the supervision of animal archaeologist Umberto Albarella at Britain's University of Sheffield.


The new chemical analysis wasn't precise enough to pinpoint the prehistoric cattle's exact origins, but the results prove that people were taking their livestock to Stonehenge from elsewhere in Britain, Albarella said.

"People were gathering from quite a large region," he said.

Furthermore, cattle bones excavated at the ancient settlement revealed no evidence of newborn calves. "If you have a site where animals were actually reared, you will almost certainly find a number of newborn casualties, but we are not finding that at all," Albarella said.

"So I'm pretty confident this is a consumer site," he added. "It is a site with a special purpose—where people are gathering, probably for feasting and eating an awful lot of meat."

Albarella is one of a large team of experts working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a continuing archaeological investigation led by Mike Parker Pearson, also from the University of Sheffield.

Parker Pearson, who has received funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, proposes that Stonehenge and Durrington Walls were intimately connected. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

The archaeologist said the two sites had corresponding standing circles—one of stone, and one of timber—that symbolized the realms of the living and the dead to ancestor-worshipping ancient Britons.

(Related story: "Stonehenge Was Cemetery First and Foremost, Study Says" [May 29, 2008])

Pagan Partying

The hundreds of prehistoric dwellings recently discovered at Durrington are thought to represent a seasonal village that a

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Ghastly English Heritage book to be pulped. by TheCaptain on Tuesday, 14 October 2008
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The Government body responsible for maintaining the nation's historic monuments has been forced to withdraw a children's guide to Stonehenge because it was littered with factual errors. The book, called The Ghastly Book Of Stonehenge, has become a laughing stock among archaeologists because of its many blunders. English Heritage, which receives £129million a year in Government funding, has recalled 4,500 copies of the £3 book and now plans to pulp them.

For the rest of this story, please see here.
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    Re: Ghastly English Heritage book to be pulped. by Anonymous on Tuesday, 14 October 2008
    It seems that most Daily Mail readers are BNP supporters, judging from the comments there.
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    Re: Ghastly English Heritage book to be pulped. by TheCaptain on Tuesday, 14 October 2008
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    have to admit, I never looked at the comments. They are a bit, how shall we say, blinkered, aren't they !
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Update on Stonehenge Environs Project by TheCaptain on Tuesday, 07 October 2008
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From hailstones.

Visited 10th September, just a few days before the end of excavations for this year. A visitors tent had been set up with finds from the area. The chalk artifacts were very interesting with their geometric patterns. These were found in stratigraphic sequence.

Pat Shelley tour guide for Stonehenge Riverside Project greeted us and gave us all the latest information on excavations. We then set out to visit all the trenches in the environs. Anomalies had been found with Geophys at the end of the Cursus but nothing was found. Then on to Longbarrow (Amesbury 42) across the road. Large piece of antler found at bottom of ditch. Barrow made in one go not two as previously thought. Returned to SH and visited the Palisade excavations. Late BA/Early IA.

Then on to the most exciting dig at West Amesbury in garden/field at back of Antrobus House by the River Avon. Paleolithic and large amount of Mesolithic artefacts found here. Mike Parker Pearson was supervising here and a ring ditch feature/barrow? may have contained a stone or wooden marker. There was also cobbled flint which has never been seen by archaeologists before! Consent for more excavation is needed from SM. A report may be out next year in February or March.
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British Minister critical of Stonehenge facilities by coldrum on Thursday, 11 September 2008
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British Minister critical of Stonehenge facilities

Facilities at Stonehenge have come under fire from Margaret Hodge,
Britain's tourism minister. She criticised hotels across the country
saying they are of 'worrying' quality and she said in particular the
facilities at Stonehenge were not befitting of a World Heritage Site.
She said the Department of Culture, Media and Sport was making efforts
to improve facilities at Stonehenge, which is the subject of a long-
running wrangle about how best to develop the site for visitors.
Last December the Tories warned Stonehenge could lose its status as a
World Heritage Site if the problem of what to do about the busy A303,
which runs parallel to the site, were not solved.
The comments come as a public consultation on the future of the
site continues and a man who has legally changed his name to King
Arthur keeps up his one man fight for an improvement to visitor
facilities at the site. English Heritage wants to know what people
across Wiltshire want to see happen at the protected site – plans
floated at the moment include the closure of the A344, which runs just
metres from the stones. A report shaped by public comments on the
proposals will go to Government by November and a reply will be
published by the end of the year.



http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/3648667.Minister_critical_of_henge_facilities/
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Re: 5,000-year-old Fence discovered at Stonehenge by AngieLake on Sunday, 31 August 2008
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From The Mailonline website:

Revealed: The 5,000-year-old, 20ft-high fence which hid Stonehenge from its nosy Stone Age neighbours

By Alun Rees
Last updated at 10:19 PM on 30th August 2008

Tourists who complain about the fence put up around Stonehenge in the Seventies should spare a thought for their Neolithic ancestors... they couldn’t even see the site because of a huge wooden barrier.

Archaeologists have found traces of the 20ft-high timber fence that snaked almost two miles across Salisbury Plain and hid sacred ceremonies from unworthy locals more than 5,000 years ago.

Now trenches have been dug along the line researchers believe the palisade took as it stretched from the east of the ancient stone circle, past the Heel Stone, to the west before heading south.


Exposed: Stonehenge was once shielded from sight by a two-mile-long fence which kept the site private from nosy neighbours

And experts believe that the time and energy taken to construct such a barrier, which has no other practical or defensive use, meant that it was designed to hide religious ceremonies from prying eyes.

Dr Josh Pollard, of Bristol University, who is co-director of the dig, said: ‘The construction must have taken a lot of manpower.

‘The palisade is an open structure which would not have been defensive and was too high to be practical for controlling livestock.

