THE TEMPLE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD

 

THE TEMPLE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD

 

Over the years I've worked at Stonehenge, there is a question which is repeatedly asked and to which the expected answer is "It's a mystery, we don't know." It is: "Why was Stonehenge built HERE?" I believe there is a  plausible and fascinating answer to this question which fits all the evidence, but for which there is and probably never will be any absolute proof.

The environmental evidence, from snail shells, pollen (rare here), and other sources seems to show that the landscape around Stonehenge was relatively open grassland as far back as the Mesolithic. Near the river and perhaps up some of the side valleys there was woodland, but away from these there were only a few small copses scattered amid the rolling grassland of the plain. This in itself must have been rare in southern Britain, and may in part account for the special status of the area in Mesolithic and early Neolithic times.

During the Stonehenge Riverside Project's excavations (2004 - 2009), archaeologists found that the ditches of the Avenue enclose a set of roughly parallel periglacial gullies running down the slope, apparently formed by melt-waters from the permafrost at the end of the last glaciation. At some point, then, someone utilising this unusual landscape must have noticed the stripes of greener grass over the gullies running exactly along the alignment of the Summer Solstice sunrise - Winter Solstice sunset. To minds ready to read symbolic meaning into every part of the landscape this must have seemed more than coincidence and rendered it a place of special supernatural interest (an SSI of its day?). But that would have been nothing to their reaction when they climbed the slope to the top of the stripes and looked around.

Six years ago one of my colleagues, Simon Banton, pointed out to me the level horizon visible from the monument at Stonehenge. His interest was in the opportunity for astronomical observations this would have presented to Neolithic star-gazers: not only is the horizon from this point horizontal within a degree or so, but it would have been mostly clear of trees, and ideal for accurately locating the positions of solar and lunar standstills, not to mention all the stellar peregrinations they might have felt were significant.

Whilst I agree with this idea, and would be surprised if such an ideal site was NOT used as an observatory at some point, I think there is something else that the Neolithic stripe walkers would have seen when they reached more level ground at the top of the slope. Laid out around them and above them was a fine model of the cosmos, and there they were, standing at its very centre, on a site indicated by the solstice-aligned striations.

Before I expand on the 'model of the cosmos' idea, let me just reiterate what I have said before: that although the evidence for it is lacking across what is now England, I consider it likely that the religion of these islands, and indeed that of most of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Europe north of the Mediterranean, was a form of shamanism. In this view, the world - indeed all levels of the cosmos - are populated and run by spirit beings, some of which in some places were elevated at this time to the status of gods. The shamans were part-time priests, in that they were also farmers and warriors like other men and women, and were probably a small portion of the population (although in some hunter-gatherer societies many more people may have been shamans). They were of high status, and as hierarchies developed in societies across the continent, they may well have been among the elite from whom leaders were chosen (however that was done - by vote, by heredity, or by strength).

 Above: South-eastern Native American Cosmos. Below: Old Testament Israelite Cosmos.
(both artist's impressions)

Recent societies still operating within shamanic systems of belief (ie those whose beliefs have been recorded by anthropologists or other writers), whilst they show great variety in their practices, share a remarkably constant view of their world and the cosmos around it. Peoples as far apart as Siberia and Africa, the Amazon and Australia, share a broad set of beliefs in which the world we live in is a thin surface populated by both living animals and a wide variety of spirit beings. There are also one or more levels above the surface in which the sky spirits and/or gods dwell, and a matching number of underworld levels with their own sets of spirit inhabitants. In some of these, at least, the various levels are seen as disc shaped, just like the view visible from Stonehenge. This combination of a naturally open landscape and a circular, level horizon would have been almost unique in Britain at the time and would surely have been seen as highly significant in religious terms. The astronomical implications would have been an added bonus, and would have added to the overall impression that they were standing at the heart of a symbolic cosmos, which with just a modicum of reality adjustment could become real.

