Excavations at Stonehenge
Encyclopedia

Early research

The first known excavations at Stonehenge were undertaken by Dr William Harvey
William Harvey
William Harvey was an English physician who was the first person to describe completely and in detail the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the body by the heart...

 and Gilbert North in the early 17th century. Both Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...

 and the Duke of Buckingham also dug there shortly afterwards. In 1666 the antiquarian John Aubrey
John Aubrey
John Aubrey FRS, was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He is perhaps best known as the author of the collection of short biographical pieces usually referred to as Brief Lives...

 could still see the central sunken hollow where the Duke of Buckingham’s pit had been filled. A few minor investigations followed.

Further excavations at Stonehenge were carried out by William Cunnington
William Cunnington
William Cunnington was a pioneering English antiquarian and archaeologist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. His work centred on excavating the barrows of Salisbury Plain. The first recorded excavations at Stonehenge were done by William Cunnington & Richard Colt Hoare in 1798...

 and Richard Colt Hoare
Richard Colt Hoare
Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 2nd Baronet FRS was an English antiquarian, archaeologist, artist, and traveller of the 18th and 19th centuries, the first major figure in the detailed study of the history of his home county, Wiltshire.-Career:Hoare was descended from Sir Richard Hoare, Lord Mayor of...

. In 1798, Cunnington investigated the pit beneath a recently fallen trilithon, and in 1810 both men dug beneath the fallen Slaughter Stone and concluded that it had once stood up. They may have also excavated one of the Aubrey Holes beneath it. In 1839, a Captain Beamish dug around the Altar Stone, and not long after that Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 was granted permission by the Antrobus family who owned Stonehenge to conduct a small excavation to test his theories about earthworm
Earthworm
Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. In classical systems they were placed in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening posterior to the female pores, even though the internal male segments are anterior to the female...

 activity burying ancient structures.

Modern studies

On New Year's Eve 1900, Stone 22 of the Sarsen Circle fell over, taking with it a lintel. Following public pressure and a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

by William Flinders Petrie, the then owner of Stonehenge, Edmund Antrobus, agreed to some remedial engineering work to be undertaken with archaeological supervision so that records could be made of the below ground archaeology. Antrobus appointed a mining engineer named William Gowland
William Gowland
William Gowland was an English mining engineer most famous for his archaeological work at Stonehenge and in Japan. He is known in Japan as the "Father of Japanese Archaeology", which is an exaggeration. He was a major founding figure....

 to manage the work. Despite having no archaeological training, Gowland produced some of the finest, most detailed excavation records ever made at the monument. Gowland established that antler picks were used to dig the stone holes and suggested the stones themselves were worked to shape on site.

The largest series of excavations at Stonehenge were undertaken by Colonel William Hawley
William Hawley
Lieutenant-Colonel William Hawley was a British archaeologist who most famously undertook pioneering excavations at Stonehenge....

 and his assistant Robert Newall after the site came into state hands. Stonehenge and 30 acres (121,405.8 m²) of land was purchased by Mr. Cecil Chubb for £6,600 on September 21, 1915 for his wife — she donated the land to the British government three years later. Their work began in 1919 following the transfer of land, funded by the Office of Works
Office of Works
The Office of Works was established in the English Royal household in 1378 to oversee the building of the royal castles and residences. In 1832 it became the Works Department within the Office of Woods, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings...

, and continued until 1926. Hawley and Newall excavated portions of most of the features at Stonehenge and were the first to establish that it was a multi-phase site.

In 1950 the Society of Antiquaries
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...

 commissioned Richard J. C. Atkinson
Richard J. C. Atkinson
Richard John Copland Atkinson CBE was a British prehistorian and archaeologist.-Biography:He was born in Evershot, Dorset and went to Sherborne School and then Magdalen College, Oxford, reading PPE...