‘It certainly wasn’t for hunting herded animals and so, like everything else in this ceremonial landscape, we have to believe it must have had a religious significance.

‘The most plausible explanation is that it was built at huge cost to the community to screen the environs of Stonehenge from view. Basically, we think it was to keep the lower classes from seeing what exactly their rulers and the priestly class were doing.

‘Perhaps we should call Michael Eavis in from the Glastonbury Festival as a consultant because the huge metal fence erected there every year is the nearest modern equivalent.’

Enlarge Holy site: One theory suggests the barrier kept the 'lower classes' from seeing activities of the priestly class

Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology Magazine and author of the book Hengeworld, said: ‘This is a fantastic insight into what the landscape would have looked like. This huge wooden palisade would have snaked across the landscape, blotting out views to Stonehenge from one side. The other side was the ceremonial route to the Henge from the River Avon and would have been shielded by the contours.

‘The palisade would have heightened the mystery of whatever ceremonies were performed and it would have endowed those who were privy to those secrets with more power and prestige. In modern terms, you had to be invited or have a ticket to get in.

‘We hope to learn more about the structure, which we lose track of on the other side of the main A303 trunk road because any remains were obliterated by the construction of a wartime airfield.’

Meanwhile, another team of scientists led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University is working on a collection of partly cremated bones found at Stonehenge in the Thirties by amateur archaeologists.


Midsummer worship: Thousands still gather to see sunrise over Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice


The task has been made very difficult because the remains have been put in two sacks and reburied in one spot.

Mr Pitts said: ‘They were the remains of 50 burials at Stonehenge which were reburied in one hole in a complete mix-up. We think they were the bones of 50 kings and queens and may represent burials over a period of 1,000 years. Professor Parker Pearson has speculated that we may be looking at a dynasty at Stonehenge.

‘Retrieving and sorting this out will make a jigs

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    Re: Salisbury Plain Baseball Park Fence by Anonymous on Sunday, 31 August 2008
    Online Mail

    The ancient Salisbury Plain Baseball Field had a fence. Everybody knew that. But only 20ft (6m) high, now that is news. "The Green Monster" left field wall (often known simply as "The Monster" or to natives of New England as "The Monstah") at Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox, is over 37ft (11m) tall. So the news is that a Home Run over 20ft (6m) ancient Salisbury Plain Baseball Park (home to the Stonehenge Yankees / Woodhenge Sox) left field wall was easier than a Slammer over "The Monster"!

    Online Telegraph

    Truth, 'hidden from lower classes'.
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Consultation for public to have a say in future of Stonehenge by Andy B on Thursday, 10 July 2008
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The public can have their say on the future of Stonehenge, in a three-month consultation to improve the site.

People can give feedback on road proposals near Stonehenge and the location of new visitor facilities.

English Heritage Corporate Communications spokesperson Renee Fok said people needed to have a say because of global interest in the site. Ms Fok said the consultation was crucial in preparing the site for the 2012 Olympic Games.

English Heritage expects people visiting England for the Olympics in London will also visit other well-known tourist sites, such as Stonehenge.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/7482995.stm
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Stonehenge stamps through the years by Andy B on Wednesday, 11 June 2008
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Three Stonehenge stamps at

http://worldheritage.heindorffhus.dk/frame-EnglandStonehenge.htm
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Is Stonehenge Roman? by coldrum on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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Is Stonehenge Roman?

After a gap of some forty four years, Stonehenge is once again being excavated. Admittedly, this time it is only a very small hole, and is only being dug for a fortnight, but it is a very important hole, and on April the 9th, we were invited down to Stonehenge to inspect it. It was a wonderful trip, not least because the weather was perfect. After the heavy snow fall at the weekend the sun decided to shine and since we were allowed inside the circle, I took the opportunity to take hundreds of photographs.

The excavations are being conducted by Geoffrey Wainwright (ex-English Heritage) and Tim Darvill (Bournemouth University), following up their research into the sources of the blue stones in the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire: but as they are being funded by the BBC TimeWatch programme, they are being carried out with the maximum publicity.

Image
Where are the excavations? They are on the other side of the monument to the road. In this panoramic view, the road is to the left, and the excavations can be seen (just!) to the right.
It must be said that it is a very small trench.

What they are looking for is evidence for the dating of the arrival of the blue stones at Stonehenge. The blue stones story is a complicated one, as the present circle of blue stones is not in the original position. There is a circle of blue stone pits known as the Q and R holes, where it is assumed that the stones were originally set before they were put in their current position. However there is no good dating evidence for the Q and R holes, so the present excavations aim to uncover the base of one of the blue stone holes in the hopes that they may find an antler-pick for radiocarbon dating.

However the most surprising discoveries so far have been Roman. In a small pit containing a small bluestone in the corner of the trench, itself cut into the main socket of one of the uprights, they found a Roman coin. Even more alarming, was the excavation of the large pit in the centre of the excavation, where right near the bottom they found a very small piece of what was indubitably Roman pottery. Was there a major reordering of the site in the Roman period? As Geoffrey Wainwright said, their small trench looked like an urban excavation, there were so many intercutting pits.

Were the Romans rather like English Heritage, people who abhor untidiness, and when they came to Stonehenge, they found a somewhat decrepit monument in need of tender loving care, and said: Oh these wretched druids, they never look after their ancient monuments properly – we had better send along a gang to tidy it up and pay due respects to whatever gods were originally worshipped there? But just how extensive was this tidying up? How much of the plan of Stonehenge that has come to us is due to Roman interference?

