The Surrounding Moat of Stonehenge I
Submitted by Orion on Saturday, 17 May 2003 Page Views: 4889
Stonehenge
The realization that the Ditch of Stonehenge I may have been a reservoir grew out of research into a larger hypothesis concerning the transport of the stones, one requirement of which is that a large supply of water needed to be available at the level of Stonehenge. It is one of many conditions required by the hypothesis that are confirmed by the records of various archaeological excavations in and around Stonehenge. However, a model of Stonehenge surrounded by a water filled moat (as opposed to a dry quarry/ditch) is noteworthy for its own sake, since it contrasts substantially with any view of the monument previously proposed.
If, as claimed by many writers, the surrounding ditch of Stonehenge I were nothing more than a dry quarry ditch, many of its features have gone without reasonable and coordinated explanation. There has not been a single unified theory that has explained many of the conditions known to exist in the ditch. Only when viewed as a major and important part of the original monument of Stonehenge I do the various pieces of the puzzle fit together to form a single and coordinated view of the surrounding ditch/moat.
Until now, it has been supposed that the ditch surrounding Stonehenge I was nothing more than a dry, ugly quarry/ditch whose sole purpose was to supply material for the building of the surrounding bank. Writers too numerous to mention have claimed that it is only the bank that was important and that the ditch was merely the inevitable by-product of the building of the bank.
R.J.C.Atkinson “Stonehenge”, 1965, p.23 writes: “Irregular ditches of this kind, like the outline of a string of very badly made sausages, are characteristic of neolithic earthworks in southern England. Their apparently unfinished state does not mean that the work was abandoned before it was completed, but that the builders regarded the ditch merely as a quarry for material to build the bank. It was the bank which was the important element of the earthwork, and the ditch had no meaning, in itself as a structural or symbolic feature.”
However, there is considerable evidence that the surrounding ditch ranked at least equally with the bank in its importance to the structure of Stonehenge I.
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