WAS STONEHENGE A BURIAL MOUND?

 

A Critical Look at "Stonehenge: new  interpretation of the 

architectural remains" by Didier Laroche

 

The 'new interpretation' outlined in this paper proposes that the main 'Sarsen' phase of  Stonehenge was essentially a huge round barrow, only with the centre missing and no central burial. The theory suffers from several shortcomings, with, not the least being that there are no burials at all associated with the hypothesised mound phase nor any viable explanation of how the central stone monument was relevant in this role. The whole hypothesis hinges on  the way the stones were shaped and finished and a perceived anomaly in dating the sequence of construction. In neither instance are alternative explanations considered, and the local regional developments that might explain these anomalies are ignored in favour of suggested links to Mediterranean Bronze Age civilisations.

 

This paper recently appeared on my Academia feed and, intrigued, I downloaded it. The paper is undated, but has references up to 2008, so is presumably more recent than that. It is essentially a new take on an old theory that involved building a temporary chalk mound to place the stones in position.

 Fig 1: Laroche's impression of the mound around Stonehenge. (from Laroche, n.d.)

In this version of the theory, however, the mound remains as part of the finished monument rather than just a building technique to be removed once the structure was complete. Laroche suggests that the main circle of  Sarsen¹ stones (see, with the gaps filled with dry stone walling (as in the earlier chambered tombs of Britain and Europe), was used to hold back an outer mound or cairn extending out to the line of the Aubrey Holes². The monument, he maintains, was always a burial place, and the mound was simply a later phase of the cemetery. He dismisses the absence of burials from this phase by suggesting that since the burials were all within the mound, they all disappeared when the mound was demolished. He says nothing of the  abundant evidence for a long tradition of oval and later circular enclosures (without mounds) which could be seen to culminate in the complex engineering feat that is Stonehenge Phase II.

The identification by Laroche of Stonehenge II as a burial mound, along with the additional working of the stones and the structural complexity, is taken as evidence of Mediterranean influence, if not actual participation. Comparison is invited to Aegean and Egyptian tombs, although he stops short of stating that the builders were actually from the eastern Mediterranean.

 

 Fig 2: The dry stone infill - with a suitably Mediterranean-looking figure for scale. (from Laroche, n.d.)

He begins by saying that the inner faces of the stones in the Sarsen circle are much more carefully dressed and finished than the outer faces, which tend to be varied and irregular. This was because, Laroche maintains, only the inner face was intended to be seen - because the outer face was covered by the mound. The difference he notes between the inner and outer faces is valid in part, although it ignores the difference in quality of stone and overall dressing between the back (southern) and the front (Avenue side) of the monument. In fact, many of the stones are quite well finished on both sides (eg. stones 1, 4, 5, 7), which rather counters the argument for a mound to hide them.

Laroche's next assertion is that the only recognised entrance to the stone circle, on the solstice alignment between stones 30 &1, is no wider than many of the other gaps between the stones. It is therefore not grand enough for a Neolithic "monumental entrance" and probably wasn't one at all³. This claim ignores completely all the other aligned elements that point to this as the entrance to the circle: the Avenue, the entrance through the ditch, the Heel Stone and Slaughter Stone (along with several missing marker stones), and the Altar Stone and Solstice Trilithon on the other side. It also leaves out  the wider gaps beside stones 11 and 22, two very 'thin' uprights, that may have been entrances, but in any case marked the points one and two thirds of the way around the circumference — with the point of origin being the gap between stones 30 & 1.

So why is there no increase in scale or grandeur to mark the entrance? There could be many reasons, but significantly there is no tradition in Neolithic Britain for such accentuated gateways — at best a few circles have slightly larger stones flanking the entrance, which is usually slightly wider than other gaps between stones or posts. It may be, for the sake of argument, that the actual entrance was considered to be the gap in the ditch — and that was marked by several large entrance stones, by gaps in both bank and ditch, and by the Heel Stone at the end of the Avenue.One must also consider the view from this point across the monument to the tallest trilithon; it is probable that the main occasion on which a ceremonial entrance might be made would quite probably be at sunset on the winter solstice,  and with the whole structure backlit by the low sun, an extra large entranceway might actually diminish the awesome effect of the moment. Needless to say, this visual effect would disappear completely if there was a 4m high mound in the way.

Which brings me to the crucial criticism of this and all other 'mound' theories. The size of the proposed mound is substantial: more than 40 m in radius and 4.2m high in the middle. Even with a hollow centre a mound like this would require a huge volume of chalk to be taken from a large (probably shallow) quarry, most likely very near the monument⁴. There is no sign within the nearby landscape of any quarrying on this scale. There were not even any remnants of ramps, let alone an entire mound, in any of the excavations at Stonehenge. The same may be said, incidentally, of the dry stone walling supposed to have been used between the stones: no remnants or loose blocks have been found in excavations covering well over a third of the monument. It is really very unlikely that the  long ramp idea commonly used for building  in the Near East was used in the construction of Stonehenge, and even less likely that there was ever a sizeable mound anywhere inside the ditch.

