stonehenge - English Heritage

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development of the rich Wessex burials draws on a
combination of local as well as exotic inspirations,
centuries-old traditions as well as up-to-date innovations.
Debate has also surrounded possible parallel
connections between the same regions in terms of
monument construction, design, and meaning. Aubrey Burl
(1997) proposed a series of similarities between the form of
Stonehenge 3 and the rock art it carried with various
horseshoe-shaped settings and rock art in Brittany, a view
subsequently challenged by Scarre (1997) who prefers the
autonomous development of these structures and motifs in
the two areas. However, focusing on relatively few sites and
limited geographical areas rather misses the point.
Connections along the Atlantic façade of Europe through
prehistoric and later times are well established and well
documented (Cunliffe 2001, 213–60); what is needed is a
more wide-ranging review of similarities and differences in
the structure and form of stone monuments dating to the
later third and second millennia BC throughout the Irish Sea
basin and western approaches.
Continental links extending beyond the stone circles and
megalithic constructions are represented in the form and
structure of round barrows and the timber monuments. The
use of stake-circles within barrow mounds has long been
recognized as a regular feature of monuments on both sides
of the English Channel, but especially in southern England
and the Netherlands (van Giffen 1938; Glasbergen 1954;
Gibson 1998a, 70–5). There are also close similarities in the
design of some metal artefacts and in the form and
decoration of the associated ceramic vessels in the two
regions, especially the Wessex biconical urns and the
Hilversum and Drakenstein urns of the Netherlands and
surrounding areas (Butler and Smith 1956; ApSimon 1972;
Illustration 83). Gibson (1998a, 63–70) has drawn attention
to certain similarities between the design of British
palisaded enclosures and contemporary examples on the
continental mainland. Recognizing that the English Channel
is as likely to encourage communications as to hinder it,
and that continental Europe is rather closer to central
southern England than many northern and western parts of
the British Isles, there is clearly much scope for further
studies of early prehistoric artefacts and monuments. That
communities living in or visiting the Stonehenge Landscape
were closely involved in those connections, perhaps through
links with coastal communities via the River Avon, is amply
demonstrated by the presence of imported objects such as
the Armorican vase à anses from Winterbourne Stoke G5
(Tomalin 1988, 209–10).
Still longer-distance relationships have been proposed
for some archaeological elements within the Stonehenge
Landscape, although the evidence is contentious and
difficult to interpret. As far back as the later nineteenth
century, for example, the possibility of contact with the
eastern Mediterranean was discussed in some seriousness.
In a paper to the British Archaeological Association in
August 1880, Dr John Phené reviewed analogies between
Stonehenge and sites in the Mediterranean, noting
especially the Cyclopean walling and other architectural
details found in the fortified citadels of Mycenean Greece. It
was a link later picked up by Oscar Montelius (1902) and
others, and reinforced by the recognition that at least some
of the rich grave goods in barrows of the Wessex Culture
could be paralleled amongst objects from the shaft graves
of Mycenae itself (and see Piggott 1938, 94–6; Atkinson
1979, 165–6). Yet more support was provided by the
recognition of what was interpreted as a Mycenean dagger
of Karo B type amongst the rock art discovered at
Stonehenge in the early 1950s (Crawford 1954, 27). By 1956,
Richard Atkinson felt able to ask: ‘is it then any more
incredible that the architect of Stonehenge should himself
have been a Mycenaean, than that the monument should
have been designed and erected, with all its unique and
sophisticated detail, by mere barbarians?’ (Atkinson 1956,
164). A decade later, this Aegean view, and the diffusionist
perspective that it represented, were called into question by
Colin Renfrew (1968; 1973b) when it became apparent from
radiocarbon dating that the main features of Stonehenge
were more than 1000 years older than the supposed
prototypes in Greece. Discussion and debate has continued
because further refinements to the dating have made the
picture still more complicated (see Selkirk 1972 for useful
summary; also Barfield 1991). Here it is important to
separate out Stonehenge itself from the contents of the rich
graves round about. The construction and associated
primary use of Stonehenge can now be placed very clearly
within the third millennium BC; there is very little evidence
for constructional work after about 2000 BC, although it
may of course have continued in use in the form that it had
reached by that stage. This is clearly too early for any
significant connection with Mycenean architecture securely
dated to the middle centuries of the second millennium BC,
and Renfrew’s argument stands.
By contrast, the rich graves of Piggott’s Wessex Culture
seem to belong mainly to the first half of the second
millennium BC and thus appear to post-date the main
constructional activity at Stonehenge. Amongst the items
from these graves that may have been imported from the
Mediterranean are: the crescentic earring from Wilsford
Barrow G8, faience beads, and the Bush Barrow bone
mounts. Amber spacer plates may have been moving in the
opposite direction, from northern Europe to the
Mediterranean (Harding 1984, 263). However, within the
broad span of the early and middle second millennium BC,
the dating of Wessex Culture burials remains difficult and it
is still uncertain to what extent the conventionally
recognized Wessex I and II sub-phases should be seen as
successive, partly overlapping in duration, or essentially
contemporaneous; this is a matter that could usefully be
clarified by a programme of radiocarbon dating material
from excavated graves. With the dating of the Mycenean
shaft graves and associated Late Mycenean/Late Helladic
material culture to the period from 1600 BC through to
about 1200 BC (Harding 1984, 12–15) there is clearly some
potential chronological overlap with the Wessex Culture,
and thus the possibility of links whether through the
exchange of actual objects (cf. Branigan 1970) or through
the transfer of knowledge. Concluding his exhaustive review
of the Myceneans overseas, Anthony Harding noted that
‘one has no alternative but to reject the possibility of any
regular contact between Britain and Mycenean Greece …
sporadic contact … can be accounted for by very few
individual acts of exchange’ (1984, 265). If the object carved
on the inner face of Stone 53 is indeed a Mycenean dagger,
there is no need to associate it with the construction or
primary use of the site; the addition of individually
meaningful symbols to existing structures as ‘graffiti’ is a
millennia-old practice that still continues. By the middle of
the second millennium BC, Stonehenge had clearly become
a sufficiently significant place to attract more than its fair
share of the richest burials in the British Isles to its
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