stonehenge - English Heritage

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experienced and how people engaged with it (see Tilley
1994). Following these ideas a team based at Birmingham
University has developed an interactive CD-ROM-based
visualization of the landscape around Stonehenge allowing
journeys through real and imagined worlds (Exon et al. 2001).
FINDING THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF
THE STONEHENGE LANDSCAPE
The investigations and studies carried out to date allow a
general overview of the achievement and potential of a
range of archaeological techniques and major sources which
can be expected to help find out about the archaeology of
the Stonehenge Landscape in future. These are reviewed in
the following sub-sections, starting with non-interventional
approaches. Statistics about the number and extent of
surveys and interventions are taken from the Stonehenge
Landscape GIS (see below).
Ground-based geophysical surveys
Contributed by Andrew David
In recent years, geophysical survey has played a major role in
mapping and unravelling the archaeology of the Stonehenge
Landscape. The applications of geophysical survey in the WHS
were reviewed in 1996 (David and Payne 1997) and a number
of specific recommendations and targets for future work were
proposed (David and Payne 1997, 107–10). That review, and its
proposals, remain substantially unchanged at the present time
of writing and should be a starting point for consideration of
geophysical applications to archaeological research in the
WHS. In the light of experience in the Stonehenge area, the
opportunity is taken here to provide a brief critical overview
together with a much-abbreviated assessment of the further
contributions that these methods can add to a better
understanding of this landscape and its monuments.
At current reckoning, the total area surveyed using
geophysical prospective methods up until 2001 within the
Stonehenge Landscape amounts to 3.1602 square kilometres,
about 2 per cent of the total area (Map B). Of this, 0.6891
square kilometres of surveyed ground lie outside the World
Heritage Site, 2.4710 square kilometres inside. This is mostly
magnetometer survey, a substantial proportion of which has
been commissioned as part of the evaluation of the several
options for visitor centres and road corridors. Magnetometer
survey has been the technique of choice, not only because it is
relatively rapid and hence cost-effective, but also because it is
particularly responsive, with proven efficacy for the detection
of features such as pits and ditches on chalkland geology
(Illustration 10). This reputation has been vindicated many
times in the Stonehenge area where, for instance, the Greater
and Lesser Cursus, Coneybury henge, and the interior of
Durrington Walls have all produced distinct magnetic
signatures. At Durrington Walls, no fewer than four new
enclosures and an abundance of pits have been found within
the earthwork enclosure. At Coneybury it was a magnetometer
survey that located the remarkable early Neolithic pit, now
familiarly known in the literature as ‘The Anomaly’.
Earth resistance survey, which is a more time-consuming
method and at the mercy of seasonal variation in soil
moisture, has been applied very sparingly and only on
specific monuments, such as Stonehenge itself, where its
ability to locate pits, ditches, and remnant bank material
was apparent. The method has an advantage over
magnetometry on account of its superior ability to locate
buried megaliths and megalith settings, which is best
Illustration 10
Plot of the results from a
geophysical survey of the
Lesser Cursus in 1993.
[Survey by Alastair Bartlett
for English Heritage.]
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