Stonehenge examines the prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain, its successive phases of construction and the communities that built and used it. It explains what archaeology reveals about the transport and setting of the stones, nearby settlements, burial landscapes and the monument’s relationship to the solstices. The book also reviews major theories about Stonehenge’s purpose, separating evidence from later myth and showing how interpretations have changed with new discoveries.
The book also explains why certainty remains limited. Stonehenge was altered repeatedly over many centuries, and later burials, landscape features and changing astronomical interpretations complicate any single explanation of its purpose. Rather than presenting one solution, the survey distinguishes what excavation can demonstrate from hypotheses about ritual, seasonal gathering, ancestry and cosmology.
Saul David
3 books
Adrian Goldsworthy
12 books
Alison Weir
35 books
Peter Ackroyd
1 book