Stonehenge
Stonehenge in Wiltshire is the most famous prehistoric monument in the world, a circular arrangement of enormous standing stones on Salisbury Plain that has been a place of human activity, ceremonial significance and intellectual fascination for over five thousand years. The monument we see today is the culmination of a building process that extended over fifteen centuries, from the first earthwork enclosure of around 3000 BC through the erection of the bluestones transported from Wales and the great sarsen trilithons of approximately 2500 BC to the final rearrangements completed by about 1500 BC. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the centrepiece of a landscape of Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial monuments of international significance.
The engineering achievement of Stonehenge remains impressive even in an age of heavy machinery. The sarsen stones, the largest weighing approximately 25 tonnes, were transported from the Marlborough Downs approximately 25 kilometres to the north using human muscle, wooden sledges and possibly water transport for part of the journey. The bluestones of the inner circle, each weighing up to four tonnes, were transported from the Preseli Hills in Wales approximately 250 kilometres away, a feat of logistical organisation that implies a social complexity and a capacity for long-distance coordination that challenges many assumptions about Neolithic society.
The purpose of Stonehenge continues to generate scholarly debate. The alignment of the monument on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, the most consistent astronomical alignments built into the structure, suggests a ceremonial function related to the solar calendar, and the evidence for cremation burials in the monument over many centuries indicates its use as a funerary site. Whether it served primarily as a temple, an astronomical observatory, a place of healing or some combination of these and other functions remains unclear and perhaps permanently unknowable.
The visitor centre opened in 2013 provides an excellent introduction to the monument and the surrounding landscape before the short walk or shuttle to the stones themselves.