Stonehenge
More than nine hundred stone rings exist in the British Isles, and scholars estimate that twice that number may originally have been built. (these megalithic structures are referred to as rings rather than circles since only 2 percent of the structures are in the shape of true circles; the other 98 percent are constructed in a variety of elliptical shapes. Stonehenge, however, is roughly circular.) It is nearly impossible to precisely date the stone rings because of the scarcity of datable remains associated with them, but it is known that they were constructed during the Neolithic period.
In southern England the Neolithic period dates from the development of the first farming communities around 4000 BC to the development of bronze technology around 2000 BC, when the construction of the megalithic monuments was mostly over. Because of the scantiness of the archaeological record at the stone rings, any attempts to explain the functions of the structures are interpretive. Most such attempts have tended to reflect the cultural biases of their times.
In the seventeenth century, well before the development of archaeological dating methods and accurate historical research, the antiquarian John Aubrey surmised that Stonehenge and other megalithic structures were constructed by the Druids. While this idea (and a whole collection of related fanciful notions) has become deeply ingrained in the uneducated minds of popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present age, it is a matter of certain knowledge that the Druids had nothing whatsoever to do with the construction of the stone rings. The Celtic society in which the Druid priesthood flourished came into existence in Britain only after 300 BC, more than 1500 years after the last stone rings were constructed.
Furthermore, no evidence suggests that the Druids, upon finding the stone rings situated across the countryside, ever used them for ritual purposes; they are known to have conducted their ritual activities in sacred forest groves. Thus any Druidic connection with the stone rings is purely conjectural. Other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century visitors to the stone rings suggested that these monuments were constructed by the Romans, but this idea is even more lacking in historical possibility than the Druid theory because the Romans did not set foot on the British Isles until the final years of the first century BC, nearly 2000 years after the construction of the stone rings.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, prehistorians attributed Stonehenge and other stone rings to Egyptian and Mycenean travelers who were thought to have infused Europe with Bronze Age culture. With the development of Carbon-14 dating techniques, the infusion-diffusion conception of British Neolithic history was abandoned and the megalithic monuments of Britain (and Europe also) were shown to predate those of the eastern Mediterranean, Egyptian, Mycenean, and Greek cultures.
While the Carbon-14 method provided approximate dates for the stone rings, it was of no use in explaining their function. The archaeological community generally assumed that function to be concerned with the ritual activities and territorial markings of various Neolithic chiefdoms. Research by scholars outside the discipline of archaeology suggested an alternative use. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Oxford University engineer Alexander Thom and the astronomer Gerald Hawkins pioneered the new field of archaeoastronomy - the study of the astronomies of ancient civilizations. Conducting precise surveys at various stone rings and other megalithic structures, Thom and Hawkins discovered many significant astronomical alignments among the stones. This evidence suggested that the stone rings were used as astronomical observatories. Moreover, the archaeoastronomers revealed the extraordinary mathematical sophistication and engineering abilities that the native British developed before either the Egyptian or Mesopotamian cultures. Two thousand years prior to Euclid's elucidation of the Pythagorean triangle theorems and at least 3000 years before the sixth century AD sage Arya Bhata had "discovered" the concept and value of Pi, the British megalithic builders were incorporating these mathematical understandings into their stone rings.
While the findings and interpretations of Thom and Hawkins were fascinating, even revolutionary, more recent studies by Aubrey Burl and Benjamin Ray have tempered some of the earlier claims. Writing in 1987, Ray states:
Hawkins (in 1964) asserted the existence of twenty-four solar and lunar alignments at Stonehenge, and he proposed the theory that the monument could have been used as a calculator to predict eclipses....However, it is now recognized that Hawkins was clearly wrong about Stonehenge's possible use as a calculating machine to predict eclipses. And it is also agreed that he overestimated the number of solar and lunar alignments involved....The 'discovery' of known alignments in megalithic sites has give the impression of remarkable astronomical knowledge on the part of late Neolithic builders, whereas in most cases the precision involved derives fundamentally from the investigator who knows the relevant alignments in advance and 'finds' them in the site.
While Ray admits to various alignments at Stonehenge and other stone rings, he seeks to counter the recent overly emphatic interpretation of the stone rings as astronomical observatories and to focus attention on their other "magico-religious" uses.
Stonehenge, the most visited and well known of the British stone rings, is a composite structure built during three distinct periods. In Period I (radiocarbon-dated to 3100 BC), Stonehenge was a circular ditch with an internal bank. The circle, 320 feet in diameter, had a single entrance, 56 mysterious holes around its perimeter (with remains in them of human cremations), and a wooden sanctuary in the middle. The circle was aligned with the midsummer sunrise, the midwinter sunset, and the most southerly rising and northerly setting of the moon. Period II (2150 BC) saw the replacement of the wooden sanctuary with two circles of "bluestones" (dolerite stone with a bluish tint), the widening of the entrance, the construction of an entrance avenue marked by parallel ditches aligned to the midsummer sunrise, and the erection, outside the circle, of the thirty-five ton "Heel Stone".