But Stonehenge is not the only site in the complex that is being excavated. After the official tour, we went on to Woodhenge and to Durrington Walls, back to the site where Geoffrey Wainwright first came face to face with Stonehenge when he carried out major excavations 40 years ago in advance of a new road: we had just launched Current Archaeology at the time, and we reported on it in CA 5 way back in 1967. More recently Mike Parker-Pearson of Sheffield University has also been digging at Durrington, with remarkable results – the full details are still embargoed as his excavations are part-funded by National Geographic magazine. But he has two sites, one down by the river where he is uncovering an approach processional way to the site from the river and the other site is within the great enclosure itself where he is discovering large numbers of very small house platforms: he would like to see them as the workers huts for the building of Stonehenge, even though the pottery is Grooved Ware, which is uncommon at Stonehenge.

So we now have two major research projects being undertaken in the Stonehenge area, both dri

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Megalithic Yard by coldrum on Tuesday, 20 May 2008
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Megalithic Yard

The Megalithic Yard in the Geometry of Triangles,
Circles and Pi-Pyramids.
by
hewpop

Professor Alexander Thom’s Megalithic Yard (hereafter designated ‘MY’), will in this exercise be taken as π√3/2 (2.720699.....).English Feet, (E.ft.) , and English Inches (E.in.).It will be also divided into 36 Megalithic Inches (M.in.). of .906899...E.ft.

The first triangle to be described is an Isosceles with base angles of 30 degrees and a base length of 20,000 E.in. This will give a vertical height of 10,000 E.in. *30 tan, = 5773.5... E.in.. When this vertical height is used as the diameter of a circle, it will have a circumference of 18137.99... E.in., or 20,000 M.in..

The second triangle is the Pi-Pyramid with the same vertical height as the previous triangle, namely 5773.5... E.in., so it’s circle circumference is the same 20,000 M.in. But a feature of a Pi-Pyramid is that the number of units in the base side is half the number of units in this circumference, so the base is 10,000 M.in..***.
The base is thus 277.77... MY, and the vertical height is 277.77... * √3 E.ft..
The base is 277 MY plus 28 M.in..
The base is 100,000 MY / 360
Thus √3 E..ft ÷1.3603... E.ft. (or MY/2) = invtan 1.2732... = 51°51'14.3. , the perfect Pi Pyramid angle of slope.
The height of 5773.5... E.in. = 481.125...E.ft. = 146.6... metres, the Gt. Pyramid height.

So for every √3 units in the Pi-Pyramid’s height, there will be a 2.720699... unit in the base side..

*** Petrie’s average length for the base side of the Great Pyramid was 9069 English inches, and Cole’s average was within a whisker of this measure. As noted in the second triangle above, the Pi-Pyramid base was 10000M.in., or 9068.99... E.in.., an astonishing coincidence.

The third triangle is an equilateral triangle with the same vertical height and circle circumference. The base angles equal 60°. The triangle sides will be 20,000 M.in. ÷ π√3/2 = 73551.052... M.in., or 6666.66....E.in, or 555.555... E.ft..
(If one divides the number of M.in. in the circle’s circumference by 3, the answer will be the same number as there are EI in the equilateral triangle’s base.)

This type of triangle is important for Stone circles, for if the base is laid out in any number of E.ft., then the circle circumference on the vertical height as diameter, will always be the same number of MY.

Example.:- An equilateral triangle with sides of 1 E..ft., will have an apothem of √3 / 2 E.ft. And a circle circumference of √3 / 2 * π = 2.720699...E.ft.
If a circle needs to be divided say into 360 divisions, each of 1MY, then the base side of the construction triangle will need to be 360 E..ft. long, or proportionate. Use a base triangle of say , 18.E..ft., giving an apothem (diameter) of 9 √3 ft. , 20 of these diameters will give the required circumference.

Once a circumference is marked out in 1MY divisions, these divisions can be projected by strings or siting sticks to any size exterior or interior circle or to landmarks on the horizon. Polygons and star-shapes can be marked with ease.

When is a Megalithic Yard not a Megalithic Yard?

Anne Macaulay, in her ‘Megalithic Measures and Rhythms’, used three ‘yard sticks’ in her re-evaluation of Professor Alexander’s survey of stone monuments in NW Europe. As well as Thom’s well documented megalithic Yard and Megalithic Rod ( 2.5 MY), a Roman Foot of 11.66 English inches was introduced, which seemed to work well when used in connection with Fibonacci numbers in the formation of polygons within Stone circles.
A Megalithic Rod was said to be made up of 7 Roman feet.

Is there, was there, a Megalithic Yard in the first place? It was taken by Thom to be 2.72 +/- .003 English feet. Now if I may be permitted to introduce another measure , the English Foot,

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Stonehenge World Record Flamethrow by Anonymous on Friday, 18 January 2008
A mass flamethrow at Stonehenge, directed by Bob the Fire Eater

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Re: Stonehenge confirmed as top site by Anonymous on Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Just found out access rights for Winter Solstice - they are letting us in at about 7.30am til 9am on 22nd and no admission at all to see the sunset. Feel free to write/call English Heritage to see if they will let us in for sunset (a most important time according to recent re-creation research). Stonehenge number: 01722 343 830
See you all in the frosty and probably foggy murkiness of Wiltshire for a faint glimmer of sun and a massive glimmer of heartfelt excitement and joy - the wheel is turning . . .
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Re: Stonehenge confirmed as top site by Anonymous on Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Anyone tell me what the access rights are for Winter Solstice - I am feeling a calling and must see the sun rise and set over this magical ur temple. I have asked English Heritage but they have not replied . . .
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Stonehenge confirmed as top site by coldrum on Monday, 12 November 2007
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Stonehenge confirmed as top site

TOURISM bosses in south Wiltshire expressed delight this week after Stonehenge came out top in a nationwide poll of Britain's best historic sites.