There is one final point I would like to examine. Laroche suggests that the dating of the Trilithons suggests that they were raised after the erection of the outer ring of Sarsens, and that Parker Pearson and others have discounted this as impractical.  Laroche's theory of a hollow-centred mound does, he claims, overcomes the problem with this anomaly as the trilithons  could be dragged into place over the top of the outer circle, thereby putting the dates for the circle and trilithons in 'correct' order.

  

 Fig 3: Additional  ramps required for erection of the trilithons (from Laroche, n.d.)

First, on his own admission, this would require temporary earthworks in the hollow centre to support the trilithon stones to their positions (see fig 3). He does not mention the considerable difficulty of moving this earth out again (without an entrance) when the erection was complete. Significantly, though, this reasoning fails because it is an unnecessary complication. The idea that the dates are out of sequence is largely the result of a misunderstanding by Laroche of the nature of radiocarbon dates and the limits of precision inherent in the technique. If the matter of statistical deviation from the central point of each date is taken into account, the single date obtained for the trilithons is well within the acceptable variation for the several dates for the outer structure, suggesting that they are all essentially indistinguishable in radiocarbon terms and part of the same construction phase, in no particular order.

So, the article gives no real evidence for foreign influence; none for contemporary burials, ramps, or a mound; and no consideration of alternative reasons — such as symbolism or that perhaps the smoothed surfaces internally might have, say, desirable acoustic properties. All these, seen in conjunction with a poor understanding of the dating and archaeology of the site, make this whole hypothesis, or indeed any part of  it, unlikely to be worthy of serious consideration as an explanation for the main phase of the Stonehenge monument.

NOTES

Most of the terms used here are well known or explained in the root post on this blog " Stonehenge: an introduction".

1  Sarsen is a hard sandstone rock found in places on the top of the Wiltshire chalks and was the stone used to build Stonehenge Phase II (=Atkinson's Phase III).

2 The Aubrey Holes are a circle of 56 pits dug just inside the bank and ditch, first discovered by John Aubrey and now known to be perhaps the oldest part in the Stonehenge monument.

3 The concept of a monumental entrance to a tomb appears to be drawn from his comparison with Aegean and Egyptian tombs.

4  To judge from other sites (such as Silbury Hill) where mounds and banks are sourced usually from adjacent ditches and scrapes.

ON ICE SHEETS AND ALTAR STONES

 

ON ICE SHEETS AND ALTAR STONES

 

The Altar Stone, half hidden beneath the massive stones of the collapsed trilithon.

(Both Photographs on this post courtesy of 'The Stones of Stonehenge' website & Simon Banton)

There have been numerous articles in the media recently about the Altar Stone, and how it might have been brought south by glacial action during the last ice age. For each and every one of these, there is a single answer. Not true! To be fair, part of the blame must lie with the writers of the original paper in the Journal of Quaternary Science (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.70080  Clarke et al 2026) who left the door open to supposition with somewhat ambiguous wording. But we should, as they say, begin at the beginning.

 Location of the Altar Stone at the heart of the stone structure (source unknown)

In 2024, Clarke and others put out  a paper in Nature (Vol 632:570-575) that analysed the Zircon and trace element signature of the Altar Stone and showed that it was not from Wales, or as suggested by preliminary results, from Orkney,  but from Old Red Sandstone outcrops in NE Scotland, probably in the area around Caithness. At that time, the consensus seemed to be that any movement of stones (erratics) by the ice sheets and glaciers during the Pleistocene would have taken them northwards or eastwards, and definitely nowhere nearer to Stonehenge, over 700km to the south.

By 2026, Clarke and his fellows had become a little less precise. They said in the Quaternary Studies paper: "However, its source location within this large basin remains unresolved and its mode of transport uncertain."

In the end, they accepted the Caithness area as the closest match, with two nearby outcrops as possibilities. These were around Inverness on the Great Glen, and a small outlier to the east at New Aberdour. They then used computer modelling to look at how any erratics from these outcrops could have been moved by glaciation. They found that in certain circumstances, especially with displacement in several stages of glacial advance and retreat, some of these stones could have been moved east and then south into the far side of the area known as Doggerland, somewhere off the coast of what is today southern Denmark — this is from the least likely of the three models, New Aberdour. From Caithness, the most likely, ice  might have transported an erratic to the sea 150km further north, where the distance to Stonehenge was almost as much as the direct route from the outcrop. And note, this would still have been around 6000 years before the construction of Stonehenge. Clarke's paper states that the New Aberdour option would have brought the erratics  c470km south, implying the distance to Stonehenge would be halved; in fact, the direction is south-east, and the reduction in distance is minimal, and a considerable land journey dragging the stone would have been needed to get it to a place safe from (as yet unforeseen) submergence.