It is almost impossible at this time to be sure of any of the beliefs or perspectives of the Stonehenge people, but if they were anything like those I have suggested here, Stonehenge would have been a very special place indeed. This great stone temple was built on a site marked by the spirits as the centre, or at least on the axis, of the universe and of the shamanic reality. It was, quite literally, located at the Heart of the World.

Above: The Mayan Cosmos

STONEHENGE AS A CLASSICAL TEMPLE

 

STONEHENGE AS A CLASSICAL TEMPLE

When I tell people about Stonehenge, I find myself increasingly stressing two things. Firstly,  the stone monument of c.2500 BC was carefully and thoroughly planned, and built to a pre-determined design. For such a complex structure, there are few if any discernable mistakes, which indicates a planned project, designed presumably to fulfil its function  effectively. Second, although we do not know how it was used and are unable at present to prove that core function, there is little doubt that that function will be a religious one. Because, apart from anything else, this planned design bears an uncanny resemblance to later European religious buildings, most notably to the Classical Greek and Roman Temple.

Let me be clear about this. There is an almost 1800 year gap between the two structural forms, and I'm not suggesting that Stonehenge was used in the same way as the later temples, except in the broadest sense that both are religious buildings, designed to impress the visitor with their magnificence  and  power, and to increase the focus of the mind as he or she moves towards the centre of the building. The elements that make up the two building types are, however, directly comparable, suggesting that at least the concept of what constitutes a space for religious participation is already present in the minds of Neolithic Europeans. The ritual uses of the elements is likely to have changed in two millennia, as religion itself became more structured and the nature of worship evolved with the growth of stratified urban civilisations and stratified pantheons.

 

A RECONSTRUCTION OF STONEHENGE POST 2500BC

(Original source not given)

Now, most classical Greek Temples (let's stick with them, as the Romans tended to deviate more from the basic pattern), are composed of several concentric layers leading from the profane outside world to the sacred presence of the God deep inside. A perimeter wall encloses the temple precinct, in the centre of which stands the temple. The area behind the temple often contained storerooms and facilities for the priests, whilst the forecourt was used for low-level religious observances, private altars, and religious or other dealings between the priesthood and the public. At Stonehenge, there is a similar area between the outer boundary bank and ditch and the stone monument.  There is little evidence to show how this was used, but it is interesting that postholes (undated but normally considered to be older than the sarsen structure) form distinctly different patterns - indicating different activities - to the back and front of the stones.

 

The temple itself always presented its most impressive facade to the forecourt and normally comprised a tall building containing a usually rectangular hall (sometimes with side chambers) surrounded on all four sides by a colonnade of decorated stone pillars supporting the roof. The area between the inner hall (known as the cella) and the colonnade was used for religious processions and for more private consultations between priests and their public. This area - which became the ambulatory in later churches - is represented at Stonehenge by the outer circle of Sarsens with their lintels and the space between them and the inner "horseshoe" of trilithons. It is further accented by the inner circle of Bluestones which would have created a very believable ambulatory before the collapse of the structure.

At the centre of the temple is the sarsen Horseshoe, emphasised by the rearranged horseshoe of bluestones. which defines the most sacred area of the monument, equivalent to the Cella of classical temples. In Greek and Roman Temples, the focus of veneration is represented at the inner end of the cella by an altar and the statue of the god. In Christian churches the statue is replaced by a usually small cross or crucifix on the altar, and the awe that the statue is meant to create is enhanced by the morning light through the huge east window. At Stonehenge, we have no representations of gods (indeed, I would argue that we are in a pre-deity stage of religion) but we have the focus created by the altar stone and the positioning of the tallest trilithon, behind which the sun sets spectacularly at the end of each year.

All the elements of later temples are therefore present and presaged by the arrangements of stones at Stonehenge. The elements are present in earlier stone circles, such as the Rollright Stones, Castlerigg, Stanton Drew, and of course Avebury, but the concentric arrangement is new at Stonehenge, one of the last of the great stone circles to be built in Britain. It might be tempting to suggest that it is Stonehenge that sets the example which later European temples follow. Or is that a step too far?

