The old earthworls were now refashioned to highlight the northeast entrance

Thus confirming the import of monument's alignment with the solstices-an emphasis that perhaps reflected beliefs about the meaning of the stones in their location at Preseli,or perhaps the new beliefs of a changing age.At some later date the giant sarsens of hard sandstone were dragged in from the Marlborough Downs,20 to 30 miles away.Although subsequent ages would fiddle with the internal design,the erection of the sarsens-the great broad-shouldered guardians of the small stones from Wales-bestowed on Stonehenge its enduring aura of unassailable assurance.Mystifying as it is to us,there is no mistaking the confident purposefulness of its massive,monumental features.


Studies conducted by Michael Allen,an expert in environment archaeology,demonstrate that throughout the long period of stonehenge's construction,people of the area carried on with the mundane tasks of their lives.Charcoal remains,pollens of weeds associated with crops,and,most valuably,snail shells-which can be mathced to different habitats-slow that the Stonehenge landscape was cleared,grazed,and farmed.Whatever its function,Stonehenge was embedded in the community it served.I see it being used like a cathedral,or Wembley Stadium,Allen said Some days it was used to hold solemn rituals,other days for more ordinary gatherings.That so much has been found so recently on this historic landscape underscores how much may yet be revealed.Projected work on the avenue could establish when it was extended to the Avon,clarifying at what stage the river became ritually linked to the monument.Creation remain that were excavatedand reburied at the monument as long ago as 1935 could benefit from rigorous new analysis with up-to-date technology.In April Timothy Darvill and Geoffy Wainwright conducted a two-week dig in decades-hoping to pin down when the bluestone arrived.Their planned reexamination of skeletal remain from the Stonehenge region people had been in need of healing.Fieldwork already under way in the Preseli hills may yield datable burial finds,possibly shedding light on the significance of the Preseli stones.



To all those who seek to read the meaning of Stonehenge in its stones,ritual texts from the dawn of history offer cautionary tales.Take,for example,a random Late Broze Age text of ritual practice from the Luwians,who lived in what is now Turkey between roughly 1700B.C. and 800 B.C.,Then they hold it the sheep out to him and he spit into its mouth twice.The Old Woman speaks as follows,Spit out pain and woe,the god's anger....,Then they bring a piglet of dough and a living piglet.Thay wave the living piglet at some distance.It is fair to say that no diligent fieldwork or application of logic and reason could have led even a visionary archaeologist to reconstruct this ritual from artifacts like bones and ceramics.These are no texts to explain Stonehenge.Secure in its wordless prehistory,it can thus absorb a multitude of meanings ,temple to the sun-or the moon for that matter,astronomical calendar,city of the ancestral dead,center of healing,stone representation of the gods,symbol of status and power.The heart of its mystique is,surely,that it excites in equal measure both zealous certitude and utter bafflement.