The eighty bluestones, some weighing as much as four tons, were transported from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales, 240 miles away. During Period III (2075 BC), the bluestones were taken down and the enormous "sarsen" stones - which still stand today - were erected. These stones, averaging eighteen feet in height and weighing twenty-five tons, were transported from near the Avebury stone rings twenty miles to the north. Sometime between 1500 and 1100 BC, approximately sixty of the bluestones were reset in a circle immediately inside the sarsen circle, and another nineteen were placed in a horseshoe pattern, also inside the circle. It has been estimated that the three phases of the construction required more than thirty million hours of labor. It is unlikely that Stonehenge was functioning much after 1100 BC.
Current thinking regarding the use of Stonehenge suggests the primacy of ritual function rather than astronomical observation. Astronomical observations would indeed have been performed. Rather than being for the sake of accumulating data regarding the movement of celestial bodies, as is the sole purpose of modern observatories, the Stonehenge observations were probably intended to indicate the appropriate days in the yearly ritual cycle. (The structure was clearly not used to determine the agricultural cycle; in this region the summer solstice occurs well after the growing season begins and the winter solstice well after the harvest is finished.)
Likely the primary purpose of the structure was its use as a ritual site, while its secondary use was as an astronomical observation device in service to that ritual function. In speaking about its architectural form and function, Benjamin Ray suggests that Stonehenge, especially in its middle and later form, was intended to be a stone (and thereby imperishable) replica of the kind of wooden sanctuary that was locally common in Neolithic times. Had the ancient builders been interested primarily in making precise astronomical observations, they would not have chosen Stonehenge's circular form with tall stones. That form contains far more stones than are needed, has too many imprecise sightlines, and prevents observation over the tall stones.
What was the nature of the rituals performed at Stonehenge? Ray theorizes that, because Stonehenge is situated in an area rich in burial tombs, it may have had some relevance in burial rituals. Its shape, which resembles that of Neolithic ceremonial buildings, however, points more to its possible use as a shrine for the living rather than for the dead. As a temple for the living, Stonehenge's capacity to determine the dates of the solstices and equinoxes becomes all important.
Throughout the ancient world people have regarded the sun and moon as sacred beings whose (apparent) cyclical rhythms, with their seasonal strengthening and weakening, had a positive, magical, and rewarding effect upon the life of human beings. Stonehenge and the large number of other stone rings located throughout the British Isles (and the world) are part solar/ lunar observatory and part ritual structure. The mystery remains: Why?
Students of mythology and archaeology will be familiar with the fact that many ancient cultures held festivals on the solstices and equinoxes. The most common interpretation of these festivals is that they are occasions for renewal: The renewal of the people and the land by the celestial powers; and also the renewal of the land and the celestial beings by the agency of human intention, celebration, and sacrifice. The interpretation usually stops here. Discussion may indeed continue regarding the characteristics of the festivals or their sociological function of contributing to the periodic renewal and strengthening of the bonding of a particular cultural group, but the actual depth of the interpretation concerning the times and original meanings of the solstice festivals is rarely pursued.
Why would this be so? The answer is quite simple. Almost all those having the academic knowledge to be able to discuss a wide range of ancient cultures and their mythologies have acquired that information while spending their lives in concrete cities, alienated from the very land-based experience that gives rise to a felt-understanding of the subtle energy rhythms of the natural world. In other words, the tendency of modern urban-based life, in isolating people from the natural world, automatically instills and perpetuates a bias that prevents prehistorians, anthropologists, and archaeologists (and most everyone else) from really understanding the nature-based life of Neolithic cultures. We moderns may with admirable scholarship catalogue the behaviors of the ancients, yet an understanding of the motivations and meanings of those behaviors often eludes us. This is especially true regarding the festivals of renewal that occurred on the solstices and equinoxes at the sacred sites.
Prehistorians and archaeologists speak about the myths of renewal of the ancient cultures, but to the ancient people the festivals were not celebrations of myth but rather celebrations of a current reality. That reality was the periodic energetic effect of solar, lunar, and stellar cycles on human beings, the animal kingdom, and the earth itself. This energetic effect, the increased presence of energy at the sacred sites during particular periods of the astronomical cycles, was the focus of the ritual use of stone rings and so many of the other ancient sanctuaries illustrated in this book.
Based on the preceding material and my own experiences, I interpret Stonehenge to be a structure with multiple purposes. It was a monument, of nearly imperishable quality, erected at a particular site of terrestrial energetic power long recognized by the peoples of the region. It was an astronomical observation device used to predict, in advance of their occurrence, those particular days in the annual cycle when the earth energies were most highly influenced and charged by the sun, moon, and stars.
It was a temple, built by and for the people, in which festivals of renewal were held at those charged energetic periods determined by astronomical observations. It was a structure built with particular materials (the diorite bluestones brought from 240 miles away and showing evidence of prior use in another sacred structure; the micaceous, green-tinged "altar" stone of unknown origin, and the great sarsen stones), positioned in such a way as to resemble a pre-existing kind of sacred enclosure but, more important, to function as a sort of battery for gathering, storing, and ultimately expressing the earth energies of the site on the festival days. Besides the particular times of those festivals, which the structure clearly reveals, prehistory has left us no information concerning the specific content of the rituals that took place at the festival times. Perhaps we are given some indication of the power of the site by an old surviving record of an even more ancient folk memory. Writing in AD 1200, Layamon, in his poem "Brut" describes Stonehenge:
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