The result of the major TV and website survey, by the UKTV History Channel, was welcomed by Salisbury and Stonehenge Tourism Partnership chairman, Mary Webb: "This is confirmation that Stonehenge is Britain's favourite visitor destination," she said.

"The stones have fascinated people for thousands of years, and continual archaeological discoveries in the landscape around the site make the megalith as captivating and intriguing as ever.

"Having Britain's favourite historic attraction in the area will boost tourism to Salisbury and south Wiltshire - welcome news for members of our Salisbury and Stonehenge Tourism Partnership."

The final result was revealed by TV presenter Alan Titchmarsh in a special programme. Stonehenge came in ahead of such attractions as HMS Victory, Liverpool Cathedral, Hadrian's Wall and York Minster in the rankings compiled by the History Channel's Britain's Best show.

More than 600,000 votes were received via the web, red button, post, phone and SMS over the past six months, and Stonehenge received 15 per cent of the overall votes - making it Britain's Best.

advertisementEnglish Heritage, which manages Stonehenge, has thanked viewers for voting in the poll. They believe the summer features and poll has encouraged the public to visit and appreciate the wonderful array of heritage sites Britain has to offer.

It hopes the survey results will further strengthen the case to improve visitor facilities at Stonehenge.

Salisbury and Stonehenge Tourism plan to use the news to highlight the heritage of the area and encourage visitors to Stonehenge to discover the other nearby attractions and book short breaks in Salisbury and the surrounding countryside.

http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/salisbury/salisburynews/display.var.1720135.0.stonehenge_confirmed_as_top_site.php
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Re: 'Vote for Stonehenge' urges boss by Anonymous on Thursday, 21 June 2007
...smiles at all the comments above...for certain the most correct leading to the mystery is the fact that it is a spiritual centre...but with what does spiritualism have to do with the past and the future this will guide you all to the true answer of stonehenge...EARTH is an important factor, the HEAVENS is another understand those and the TRUTH LIES WITH-IN.
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'Vote for Stonehenge' urges boss by coldrum on Friday, 09 February 2007
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A tourist manager is reminding people that historic Stonehenge could still take the prestigious title of one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.
The ancient monument in Wiltshire is one of 21 finalists in the race to elect the new wonders.

Stuart Maugham, Stonehenge head of visitor ops, said: "This is a wonderful opportunity for Stonehenge to receive lasting international recognition."

The New 7 Wonders of the World will be announced in Portugal on 7 July.

Mr Maugham added: "If you haven't yet voted and would like to see Stonehenge amongst the winners of this prestigious title, there is plenty of time to vote, so pick up your mouse or phone now and help make history."

Currently, the top finalists are: the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the Pyramids at Giza, Petra, the Statues of Easter Island and the Taj Mahal.

bbc.co.uk.
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    Re: 'Vote for Stonehenge' urges boss by AngieLake on Sunday, 11 February 2007
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    Thanks for that BBC link Coldrum. There were some very interesting pics and videos of Stonehenge and other sites in Wiltshire on it!
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Re: Ancient housing settlement discovered near Stonehenge by coldrum on Sunday, 04 February 2007
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A major prehistoric village has been unearthed near Stonehenge in southern England.

The settlement likely housed the builders of the famous monument, archaeologists say, and was an important ceremonial site in its own right, hosting great "feasts and parties".

Excavations also offer new evidence that a timber circle and a vast earthwork where the village once stood were linked to Stonehenge—via road, river, and ritual. Together, the sites were part of a much larger religious complex, the archaeologists suggest.

"Stonehenge isn't a monument in isolation. It is actually one of a pair—one in stone, one in timber," said Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a joint initiative run by six English universities and partially funded by the National Geographic Society.

The Late Stone Age village—the largest ever found in Britain—was excavated in September 2006 at Durrington Walls, the world's largest known "henge," a type of circular earthwork. A giant timber circle once stood at Durrington, which is 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the celebrated circle of standing stones on Salisbury Plain. Measuring some 90 feet (27 meters) wide and 560 feet (170 meters) long, the avenue linked the site of the former massive timber circle at Durrington to the River Avon. The road mirrors a similar avenue at Stonehenge that connects to the Avon downriver of Durrington.

As reported by James Owen for National Geographic News. January 30, 2007
Aerial-Cam


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    Re: Ancient housing settlement discovered near Stonehenge by coldrum on Saturday, 03 February 2007
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    Stonehenge builders' houses found

    A huge ancient settlement used by the people who built Stonehenge has been found, archaeologists have said.
    Excavations at Durrington Walls, near the legendary Salisbury Plain monument, uncovered remains of ancient houses.

    People seem to have occupied the sites seasonally, using them for ritual feasting and funeral ceremonies.

    In ancient times, this settlement would have housed hundreds of people, making it the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain.

    The dwellings date back to 2,600-2,500 BC - according to the researchers, the same period that Stonehenge was built.

    But some archaeologists point out that there are problems dating Stonehenge itself because the stone circle has been rebuilt many times.

    Consequently, archaeological material has been dug up and reburied on numerous occasions, making it difficult to assign a date to the original construction.

    But Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues are confident of a link.

    "In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards," he explained.

    The Sheffield University researcher said this was based on the fact that these abodes had exactly the same layout as Neolithic houses at Skara Brae, Orkney, which have survived intact because - unlike these dwellings - they were made of stone.

    bbc.co.uk.


    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6311939.stm
    [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Ancient housing settlement discovered near Stonehenge by coldrum on Saturday, 03 February 2007
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    Ancient housing settlement discovered near Stonehenge

    Evidence of a large settlement full of houses dating back to 2600 BC has been discovered near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge in southwest England, scientists said on Tuesday.

