In 1810 Sir Richard Colt Hoare, one of the first recorded excavators of Stonehenge, was moved to declare of the monument ‘How grand! How wonderful! How incomprehensible!’ His words still resonate today. In recent years, attempts to understand Stonehenge have shifted away from the locality of the monument itself. Instead, its connections with the Preseli Hills as the source of bluestones used in the later stages of its construction have become the centre of attention.
At the heart of this interest are questions that people ask in everyday conversation: What is Stonehenge? Why was it built? How did it work? And what did all those different kinds of stone mean to people back in the Late Neolithic? Surprisingly, these questions are rarely addressed by archaeologists, but our work suggests that clues to the answers survive in the Preseli landscape.
Circular arguments
Lots of ideas about Stonehenge have been peddled over the past 300 years, some based on a close reading of the evidence, others simply convenient fabrications that tell us more about ourselves than the ancient past. Not all of them can be right, but equally there is no reason to think that Stonehenge had a single, unchanging role and meaning throughout its 1,500-year lifespan. After all, recent re-dating of the site’s main components shows a complicated pattern of refurbishment and change (see box on pp.24-25). It is entirely plausible that such refinement of the physical fabric mirrors conceptual changes.
