History of Stone henge ?

Question: History of Stone henge !?
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The Stonehenge complex was built in several construction phases spanning at least 3000 years, although there is evidence for activity both before and afterwards on the site, perhaps extending its time frame to 6500 years!.

Dating and understanding the various phases of activity at Stonehenge is not a simple task; it is complicated by poorly kept early excavation records, surprisingly few accurate scientific dates and the disturbance of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing!. The modern phasing most generally agreed by archaeologists is detailed below!. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right, which illustrates the site as of 2004!. The plan omits the trilithon lintels for clarity!. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles and stones visible today are shown coloured!.

Before the monument (8000 BC forward)

Some archaeologists have found four (or possibly five, although one may have been a natural tree throw) large Mesolithic postholes which date to around 8000 BC nearby, beneath the modern tourist car-park!. These held pine posts around 0!.75 metres (2!.5 ft) in diameter which were erected and left to rot in situ!. Three of the posts (and possibly four) were in an east-west alignment and may have had ritual significance; no parallels are known from Britain at the time but similar sites have been found in Scandinavia!. At this time, Salisbury Plain was still wooded but four thousand years later, during the earlier Neolithic, a cursus monument was built 600 metres (2,000 ft) north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the forest and exploit the area!. Several other early Neolithic sites, a causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood's Ball and long barrow tombs were built in the surrounding landscape!.

Stonehenge 1 (ca!. 3100 BC)
Stonehenge 1!. After Cleal et al!.
Stonehenge 1!. After Cleal et al!.

The first monument consisted of a circular bank and ditch enclosure made of Late Cretaceous (Santonian Age) Seaford Chalk, (7 and 8) measuring around 110 metres (360 ft) in diameter with a large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south (14)!. It stood in open grassland on a slightly sloping but not especially remarkable spot!. The builders placed the bones of deer and oxen in the bottom of the ditch as well as some worked flint tools!. The bones were considerably older than the antler picks used to dig the ditch and the people who buried them had looked after them for some time prior to burial!. The ditch itself was continuous but had been dug in sections, like the ditches of the earlier causewayed enclosures in the area!. The chalk dug from the ditch was piled up to form the bank!. This first stage is dated to around 3100 BC after which the ditch began to silt up naturally and was not cleared out by the builders!. Within the outer edge of the enclosed area was dug a circle of 56 pits, each around 1 metre (3!.3 ft) in diameter (13), known as the Aubrey holes after John Aubrey, the seventeenth century antiquarian who was thought to have first identified them!. The pits may have contained standing timbers, creating a timber circle although there is no excavated evidence of them!. A small outer bank beyond the ditch could also date to this period!.

Stonehenge 2 (ca!. 3000 BC)

Evidence of the second phase is no longer visible!. It appears from the number of postholes dating to this period that some form of timber structure was built within the enclosure during the early 3rd millennium BC!. Further standing timbers were placed at the northeast entrance and a parallel alignment of posts ran inwards from the southern entrance!. The postholes are smaller than the Aubrey Holes, being only around 0!.4 metres (16 in) in diameter and are much less regularly spaced!. The bank was purposely reduced in height and the ditch continued to silt up!. At least twenty-five of the Aubrey Holes are known to have contained later, intrusive, cremation burials dating to the two centuries after the monument's inception!. It seems that whatever the holes' initial function, it changed to become a funerary one during Phase 2!. Thirty further cremations were placed in the enclosure's ditch and at other points within the monument, mostly in the eastern half!. Stonehenge is therefore interpreted as functioning as an enclosed cremation cemetery at this time, the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles!. Fragments of unburnt human bone have also been found in the ditch fill!. Late Neolithic grooved ware pottery has been found in connection with the features from this phase providing dating evidence!.