    They suspect inhabitants of the houses, forming the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, built the stone circle at Stonehenge – generally thought to have been a temple, burial ground or an astronomy site – between 3000 and 1600 BC.

    "We found the remains of eight houses," Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of archaeology at Sheffield University, UK, said in a teleconference to announce the discovery.

    "We think they are part of a much larger settlement. I suspect we can identify 25 likely house sites. My guess is that there are many more than that," he added.

    Village of builders
    During excavation at Durrington Walls, about 3 kilometres from Stonehenge, scientists working on the seven-year Stonehenge Riverside Project detected dozens of hearths.

    They also uncovered the outlines of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards and 4600 year-old debris, including burnt stones and animal bones strewn on the clay floors.

    "We think we are looking at the village of the builders of Stonehenge," he added.

    The houses measured about 5 metres (16 feet) square and were located in a small valley north of Stonehenge that leads down to the River Avon. They are on either side of an avenue that leads from the river to a wooden version of Stonehenge.

    "We think our discovery is very significant for understanding the purpose of Stonehenge. What we have revealed is that Stonehenge is one half of a larger complex," said Parker Pearson, referring to the stone and wooden circles.

    Feasts and parties
    The scientists believe Stonehenge and Durrington Walls were complementary sites. Neolithic people gathered at Durrington Walls for massive feasts and parties while Stonehenge was a memorial or burial site for the dead.

    "We are looking at least a century, probably several centuries of use, at both sites," said Parker Pearson. "Stonehenge is our biggest cemetery from that period. There is a very interesting contrast in terms of life and death."

    Stonehenge's avenue is aligned on the midsummer solstice sunrise, while the Durrington avenue corresponds with the midwinter solstice sunset, according to the researchers. Tourists are drawn to Stonehenge throughout the year but the most popular day at the site is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

    Druids, a pagan religious order dating back to Celtic Britain, gather at Stonehenge, about 160 km west of London, during the summer solstice because they believe it was a centre of spiritualism.

    "This is a place of enormous importance that has been remembered over a long period of time," said Julian Thomas of Manchester University, who also worked on the project.

    newscientist.
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    Re: Ancient housing settlement discovered near Stonehenge by coldrum on Saturday, 03 February 2007
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    Stonehenge 'party village' unearthed in Wiltshire
    Mark Bridge

    Archaeologists have unearthed remains of a huge ancient settlement that they believe housed the hundreds of construction workers needed to build nearby Stonehenge.

    Piles of animal bones found at the Neolithic village in Wiltshire, the largest of its kind ever found in Britain, suggest it was also the place to go for a lavish feast, featuring spit-roast pork and beef.

    "We’re talking Britain’s first free festival. It’s part of attracting a labour force – throwing a big party," Professor Mike Parker Pearson, of the University of Sheffield, lead archaeologist, told Times Online.

    He said that the village’s Neolithic inhabitants – who he believes are likely to be among the ancestors of modern Britons – were not primitive "cave men".

    They were well-dressed in "smarter than you'd imagine" leather clothing and capable of enormous feats of engineering – notably the transport of the huge stones of Stonehenge 240 miles from Wales's Preseli Mountains to Salisbury Plain.

    The excavations have unearthed hundreds of well-preserved houses with imprints of beds and wooden dressers still present on the clay floors.

    The finds were made at Durrington Walls, less than two miles from Stonehenge, where a second massive monument – a circle of huge timber posts more than a thousand feet across – once stood.

    Magnetic scans of the area revealed that the valley at Durrington Walls was densely populated. Experts had never before found evidence of human habitation near Stonehenge.

    The houses have been radiocarbon dated to 2600-2500 BC, the same period Stonehenge was built. They were 16-foot square, and made of wood, with a clay floor and central hearth.

    The team also excavated a paved avenue between Durrington Walls’s timber circle and the River Avon. The 90-foot wide pathway mirrors one that links Stonehenge with the same river.

    But while Stonehenge’s avenue is lined up with the midsummer solstice sunrise, Durrington’s is aligned with that day’s sunset.

    Similarly, where Stonehenge’s giant markers frame the midwinter sunset, Durrington’s timber posts would have given Neolithic people a perfect view of the sun rising on the same day.

    timesonline.
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    Re: Ancient housing settlement discovered near Stonehenge by coldrum on Saturday, 03 February 2007
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    Stonehenge Settlement Found: Builders' Homes,

    A major prehistoric village has been unearthed near Stonehenge in southern England.

    The settlement likely housed the builders of the famous monument, archaeologists say, and was an important ceremonial site in its own right, hosting great "feasts and parties".


    Excavations also offer new evidence that a timber circle and a vast earthwork where the village once stood were linked to Stonehenge—via road, river, and ritual. Together, the sites were part of a much larger religious complex, the archaeologists suggest.

    Stonehenge isn't a monument in isolation. It is actually one of a pair—one in stone, one in timber ," said Mike Parker Pearson, leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a joint initiative run by six English universities and partially funded by the National Geographic Society.

    The Late Stone Age village—the largest ever found in Britain—was excavated in September 2006 at Durrington Walls, the world's largest known "henge," a type of circular earthwork. A giant timber circle (photo) once stood at Durrington, which is 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the celebrated circle of standing stones on Salisbury Plain.

    At Durrington the archaeologists discovered foundations of houses dating back to 4,600 years ago —around the time construction began on Stonehenge.

    Excavations revealed the remains of eight wooden buildings. Surveys of the landscape have identified up to 30 more dwellings, Parker Pearson said.

    "We could have many hundreds of houses here," he added.

    The initial stone circle at Stonehenge—the so-called sarsen stones—have been radiocarbon-dated to between 2600 and 2500 B.C.

    nationalgeographic.