Because, as sea levels rose during the Mesolithic, Doggerland was fairly rapidly submerged beneath what is now the North Sea and anything carried there by ice would have been many fathoms beneath the sea. So before that happened — still around 3000 years before Stonehenge — Mesolithic hunters would have had to have considered this rock so important that they moved it across the landscape to a position where, presumably by chance, it would be safe from inundation.  And that would leave it either on the northern English coast or more likely on the coast of the European mainland. From there it would still have been necessary to haul or float it  all the way to Stonehenge. Clarke et al had to admit: "The need to invoke such a long, multi-stage chain of events challenges the plausibility of Dogger Bank as an intermediate source." Yet in their conclusions, they allow that this option is "plausible" after all. This was the loophole the media needed to make headlines about glacial transport to Stonehenge.

So that soon we had articles all over the papers and online media saying things varying between the strong possibility that the stones could have been transported much closer to Stonehenge and the absolute certainty that this was how it happened. None of them relayed the evident unlikeliness of this happening (partly because Clarke's paper failed to make it at all clear in the conclusions) or the huge gaps in time between the various stages of the transport. And the impression given in the paper that the ice transport to Dogger might have shortened the journey considerably — it doesn't actually say that, but the wording does allow you to think it if you don't look too closely — does encourage such flights of fancy.

 

The reality is that any such ice transportation was very unlikely to begin with, and would not have brought an erratic closer to Stonehenge. Add to that the human action in the Mesolithic that would have been necessary to get it somewhere it could be found later and taken to Stonehenge ...

I mean, it's possible (just), but no-one could seriously call it "plausible".  Not when long journeys with large megaliths were quite evidently within the means and experience of Late Neolithic people in the British Isles. Not when there is already strong evidence that people drove livestock to Stonehenge from the north of Britain (let's not insist on Orkney, that's also far from proven) around 2500BC. We don't know whether they used sea-going boats to move the stones but that information will come eventually, as long as we are looking for the right evidence and not some proof of what is surely no more than a fantasy.

PUBLISHED: THE HEART OF THE WORLD

PUBLISHED: THE HEART OF THE WORLD

 

Stonehenge at the dawn of the Bronze Age.

Son of the greatest shaman of the age, Ulrac has a momentous legacy to uphold. But with his family falling apart as rivals threaten his leadership, he still has a lot to learn. The seer will need all his supernatural strength to battle wild beasts, warriors, plots and plagues if he is to save his family and his people from disaster — but are the spirits really with him this time?

 

Available through:  https://mybook.to/hotw

MORE ON MEASURING TIME

 

MORE ON MEASURING TIME

 

After my post last year deconstructing Darvill's Stonehenge Calendar theory, I thought I might expand a little on my ideas concerning Neolithic calendars. The starting point has to be that a calendar is pointless if it is more complex or more precise than it needs to be. I would argue that one that fixes the length of the week, perhaps even naming the days, and squeezes the months to fit into the solar year so that you need a chart or a book to keep track of it all, would have been totally superfluous in rural, small-scale societies such as existed in Northern Europe in the Neolithic.

At the end of the Pleistocene, around 12 000 years ago, humans living in the Near East began to settle into smaller territories and even perhaps experiment with sedentary village life. Once they could watch the sun and moon rise and set from a single spot all year round, they would soon have realised that there were patterns to the variation in where the celestial orbs rose and set. A few years of observation would have shown the regularity of the sun's movement around the horizon and I'm sure they worked out very quickly that as the sunrise and sunset moved northward, the days grew longer (and why) and that the opposite was true as it tracked south again. They would equally soon have noticed the movement coming to a halt for several days at each end of the swing. From here it was a short step to picking one of these nodes as the start and end of the annual cycle, the 'New Year'.

Admittedly, the absence of movement at the solstices would have made it hard to judge precisely when the turning point occurred, but on the plus side it gave you several days from which to pick the best for outdoor community celebrations. And what could it possibly matter if one year was 362 days and the next was 369? Day by day accuracy was not required for planting and harvesting schedules, so why complicate things? The system was, in any case, self-correcting both through the year and over longer periods. There was no call to set leap years, because any inaccuracy disappeared within the mobility of the chosen turning point.

I would argue that for early farmers such as these, the summer solstice comes in the middle of the growing season, and that the quiet time of midwinter was the more obvious choice for the turning of the years. If they were then to calculate the mid-points between the solstices, our farmers would have a useful aid to their activities which was perhaps more reliable than the weather alone. You could mark the four points on the horizon with posts around the village, and everyone knew to plant around the spring equinox, harvest around or after the summer solstice, and pick your fruits and make preserves by the autumn mid-point. Or you could do it in a coded way and introduce an 'enlightened' cabal into your society.

 

Anyone could gauge the passage of time between these four points with reference to the moon and its phases. The lunar cycle is about 29 days, so if you make a few one day adjustments through the year you can predict the moon phase quite accurately. That means you can easily judge the passage of time to within a few days, for task management or recording the length of journeys, without ever counting as high as ten. Effectively, you have created weeks and months. And if you were a Neolithic farmer, who needs greater accuracy than that?