Stonehenge 3 I (ca!. 2600 BC)
Stonehenge from the heelstone in 2007 with the 'Slaughter Stone' in the foreground
Stonehenge from the heelstone in 2007 with the 'Slaughter Stone' in the foreground

Archaeological excavation has indicated that around 2600 BC, timber was abandoned in favour of stone and two concentric crescents of holes (called the Q and R Holes) were dug in the centre of the site!. Again, there is little firm dating evidence for this phase!. The holes held up to 80 standing stones (shown blue on the plan) 43 of which, the bluestones (dolerite, a holocrystine igneous rock), were thought for much of the 20th century to have been transported by humans from the Preseli Hills, 250 kilometres (160 mi) away in modern day Pembrokeshire in Wales!. A newer theory is that they were brought from glacial deposits much nearer the site, which had been carried down from the northern side of the Preselis to southern England by the Irish Sea Glacier!.[5] Other standing stones may well have been small sarsens, used later as lintels!. The stones, which weighed about four tons, consisted mostly of spotted Ordovician dolerite but included examples of rhyolite, tuff and volcanic and calcareous ash!. Each measures around 2 metres (6!.6 ft) in height, between 1 m and 1!.5 m (3!.3-4!.9 ft) wide and around 0!.8 metres (2!.6 ft) thick!. What was to become known as the Altar Stone (1), is derived from either South Pembrokeshire or the Brecon Beacons and may have stood as a single large monolith!.

The north eastern entrance was also widened at this time with the result that it precisely matched the direction of the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset of the period!. This phase of the monument was abandoned unfinished however, the small standing stones were apparently removed and the Q and R holes purposefully backfilled!. Even so, the monument appears to have eclipsed the site at Avebury in importance towards the end of this phase!.

The Heelstone (5), a Tertiary sandstone, may also have been erected outside the north eastern entrance during this period although it cannot be securely dated and may have been installed at any time in phase 3!. At first, a second stone, now no longer visible, joined it!. Two, or possibly three, large portal stones were set up just inside the north eastern entrance of which only one, the fallen Slaughter Stone (4), 4!.9 metres (16 ft) long, now remains!. Other features loosely dated to phase 3 include the four Station Stones (6), two of which stood atop mounds (2 and 3)!. The mounds are known as 'barrows' although they do not contain burials!. The Avenue, (10), a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading 3 kilometres (1!.9 mi) to the River Avon was also added!. Two ditches similar to Heelstone Ditch circling the Heelstone, which was by then reduced to a single monolith, were later dug around the Station Stones!.

Stonehenge 3 II (2600 BC to 2400 BC)

The next major phase of activity at the tail end of the 3rd millennium BC saw 30 enormous Oligocene-Miocene sarsen stones (shown grey on the plan) brought from a quarry around 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Stonehenge, on the Marlborough Downs!. The stones were dressed and fashioned with mortise and tenon joints before 30 were erected as a 33 metres (110 ft) diameter circle of standing stones, with a ring of 30 lintel stones resting on top!. The lintels were fitted to one another using another woodworking method, the tongue and groove joint!. Each standing stone was around 4!.1 metres (13 ft) high, 2!.1 metres (6!.9 ft) wide and weighed around 25 tons!. Each had clearly been worked with the final effect in mind; the orthostats widen slightly towards the top in order that their perspective remains constant as they rise up from the ground while the lintel stones curve slightly to continue the circular appearance of the earlier monument!. The sides of the stones that face inwards are smoother and more finely worked than the sides that face outwards!. The average thickness of these stones is 1!.1 metres (3!.6 ft) and the average distance between them is 1 metre (3!.3 ft)!. A total of 74 stones would have been needed to complete the circle and unless some of the sarsens were removed from the site, it would seem that the ring was left incomplete!. Of the lintel stones, they are each around 3!.2 metres (10 ft), 1 metre (3!.3 ft) wide and 0!.8 metres (2!.6 ft) thick!. The tops of the lintels are 4!.9 metres (16 ft) above the ground!.

Within this circle stood five trilithons of dressed sarsen stone arranged in a horseshoe shape 13!.7 metres (45 ft) across with its open end facing north east!. These huge stones, ten uprights and five lintels, weigh up to 50 tons each and were again linked using complex jointings!. They are arranged symmetrically; the smallest pair of trilithons were around 6 metres (20 ft) tall, the next pair a little higher and the largest, single trilithon in the south west corner would have been 7!.3 metres (24 ft) tall!. Only one upright from the Great Trilithon still stands; 6!.7 metres (22 ft) is visible and a further 2!.4 metres (7!.9 ft) is below ground!.
Grafitti on the sarsen stones!. Below are ancient carvings of a dagger and an axe
Grafitti on the sarsen stones!. Below are ancient carvings of a dagger and an axe

The images of a 'dagger' and 14 'axe-heads&Www@QuestionHome@Com

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