, Stuart Piggott
Stuart Piggott
Stuart Ernest Piggott CBE was a British archaeologist best known for his work on prehistoric Wessex.Born in Petersfield, Hampshire, Piggott was educated at Churcher's College and on leaving school in 1927 took up a post as assistant at Reading Museum where he developed an expertise in Neolithic...

 and John FS Stone to carry out further excavations. They recovered many cremations and developed the phrasing that still dominates much of what is written about Stonehenge.

As part of service trenching in 1979 and 1980, Mike Pitts led two smaller investigations close by the Heelstone, finding the evidence for its neighbour. More recent excavations have been held to mitigate the effects of electrical cables, sewage pipes, and a footpath through the site.

Since 2003, Mike Parker Pearson has led investigations in the stones area as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project
Stonehenge Riverside Project
The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a major AHRC-funded archaeological research study of the development of the Stonehenge landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain...

 in an attempt to better relate Stonehenge to its surrounding environs. National Geographic Channel screened a two hour documentary exploring Parker Pearson's theories and the work of the Riverside Project in depth in May 2008. In April 2008 Professor Tim Darvill of the University of Bournemouth and Professor Geoff Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...

 excavated a small area inside the stone circle It is hoped this will establish a more precise date for the earliest stone structure that occupied the Q and R Holes.

Britain's Bournemouth University
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth University is a university in and around the large south coast town of Bournemouth, UK...

 archaeologists, led by Geoffrey Wainwright, president of the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 Society of Antiquaries
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...

, and Timothy Darvill, on September 22, 2008, found it may have been an ancient healing and pilgrimage site, since burials around Stonehenge showed trauma and deformity evidence: "It was the magical qualities of these stones which ... transformed the monument and made it a place of pilgrimage for the sick and injured of the Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 world." Radio-carbon dating places the construction of the circle of bluestones at between 2,400 B.C. and 2,200 B.C., but they discovered charcoals dating 7,000 B.C., showing human activity in the site. It could be a primeval equivalent of Lourdes
Lourdes
Lourdes is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France.Lourdes is a small market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees, famous for the Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous...

, since the area was already visited 4,000 years before the oldest stone circle
Stone circle
A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....

, and attracted visitors for centuries after its abandonment.

See also

  • Stonehenge
    Stonehenge
    Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...

  • Archaeoastronomy and Stonehenge
    Archaeoastronomy and Stonehenge
    The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge has long been studied for its possible connections with ancient astronomy. Archaeoastronomers have claimed that Stonehenge represents an "ancient observatory," although the extent of its use for that purpose is in dispute...

  • Battle of the Beanfield
    Battle of the Beanfield
    The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on the afternoon of Saturday 1 June 1985 when Wiltshire Police prevented a vehicle convoy of several hundred new age travellers, known as "The Convoy" and referred to in the media as the "Peace Convoy" from setting up at the 11th Stonehenge...

  • Theories about Stonehenge
    Theories about Stonehenge
    Stonehenge has been subjected to many theories about its origin, ranging from the academic worlds of archaeology to explanations from mythology and the paranormal.-Early theories:...

  • Stonehenge replicas and derivatives
    Stonehenge replicas and derivatives
    This is list of Stonehenge replicas and derivatives that seeks to collect all the non-ephemeral examples together. The fame of the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge has led to numerous efforts to recreate it, using a variety of different materials, around the world...

  • Stone circle
    Stone circle
    A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....

  • Cultural depictions of Stonehenge
    Cultural depictions of Stonehenge
    The Prehistoric landmark of Stonehenge is distinctive and famous enough to have become frequently referenced in popular culture. The landmark has become a symbol of British culture and history, owing to its distinctiveness and its long history of being portrayed in art, literature and advertising...

  • Stonehenge road tunnel
    Stonehenge road tunnel
    The Stonehenge road tunnel was a controversial tunnel in Wiltshire, England proposed by the Highways Agency to upgrade the A303 road. It would have moved the A303 into a tunnel under the Stonehenge World Heritage Site and close the A344 road...

  • Stonehenge Riverside Project
    Stonehenge Riverside Project
    The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a major AHRC-funded archaeological research study of the development of the Stonehenge landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain...

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