Stonehenge

Frideswide said:
a better solution!
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"Stonehenge Tunnel Campaigners 'not impressed' with new plan"

stonehenge bridge.png
 
The level of detail is really quite impressive. Especially when viewed in conjunction with the google maps satellite images of the area.
 
I totally agree Trev - I look at a an area - the bend in the River - and I see Agricultural History, imposed over Pre-History, and then I see an Iron age Fort, clearly deliniated, and then my thoughts hover over the fact that there is an awful lot of agricultural plots that border the river more than would be needed for a small riverside town...and then I factor in all the earthworks which just takes my mind into a half hour ramble...

'They've' LIDAR'd the whole of England and Wales Tha' knowest? (see below)

https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=NZ44642009
 
Some big holes have been dated by that "last-time-the-soil-saw-daylight" technique

The guy in the video has an interesting hypothesis for their use.

 
A calendar, but it would take Obelix to flip over the page.

A new study suggests that Stonehenge once served as a solar calendar.

Research showed the stones were added about 2500BC and remained in the same formation, indicating they worked as a single unit such as a calendar.

Professor Timothy Darvill said the Wiltshire stone circle's layout served as a physical representation of the year. He said the research indicated "the site was a calendar based on a tropical solar year of 365.25 days".

Although the origins of the site remain a mystery, in a paper published in the journal Antiquity, Prof Darvill deduced that the stones are displayed to represent a solar year of 365.25 days and were once used to help people keep track of time.

His analysis also includes new finds about the site's history, along with analysis of other ancient calendar systems.

The prehistorian, who works at Bournemouth University, said that "the clear solstitial alignment of Stonehenge has prompted people to suggest that the site included some kind of calendar since the antiquarian William Stukeley. Now, discoveries brought the issue into sharper focus and indicate the site was a calendar based on a tropical solar year of 365.25 days." ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-60573527
 
hunck said:
Stonehenge related.

Exhibition of Prehistoric Items at British Museum

Objects from around Europe including the Nebra sky disc & these:

Headdress c9000 BC found N.Yorks.
View attachment 52158

Gold pendant c3000 years old
View attachment 52160
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Went to see this yesterday. Recommended.
The first one is the Star Carr Headdress, or rather one of them. There are at least 21 in various places; the Mesolithic people apparently wore them on their heads. Years ago, I drew one for Scarborough Museum (very badly).

The second object may be a partially ecliped sun; the tiny stripes make it glitter in an entrancing fashion. Also present is the Rillaton Cup, the Mold golden cape and the Bush Barrow treasure.

I'm intriged by these particularly silly hats
Cappello_d'oro_di_berlino,_1000_ac_ca._01.jpg

and the Divine Twins from Kallerup, which I can't find a good picture of, but they/it is bloody weird.
 
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Into town and to the BM yesterday to see the exhibition The World of Stonehenge. In a word: Wow!

Assembling such a range of exhibits must have been a Herculean labour. Careful display, informative labelling and innovative animation; also evocative “soundscapes”.

sky_di1.jpg


The only chance I’ll ever have to see the Nebra sky disc

I’ll mark them down one point out of ten for some speculative and fashionable content in one or two captions, and l still have reservations about paying to see things in museums, but on the whole it’s well worth the £22 per head they’re asking. The memsahib and l were utterly absorbed for an hour and a half, and could have spent longer there.

Outstanding.

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Into town and to the BM yesterday to see the exhibition The World of Stonehenge. In a word: Wow!

Assembling such a range of exhibits must have been a Herculean labour. Careful display, informative labelling and innovative animation; also evocative “soundscapes”.

sky_di1.jpg


The only chance I’ll ever have to see the Nebra sky disc

I’ll mark them down one point out of ten for some speculative and fashionable content in one or two captions, and l still have reservations about paying to see things in museums, but on the whole it’s well worth the £22 per head they’re asking. The memsahib and l were utterly absorbed for an hour and a half, and could have spent longer there.

Outstanding.

maximus otter
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Did you have the opportunity to visit the Atlantis Bookshop as you were so close?

http://theatlantisbookshop.com/
 
Recent survey work has revealed thousands of pits in the ground around Stonehenge - some dating back as far as 10,000 years BP.
Thousands of prehistoric pits discovered around Stonehenge

Stonehenge is surrounded by grassy vistas nowadays, but about 10,000 years ago, the landscape had pits likely dug by prehistoric hunters trying to trap game, a new study finds.

A team of researchers found evidence of these pits while surveying the area around Stonehenge, according to the study, published online on May 9 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The team conducted an electromagnetic induction field survey of about 1 square mile (2.5 square kilometers) around Stonehenge and used an algorithm to detect anomalies. ...

The algorithm identified 415 potential large pits that were bigger than 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) in diameter, and about 3,000 smaller pits that were less than 7.9 feet across ...

When all these pits date to is uncertain. The team excavated nine of the large pits and found that six of them were made by humans in prehistoric times. They could tell they were made by humans based on the artifacts found within them and the shape of the pits. The oldest excavated pit was around 10,000 years old and contained the remains of stone tools that may have been used for hunting. The finds "suggest it [the pit] was probably dug as a hunting trap for large game such as aurochs [a now-extinct cattle species], red deer and wild boar" ...

While the oldest known pit was likely used for hunting, one of the other pits dated to 3,300 years ago, a time after Stonehenge was erected and may "very well relate to the long-term ceremonial structuring of the Stonehenge landscape" ...
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FULL STORY (With Photos): https://www.livescience.com/thousands-pits-found-around-stonehenge
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published research report (in press).

