How to build Stonehenge – Mike Pitts/Thames & Hudson (2022)
In addition to Mike Pitts’ recent book on the construction of Stonehenge it is important to acknowledge an academic paper published in Mercian Geologist 2021 20 (2) with the title ‘The Sarsens of the West Woods, Marlborough Downs and Stonehenge’ which is a vital source for the book and written by Peter Worsley of Reading University with the advice and help of many others.
Unlike the smaller ‘bluestones’ which were brought to the site of Stonehenge around 3000 BC from south Wales the origin of the large sarsen megaliths has long been unsolved. They were brought to the site around 2500 BC when the site was completed in its final form. As the paper states after the reacquisition of a sarsen core from Stone 58, extracted over 60 years before, the more sophisticated analyses using techniques dependent upon sample core material, had enabled a confident assignment of the West Woods area as the main source area for the Stonehenge sarsens. The sarsens at West Woods are widely dispersed and it would be premature to claim that the mystery has been fully resolved: there may be a more local source on Salisbury Plain and 2 stones (26 and 160) have a different chemistry from the majority of the others so their source is unknown.
Having discussed the origins of the Stonehenge sarsens the book and the paper go on to discuss the issue which is relevant to all walks: the route.
First there seems to be a consensus as to how they moved the sarsens: a wooden track of tree trunks would have been laid down the length of the 25-30 kls between the Marlborough Downs and the Stonehenge site and the massive stones fitted into large sledges to which ropes of some kind would have been attached to enable our ancestors to haul them all that distance.
The sketch map above illustrates the four most likely hypothetical haulage routes from the Marlborough Downs to Stonehenge proposed by 1. Richard Atkinson 2. Tim Daw 3. Mike Parker Pearson and 4. Patrick Hill
Mike Pitts points out in his book that Hill’s solution was one in which ‘more than three quarters of the journey was downslope...his (Hill’s) idea of following valleys, especially that of the River Avon, seems eminently sensible - not to float the stones... but as a way of avoiding the climb onto the high plain.’
Pitt’s conclusion follows that of Peter Worsley in his paper who says: ‘Assuming that the West Woods were the source of the Stonehenge Sarsens, I would suggest that the geomorphological attribute of the area indicates that the easiest way south would be via the 213m OD col through the chalk scarp just north of Huish. (this is 4m lower than at Knap Hill)…. As Hill realised, if the heights of heights of Salisbury Plain are to be avoided then the alternative is to follow the Avon valley south of Upavon. The Huish col lies directly north of Upavon. Interestingly, Parker Pearson et al. (2020) state ‘There can be little question that it (River Avon) served as a direct conduit between different places, monument and realms.’ Perhaps the pendulum of archaeological opinion is now poised to swing behind Hill’s view that the Avon valley, rather than the Salisbury Plain with its attendant uphill problems, was the way the sarsens were taken ...’ to Stonehenge.
As Hill (2011) prosaically concluded ‘we will never know the full story of the stones and assuming the easiest route is the route they took may be a mistake.’ After all, walkers don’t always choose the easiest routes, but then they aren’t hauling sarsen stones after them.
Two further thoughts:
Mike Pitts in his preface reminds us that ‘Stonehenge is also the most copied monument.… beginning in the 18th century, when John Wood designed the Circus in Bath - a grand ring of Georgian terraced houses – and William Stukeley his garden in Grantham, Lincolnshire, both based on Stonehenge’s layout.’
Duncan Garrow and Neil Wilkin in their work on the world of Stonehenge say, ‘It is a paradox of the deep past that more is known about monuments, including Stonehenge, than it is about the society that built them. Given the efforts involved, Stonehenge was surely constructed by a society with the political drive and community buy-in to see the project through to its successful completion.’
A further paradox may be that a Stonehenge, a monument one function of which is to celebrate solar power in its widest sense, may still be standing when human life, perhaps all life, may no longer exist on this planet; allowed to happen by a society, which despite all its rhetoric of globalisation, and growth in wealth and technical expertise of many kinds, was lacking in just that political drive and community buy-in to see through the struggle against climate change and parallel loss of biodiversity.’