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    Stonehenge ceremonies start early by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 January 2007
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    Some had turned up in flowing robes while others were wearing lovingly-crafted winter solstice wreaths decorated with berries and ivy.

    The problem for the assorted pagans, druids and pantheists who arrived at Stonehenge yesterday morning to celebrate the winter solstice was that they had arrived a day early.

    Around 60 people had gathered at the stone circle, cloaked in frost and fog, to celebrate what they believed was the winter solstice. The staff who guard the precious monument in Wiltshire explained they were 24 hours early.

    However, they allowed the disappointed, and in some cases embarrassed, celebrants on to the site anyway to take part in rather muted ceremonies.

    The winter solstice tends to be more muted than its summer equivalent anyway. Almost 20,000 people showed up this summer whereas last year 1,500 came to the winter version.

    As it always does, English Heritage had discussions with druid and pagan groups to decide when the winter solstice should be celebrated.

    Many people think it always falls on December 21. However, the solstice varies and the time when it ought to be celebrated is open to different interpretations.

    The astronomical moment of the solstice was actually at 22 minutes past midnight today - and so English Heritage and many pagans believed the solstice celebration ought to have been celebrated at sunrise this morning. They had asked celebrants to arrive at 7.45am today.

    The head of the Druid Network, Emma Restall Orr (also known as Bobcat), said: "Pagans are not entirely scientific. They are more guided by nature."

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1977361,00.html
    [ Reply to This ]

    Early celebrations for Solstice by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 January 2007
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    Around 60 people turned up to celebrate the Winter Solstice at Stonehenge - on the wrong day.

    After negotiating with site-managers English Heritage, the crowd performed traditional solstice activities on Thursday morning, and left peacefully.

    One reveller, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "We formed a ring and held hands, and touched the stones. The man with the green cloak was there.

    "But there were an awful lot of red faces," she said.

    The Pagan celebration of Winter Solstice is one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world.

    The Solstice is actually at 0022 GMT on Friday, and some crowds are expected at Stonehenge on Friday morning.

    "I don't know if I'll go back," the reveller said.

    A spokeswoman for English Heritage, which looks after the site, said: "People assume because the Summer Solstice is the 21st June, the Winter Solstice will be the 21st December.

    "They should always check."

    Stonehenge is currently competing against other iconic buildings and structures, ranging from the Statue of Liberty to the Great Wall of China, in a global hunt for the New Seven Wonders of the World.

    The poll is being organised by the Swiss-based group New7Wonders and the winners will be announced in July 2007.

    Last year, planning permission was refused for a new visitor centre at Stonehenge but English Heritage plans to appeal against the decision in December.

    It also said that the much-needed improvements to the A303 - which have been endorsed at a public inquiry - were now subject to a government review as a result of cost increases.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6199671.stm
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    Stonehenge New 7 Wonders Voting by TimPrevett on Sunday, 31 December 2006
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    Voting is now open on the New 7 Wonders website, Stonehenge among them. Visit The Website to see the candidates and cast your votes.
    [ Reply to This ]

    Inquiry opens into fate of Stonehenge visitor centre by Andy B on Friday, 08 December 2006
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    English Heritage has called on the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly to seize a once-in-a-generation opportunity' and approve plans for the controversial Stonehenge visitor centre. More at http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412740
    [ Reply to This ]

    Stonehenge ‘No Place for the Dead’, Says Darvill by Andy B on Friday, 01 December 2006
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    Professor Timothy Darvill, Head of the Archaeology Group at Bournemouth University, has breathed new life into the controversy surrounding the origins of Stonehenge by publishing a theory which suggests that the ancient monument was a source and centre for healing and not a place for the dead as believed by many previous scholars.

    More:
    http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412704
    [ Reply to This ]

    Earliest Sketch of Stonehenge by TimPrevett on Monday, 27 November 2006
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    See The Guardian
    [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Earliest Sketch of Stonehenge by MickM on Tuesday, 28 November 2006
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      Interesting to see that the drawing shows a fourth standing trilithon. If correct it probably shows the stones numbered 59-60 by Flinders Petrie. This is the most northerly trilithon whose stones now lie in pieces & which had fallen by the time John Aubrey planned the site in 1666. It is unlikely to show stones 55-56, the other fallen trilithon at the southeast which forms the centre of the horseshoe as these are believed to have fallen before the Romans arrived. Also interesting to see that the mortice joints are shown.
      [ Reply to This ]

    A Step towards Stonehenge being stripped of its World Heritage Status? by TimPrevett on Saturday, 04 November 2006
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    BBC News website records that 'The Unesco World Heritage site Stonehenge is "a destination in trouble", a new survey has found.' For more details see here.
    [ Reply to This ]

    Stonehenge Partial Lunar Eclipse by Anonymous on Saturday, 23 September 2006
    http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/stonehenge/Lunareclipse.htm

    I very nearly lost these photos, it took the lab 2 weeks to track them down.
    Enjoy
    PeteG
    [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Stonehenge Diagram by Andy B on Monday, 11 September 2006
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    We have more on the Stonehenge Riverside project here:
    http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412603
    [ Reply to This ]

    Stonehenge Diagram by TimPrevett on Tuesday, 08 August 2006
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    Stonehenge Diagram HERE.
    [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by PeteG on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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    >A hot-air balloon will rise over Salisbury Plain tomorrow (Monday 24th
    >July) on a trip that will mark one of the country's strangest scientific
    >breakthroughs: the 100th anniversary of the first aerial photograph of
    >Stonehenge.