Philippe De Smedt, Paul Garwood, Henry Chapman, Koen Deforce, Johan De Grave, Daan Hanssens, Dimitri Vandenberghe,
Novel insights into prehistoric land use at Stonehenge by combining electromagnetic and invasive methods with a semi-automated interpretation scheme
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2022, 105557,ISSN 0305-4403.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2022.105557

Abstract:
Geophysical survey methods have led to high-resolution mapping of subsurface remnants of ancient landscapes at continually expanding spatial scales. Yet, particularly when applied across entire archaeological landscapes, spanning hundreds of hectares, resultant datasets provide little direct information about inhabitation, environments or change over time. Focusing on a 2.5 km2 area around Stonehenge, we show how geophysical soil survey, when combined with targeted sampling and excavation, can enable reliable empirically-grounded identification of complex activity traces. Particular focus lies on anthropogenic dug pits, identification and interpretation of which are vital in European earlier prehistoric archaeology due to their close connection with inhabitation and ceremonial practices. By integrating frequency domain electromagnetic and invasive datasets, and using a semi-automated interpretation scheme, we identified previously unknown concentrations of large pits (with diameters >2.4 m) among several thousand smaller pits and natural features across the Stonehenge landscape. Excavations of a subset of identified features demonstrate that, in this area, our investigative methodology is 66% accurate for identifying large anthropogenic pits. Our results have significant implications for understanding Stonehenge and its landscape setting, revealing elusive forms of Mesolithic to later Bronze Age land use that - even within the world's most intensively researched archaeological landscape - have gone unrecognized until now. These findings underscore both the crucial role of archaeological excavation as an essential basis for reliable interpretation of geophysical data, as well as the perils of inductive visual interpretation of features’ morphologies and their spatial configuration in non-invasive survey data.

SOURCE: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440322000152
 

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Will the crowds come on Friday, June 24th for midsummer dancing around Stonehenge ?
 
Another excellent film by Paul and Rebecca - this time "Should we build a tunnel?"

 
Anonymous said:
You should also get hold of Prof Ron Hutton's work, if you haven't done so already.

An awful lot of neopagan dogma about Celtic backgrounds to our myths etc owes its existence to the Edwardian romantics and not any continuation of use tradition.
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On which topics and more, I contribute this superb lecture from Professor Hutton at Gresham College.


Stonehenge & Lindow Man being his two case studies here.

Common sense abounds.
 
Please bear with me if these questions are idiotic, but as a non-UKer, these puzzle me:
Who owns Stonehenge?
Who owns the land surrounding it?
How big is the land associated with it?
Who pays for its maintenance?
Who pays for guarding or monitoring it?
How close can ordinary people get to it?
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Who owns Stonehenge?
Who owns the land surrounding it?
How big is the land associated with it?
Who pays for its maintenance?
Who pays for guarding or monitoring it?
How close can ordinary people get to it?
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It had been privately owned for many centuries, but in the early 1900s, with care and maintenance becoming ever more necessary, the then owners 'gifted' it to the 'Crown Estates' (essentially, our Royal Family).
The 'Office of Works' (which is these days named 'English Heritage') undertook conservation work to ensure the whole site was made safe and secure.
More here;
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/blog-posts/stonehenge-100-years-of-care/

The surrounding land is an area owned by The National Trust, (a charitable organisation with responsibility for managing heritage conservation across most of the UK), with the stones themselves being listed as a 'scheduled monument'.
Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which covers two large areas of land separated by about 15 miles rather than a specific monument or building, (and) the area also has an exceptionally high density of small-scale archaeological sites, particularly from the prehistoric period. More than 700 individual archaeological features have been identified. There are 160 separate Scheduled Monuments, covering 415 items or features.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge,_Avebury_and_Associated_Sites

The site of the stones themselves is fenced off but you can pay to visit, so as such it has it's own security staff etc.
Access is via a tunnel from a visitor centre on the other side a nearby road.
Or you can get reasonably close on the public roads.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.1791567,-1.8276352,589m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en-GB
 
Sorry - forgot to mention that significant money was spent just a few years ago replacing the small visitor centre with a much larger facility just up the road a bit, and the tunnel was filled in.
 
Before 1950, I have read that Stonehenge was a mess with a lot of stones down.

In the 1950s and 1960s the stones were put back and secured.

Who paid for the reconstruction over those years I don’t know.
 
charliebrown said:
Before 1950, I have read that Stonehenge was a mess with a lot of stones down.

In the 1950s and 1960s the stones were put back and secured.

Who paid for the reconstruction over those years I don’t know.
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Yes. See above. The 'Office for Works' (a government department) would have been tasked with doing the work needed to stabilise the structures and replace any bits that had fallen or moved. The finances for this would have been provided out of general taxation.

A lot of people don't realise what a terrible state it was once in and that many of the stones you see now were re-erected just wherever the 'experts' at the time thought they should go. So there's no telling if they were put in the exact same positions as they were when it was originally constructed.
 
Lt-Colonel William Hawley was employed by the Office of Works to carry out restoration works at Stonehenge between 1919-1926. There is a lovely picture of a trilithon being re-erected ~1920 in the excellent book The Paper Time Machine (Wild & Lloyd).
There are some early-ish maps of Stonehenge and we have accounts of how and when at least two of the stones fell, so siting of re-erections wasn't just on a whim.

Stonehenge_1920.jpg
 
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