Stonehenge Astronomy VIII: No Answers

When I first thought of writing a Stonehenge series of posts the plan was to just have four and put them up on the Monday mornings. I was thinking of basically covering the i-Science course, so the first Which Stonehenge would lead into one on geology, then another on engineering before finishing with Astronomy on June 20. I didn’t do this I was a bit concerned how I could write it up without overly influencing next year’s class if they found this. I don’t want to give the impression I have the definitive answers for the site. I’m not sure you can answer those kind of questions unless you build the site yourself. However I think there are some interesting questions.

Norfolk Wood Henge, a modern construction. Photo by Cer!se.

“Which Stonehenge?” is a big one. Channel 5 rebuilt a Bronze Age Stonehenge but it was the last in a series of monuments stretching back over a thousand years. Each generation might have had their own uses for the site and built their own relationships to the cosmos into the site. As time passed these links could have been forgotten but nevertheless remained in the material construction of the monument. By the time of the final phases did the sun alignments even matter?

Certainly they would not have been important all the time. It’s hard to see a site like Stonehenge being used just one or two days of the year. Even if that were the plan someone would have discovered a ritual that required him or her to be centre of attention at Stonehenge at some time when no-one else was using it. By the later stages of the monument use outside of the astronomically important times might have eroded the astronomical significance of the site. It could have been important not because of astronomical power, but simply through the weight of its age and prestige down the generations.

There’s probably no one answer to “What was it used for?” It almost certainly varied across the ages, but it also would have differed according to the needs of different times of the year. Do you think Wembley is a football stadium? Try playing football there when they’re holding a concert. Archaeologists say it was a ritual centre, but what sort of ritual? In an age when there were gods in all things what does the word ‘ritual’ really tell us? As a prominent landmark could it have also hosted markets? That leads us on to the final question and the biggest.

“Where’s the evidence?”

There’s no shortage of theories at Stonehenge. In stark contrast there is a real shortage of evidence despite the site having been exacavated around one year in three throughout the twentieth century. It’s only recently that English Heritage have published the combined results of these excavations in the brick-like ‘Stonehenge in its Landscape’. There are still large parts of the monument, like the west side, that we know nothing about because they haven’t been dug. Until we have more data it will be difficult to discard some theories. Unfortunately by digging the site we’ll destroy it, so there is arguably a responsibility to preserve for future, hopefully more hi-tech, generations to investigate. If you watch Stonehenge Live tonight then you may want to keep in mind this last question because it’s the evidence which sorts the good theories from the bad. —–