stonehenge - English Heritage

047-120 section 2.qxd 6/21/05 4:20 PM Page 99
and geochemical surveys to create detailed plots of
anomalies to set alongside the aerial photographic evidence,
and broad use-pattern fingerprints to set alongside the
evidence of artefact scatters. In some cases the importance
of such work revolves around the definition of incompletely
known structures and monuments, for example the
Stonehenge Palisade Ditch, and here blanket rather than
selective geophysical studies are needed.
Combining data sets derived from a range of techniques,
based as they are on different sample intervals and with
markedly different constraints, will be a challenge for future
data capture, storage, analysis, and visualization systems.
Ceremony, ritual, and belief systems: In one sense this is
the most extensive and robust element of the database
relating to the Stonehenge Landscape. The density of
prehistoric ceremonial and ritual monuments in this small
area is probably greater than for any other part of the
British Isles. However, the proportion of sites that have
been excavated to modern standards with opportunities for
scientific studies that allow detailed insights into the date
and sequence of events, spatial variations in the nature and
extent of activities, and sampling for macroscopic and
microscopic environmental data is very low. While much has
been made of the results of antiquarian excavations, and
there is undoubtedly more to be learnt, new excavations at
typical sites within the Stonehenge Landscape are needed.
Social organization: Many papers and studies dealing with
prehistoric social organization and socio-cultural evolution
have used the Stonehenge area as a case study (e.g. Renfrew
1973a; Thomas 1999, 163–83), yet critical elements of the
picture are missing. This is most acute in relation to habitation
sites. It remains an outstanding issue as to whether people
lived in the Stonehenge area at all; a secondary issue being
whether such occupation may have been temporary, seasonal,
or more or less permanent. And beyond this there is the
question of settlement size and composition. Only in this way
will it be possible fully to address issues such as the scale and
organization of social units.
Economy, craft, and industry: Although the Stonehenge
Landscape is famed for its ritual and ceremonial monuments,
recent surveys and the results of excavations over the last
century or so show plentiful evidence for what is conventionally
referred to as industrial activity, especially flintworking. In fact
of course, the association of this work with ceremonial activity
may not be fortuitous and the question of embeddedness
between apparently diverse activities deserves further
attention. Small-scale flintworking is represented at a
surprising number of sites, throughout the fourth, third, and
second millennia BC, amongst them: in the ditch of the
Amesbury 42 long barrow, including refitting material (Harding
in Richards 1990, 99–104); and in Christie’s cutting V through
the ditch of the Cursus (Saville 1978, 17). Larger-scale activity is
represented by the working areas recognized at Wilsford Down
(Richards 1990, 158–71) and the mines north of Durrington
(Booth and Stone 1952). Geophysical surveys in both areas are
needed to define more closely the extent of these activities,
especially the presence of quarries and extraction pits.
Technical and comparative studies of in situ flintworking
assemblages have been undertaken by Saville (1978) and
Harding (in Richards 1990, 213–25), while specific classes of
flint artefact from sites in the Stonehenge Landscape include
Riley’s review of scrapers and petit tranchet derivative
arrowheads (in Richards 1990, 225–8). Saville’s (1978, 19)
comments on the use of flint derived from the clay with flint
deposits at the Winterbourne Stoke G45 barrow as against
the more commonly exploited chalk-derived nodules serves
to emphasize the need for further technological and
typological analyses (and cf. Piggott 1971, 52–3).
Trade and exchange: Discussions of this theme have been
dominated by the matter of the Stonehenge bluestones, their
origins, and the means by which they came to Salisbury Plain
(Green 1997; Scourse 1997; Williams-Thorpe et al. 1997).
Although the glacial-action theory has attracted supporters
over the years, human agency is generally considered the
most likely means of transport. As suggested below, however,
the further investigation of this topic requires work around the
source areas in southwest Wales as well as on Salisbury Plain.
The incidence of bluestone in other monuments around
Stonehenge is often commented upon in excavation reports
and remains intriguing. In some cases the material is assumed
to be waste from dressing the pillars of the bluestone circles
and horseshoe erected in Stonehenge Phase 3. In other cases,
as for example the block from Bowls Barrow (Cunnington
1889), the stone seems to be an original piece rather than
waste. It has long been postulated that another bluestone
monument existed in the area, perhaps near to where the
Stonehenge Cursus enters Fargo Plantation, but this is as yet
not proven. A quantification and mapping exercise to plot the
density and spread of bluestone fragments within monuments
around Stonehenge, building on the work already done (e.g.
Thorpe et al. 1991, figure 4 and table 2), may be enough to
highlight search areas to help pinpoint such a structure.
The bluestones and other structural components for
monument building were by no means the only items being
moved around in the Stonehenge Landscape or brought in
from other areas of Europe. In the early and middle
Neolithic exotic items such as the jadite axe from near
Stonehenge and the stone axes from western and northern
Britain travelled hundreds of kilometres from their source.
Together with several axes imported from Cornwall, mention
may also be made of the gabbroic pottery identified by
Peacock (1969) from Robin Hood’s Ball on the very eastern
edge of the distribution of such ware. Despite the potential
for petrological work on the pottery from other Neolithic and
Bronze Age sites in the Stonehenge Landscape, using both
macroscopic and microscopic analysis, very little seems to
have been done to date (cf. Cleal 1995).
During the later third millennium and early second
millennium BC the range of imports to the area increased
with the availability of new stone sources, metal objects,
and imported pottery. Amongst the stone artefacts known
to date, some of the finest include the Group XIII (spotted
dolerite) axe hammer from Wilsford G54 (Annable and
Simpson 1964, 43), and the battle axe from Shrewton
barrow G27 (Annable and Simpson 1964, 49). The origin of
possibly imported metal objects, shale, amber, and faience
beads from Wessex Culture contexts have been extensively
discussed (Branigan 1970; Newton and Renfrew 1970;
McKerell 1972; Watkins 1976; Barfield 1991; Needham 2000;
Illustration 79). Bradley and Chapman (1986) have
considered the general nature and development of longdistance
relations in the later Neolithic of the British Isles.
The continuation of long-distance relationships into the
later Iron Age may be suspected on the basis of coin finds
which form part of a widespread pattern across southern
England (De Jersey 1999).
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