    It looked like this
    http://www.aveburylodge.co.uk/Photos/StonehengeBalloon.jpg
    PeteG
    [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by Aluta on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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      Thank you, Pete. A great photo as always!
      [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by TheCaptain on Friday, 28 July 2006
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      Oh, shame. I was looking forward to a picture of the orignal event 100 years ago !But thanks anyway !
      [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by PeteG on Friday, 28 July 2006
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      wait a while.
      I'm awaiting the trip in the balloon to do before and after photos.
      If you can't wait a week then check out P11 of Beyond Stonehenge for the original pics of the balloon and the photos.
      PeteG
      [ Reply to This ]
      Re: 100th Anniversary by bat400 on Friday, 28 July 2006
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      Wonderful photo, Pete!
      [ Reply to This ]

    Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by Andy B on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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    Employers, watch out for this particular output from Penn State University!

    http://live.psu.edu/story/18726
    [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by Aluta on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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      Alien statues that make him proud of mankind . . . and people mock American thinking?!
      [ Reply to This ]
        Re: Awesome! by bat400 on Friday, 28 July 2006
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        At least he was awestruck. He could have just been biding his time until the bus got to London's Hard Rock Cafe.
        [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Dispatches from Abroad: Student is awestruck by otherworldly Stonehenge by bat400 on Friday, 28 July 2006
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      Jeeze-Louise! Thanks, Andy, for alerting our international peers to another American Idiot, leering for the camera in front of a Monument of the Ages. However, I'm far more annoyed that Penn would host this fool's comments on their website than with the fool himself.

      And after all, go back and look at this site's forum pages. There are comments that imply some of our own members doubt that the pyramids (for one example) were built by the hands of man. Perhaps this fellow from Penn should join us.
      [ Reply to This ]

    Fight for Stonehenge takes to the air by Andy B on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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    A hot-air balloon will rise over Salisbury Plain tomorrow (Monday 24th July) on a trip that will mark one of the country's strangest scientific breakthroughs: the 100th anniversary of the first aerial photograph of Stonehenge.

    The 1906 flight was the first use of air reconnaissance for studying ancient monuments in Britain, and will be commemorated with a balloon flight of English Heritage officials and other VIPs. 'Aerial photographs are our main method for finding new [archaeological] sites,' said Martyn Barber, of English Heritage's aerial survey unit. 'They are invaluable for studying the past.'

    But the trip has another purpose. It is to form part of an unofficial campaign by English Heritage to maintain public awareness of the World Heritage site. They are anxious to press ministers who have promised they will decide in the next few months on what to do with the main roads that run near the 5,000-year-old stone circle.

    English Heritage is particularly worried because Unesco, the United Nations education and cultural body, has warned it may remove the monument's World Heritage status unless Britain tackles the serious problem of traffic passing right beside Stonehenge, which is one of the world's richest reservoirs of Stone Age circles, henges and alignments.

    More:
    http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1827063,00.html
    [ Reply to This ]

    EH: Support for the 2.1 km tunnel at Stonehenge continues by Andy B on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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    English Heritage are trying to rabble-rouse in favour of the Stonehenge tunnel, and their 'rabble' includes Aubrey Burl, Mike Pitts and Julian Richards (a letter to the Times from 23 February 2006)

    Support for the 2.1 km tunnel at Stonehenge continues

    English Heritage and many others believe that the published scheme, which involves the building of a 2.1km long bored tunnel past Stonehenge, would bring immeasurable benefits, both practical and cultural. We also believe that, in the absence of any other viable or affordable scheme, rejection of this one would invite decades of inactivity, or, worse still, an expedient transport solution which would be genuinely damaging.

    http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.6695

    [ Reply to This ]

    Leave our glimpse of Stonehenge alone by Andy B on Thursday, 27 July 2006
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    An opinion piece in the Telegraph by Philip Johnston: Later today, all being well, we will leave behind the oppressive heat of London and head west to enjoy the cooling breezes of the north Devon coast.

    It is a journey we have made many times; and the highlight of the long drive has always been the first glimpse of Stonehenge as the car crests the hill on the A303 just after the Amesbury roundabout, laying bare the panoramic Wiltshire landscape. As a child, I vaguely remember stopping for a picnic among the stones, something that seems astonishing when you consider that, today, they are fenced off and can be viewed close up only while walking around them in circular procession along a set path. It is strictly no touching.

    We no longer stop. It has become, depressingly, the Stonehenge Experience, with the inevitable (if inadequate) visitor centre and opening hours. The idea that an ancient monument can have opening hours is bizarre. Stonehenge lies between two roads, the busy A303 and the A344, a more ancient route to the north. For almost as long as anyone can remember, there has been controversy over what, if anything, should be done to remove these roads both to ease the summer congestion and to allow the monument to stand in glorious isolation, to be gawped at by thousands of tourists without traffic in the background. We are, supposedly, approaching the moment of truth when the Government will make a decision after decades of dithering. Those who have followed this saga will believe it when they see it.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/07/24/do2402.xml
    [ Reply to This ]

    Stonehenge visitor plan approved by Anonymous on Tuesday, 18 July 2006
    Plans to build a new visitor centre, with its own rail link, at Stonehenge have been approved by councillors.

    English Heritage's original application was refused by Salisbury District Council amid fears a rail link would damage the environment.

    But after an appeal, planners on Monday approved the scheme with conditions.

    The development cannot start until the government has sanctioned improvements to the nearby A303, including a tunnel through the Wiltshire countryside.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/5167584.stm
    [ Reply to This ]

    Old Aerial Photos of Stonehenge to be Revealed by Andy B on Monday, 17 July 2006
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    English Heritage is celebrating the centenary of the first aerial photographs of Stonehenge with a touring exhibition opening at the Neolithic site.

    Dozens of vintage and modern photographs will tell the story of the first images and explore the world of aerial photography in Victorian, Edwardian and wartime Britain, and will look at how they have helped our understanding of 6,000 years of British history and pre-history.

    “Aerial photography is most useful in helping us understand the human use and development of the landscape around Stonehenge,” said Dave Batchelor, chief Stonehenge archaeologist at English Heritage.

    http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART38599.html
    [ Reply to This ]

    Henge Centre Revived by coldrum on Monday, 10 July 2006
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    Renewed moves by English Heritage to create a world class visitor centre at Stonehenge seem certain to get the go-ahead today, marking an amazing U-turn by councillors.

    Salisbury District Council's Planning Committee will approve an application for the landmark £67.5million visitor centre at Countess East, just under two miles from the 4,500-year- old henge.

    The scheme is exactly the same one the council threw out last summer following objections from residents.

    A key reason for rejecting the scheme was that a land train taking people from the monument to the centre would have an adverse impact on nearby residents.

    But in the light of a forthcoming public inquiry, the authority reappraised its decision and invited English Heritage to resubmit the original plans.

    Last week the council's Northern Area Committee recommended that the Planning committee should today approve the scheme, with a number of conditions.

    These include the condition that the visitor centre should only go ahead if the Government approves the A303 Stonehenge Improvement Scheme, the cost of which has now spiralled to £200million.

    http://www.westpress.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=146238&command=displayContent&sourceNode=146064&contentPK=14876924&folderPk=69655
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    Stonehenge Facts by Andy B on Monday, 22 May 2006
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    corn writes:
    Stonehenge, like all stone circles etc., has no connection with the Celts or their priests - Druids. These sites were long abandoned by the time the Celts arrived around 500 b.c. and their holy places were not temples but natural locations such as rivers, glades and woods.They would not have used them anymore than Moslems would use a Church of England as their holy place.

    Stonehenge had 5 different building phases/changes. Dates vary depending on whose information you read, mine are from two reliable books

    PHASE 1: was built 2,500 to 2,200 b.c. Consisted of a simple ditch and bank with break in bank to N.E. 30m outside the 'Heel Stone', a natural sarsen some 15 ft. tall, was erected - probably the only substantial above ground feature and used as a 'location' marker for site. On outer side of ditch 56 holes (Aubrey holes) were dug, some later held cremations. Site probably abandoned.

    PHASE 2: was built by the 'beaker' people about 1,620 b.c. A double row of blue stones (82) were set up with a N.E. entrance. Unfinished stone holes show that this phase was never completed.

    PHASE 3: which was divided into 3 stages between about 1,600 to 1,240 b.c.
    3a: The double row of bluestones were dismantled and site levelled off. Great sarsen blocks were brought from Marborough Downs and set up in the circle and horseshoe formation we see today - 30 uprights linked by 5 trilithons.
    3b: saw the return of 20 of the bluestones which were set in an oval within the horseshoe sarsens. Possibly the remaining 62 bluestones were intended to be placed in two circles outside sarsen circle, but was never completed although the holes to receive the stones were dug.
    3c: the final phase about 1300b.c. saw the oval setting of bluestones taken down. The bluestones were then erected in a circle between the horseshoe and outer sarsen circle and a horsehoe of 19 bluestones erected within the 5 trilithons. The largest of the bluestones, some 12ft tall, was stood upright in front of central trilithon but subsequently fell...now mistakenly known as the Altar Stone.
    [ Reply to This ]
      What Celtic Iron Age invasion? by Anonymous on Tuesday, 31 August 2010
      I don't think the Celts 'arrived' in Britain c. 500 b.c., I think you'll find we were already here, and had been since at least 2,500 b.c.! If you can find any evidence for a massive Iron Age invasion, congratulations.
      [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Stonehenge to open over Christmas by Anonymous on Wednesday, 14 December 2005
    I propose to reveal the true about stonehenge in a particular date, when should it be? I accept suggestions!

    JCAntunes
    [ Reply to This ]

    Stonehenge to open over Christmas by Andy B on Tuesday, 06 December 2005
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    English Heritage says it is responding to visitor demand and opening Stonehenge to the public on Boxing Day and New Year's Day.

    The ancient monument will be open from 1000 GMT with last admissions at 1600 GMT on both days.

    However, visitors will be restricted to the perimeter of the site and not allowed into the stone circle (as is usual).

    Source: BBC
    [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Stonehenge by Anonymous on Thursday, 18 August 2005
    Has anybody considered that Stonehenge may have been roofed with massive timbers? The plan of the major stones are very similar to those of circular houses of the time. Might this not be the house of deity?
    [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Stonehenge by Ruan on Wednesday, 29 December 2004
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    Just a thought, in light of recent events ( undersea earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis) , was Stonehenge damaged by earthquakes at some stage between its building and present day ? Not unlikely and could explain present ruined condition . In the Bronze Age there was much seismic and volcanic activity , particularly in The Aegean , resulting in the end of the hitherto powerful Minoan culture and destruction of Santorini/Thera (Atlantis?) . As the dinosaurs were possibly wiped out by giant meteors , was much of the once powerful Minoan and later Mycanaen cultures destroyed not by their enemies , but by the Gods (forces of nature) ?
    [ Reply to This ]

    Re: Stonehenge by gormer on Saturday, 01 November 2003
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    I don't think anyone could truly be disappointed by Stonehenge, but it is more commercial than one might expect (I'm wincing as I write this, knowing what commercial horrors we Americans are responsible for--I hardly feel fair critiquing the U.K.!). For however crowded it may get, it's a different kind of magic being able to explore the site and share the experience with so many other people of different nations and backgrounds. Even surrounded by tourists sporting Stonehenge t-shirts and scribbling notes in Stonehenge notepads, the circle doesn't seem to have lost its dignity.
    [ Reply to This ]
      Re: Stonehenge by Anonymous on Monday, 04 May 2009
      ta we brits love stonehenge
      [ Reply to This ]

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