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THE BLUESTONE CONTROVERSY

 

The first modern excavations at Stonehenge took place between 1918 and 1926, conducted by William Hawley. Amongst many other features, he excavated a number of the Aubrey Holes, the ring of 56 pits just inside the bank. In the base of each pit was a compacted chalk surface such as might be created by the weight of a heavy object settling into and sitting in the pit.

At first, Hawley was sure that these pits had once housed the bluestones, but  by the time he wrote his final reports, his certainty had disappeared, and he proposed the long-held ambivalence that the pits were either occupied by large stones or wooden posts. One problem was that neither in Hawley's investigations  was any fragment of bluestone recovered from trustworthy contexts in the Aubrey Holes, so the presence of bluestones at this early phase could not be proven.

In the 1950s, Atkinson excavated several more of the Aubrey Holes without coming to any more definite a conclusion. He also investigated a group of pits within the stone circle known as the "Q & R Holes". In these, archaeologists found chips of bluestone, and it was generally accepted that this double arc of pits, with extras by the NE entrance, were created to hold the bluestones. Hawley had found one which was cut by one of the Sarsen holes, and it was deemed that the Q & R setting was slightly earlier than the Sarsen monument. The earliest evidence for the Welsh stones at Stonehenge was therefore considered to be around 2500BC.

In 2008 the Stonehenge Riverside Project re-excavated Aubrey Hole 7 to recover the cremated remains reburied there by Hawley after his work finished. They found an oval impression which Parker-Pearson said had to be a stone impression. At the same time, their investigation of the riverside end of the Avenue brought to light the remains of an early stone circle there (West Amesbury Henge), with chips of bluestones in the demolition levels dating to around 2500BC. It was again suggested that the Bluestones might have arrived in the earliest phase of building at Stonehenge, and that the Q& R setting was in fact a repositioning of the stones removed from the Aubrey Holes and West Amesbury Henge. But when the chips found at the new site proved not to be Preseli bluestones after all, everyone again fell back on the vaguer 'wooden posts or stones' explanation for the Aubrey Holes.

 

Parker Pearson next investigated the quarry sites in the Preseli hills, finding that at least two of them had been in use well before 2500BC, and indeed were several centuries older even than the Aubrey Holes. Work to find a local monument using bluestones from this period was successful, and preliminary dates from a circle excavated at the base of the hills shows that it was demolished (and the stones removed) around 3000BC.

So now we have Bluestone quarries dating to c3200BC, a local circle that was destroyed two centuries later, releasing more than 50 stones for re-use, and a two circles of pits just the right size for them at Stonehenge dating to precisely the same period. It looks enticingly as if Hawley was right all along: if only we could find a few chips of Bluestone in one of the remaining Aubrey Holes ...

 

 

STONEHENGE: AN INTRODUCTION

 

When we talk about Stonehenge, we are actually talking about several separate elements that combine to make up the archaeological site. These include: the "henge", the circular bank and ditch; the sarsen monument within the henge; the bluestone arrangements; the Station Stones and the so-called Slaughter Stone; the Heel Stone; numerous arrangements of pits and postholes; and the Avenue leading from the henge to the Avon. They were not all built or used at the same time: indeed, the construction of the monument spans almost a thousand years! It is important to understand that it did not take this long to build: Stonehenge was built in a number of phases, sometimes separated from one another by hundreds of years. The current thinking about the construction sequence goes like this:

1. 3000BC - 2700BC: The Bank and Ditch, the Aubrey Holes, the cremation cemetery, posthole arrangements around the north-east and south entrances through the ditch. Based on numerous radiocarbon dates.

2a. 2500BC: the Sarsen Stone Circle and the five Sarsen Trilithons. The first physical evidence for the Bluestones comes from this same period, from features known as the "Q & R Holes".

2b. 2300BC: the Bluestone circle between the Sarsen circle and the trilithons, and an oval arrangement of bluestones within the five trilithons. The Avenue may have been built at this time or slightly later.

2c. 2100BC: rearrangement of the bluestones which gave us the final bluestone circle and a 'horseshoe' of larger bluestones in place of the earlier oval.

2d.  2100BC - 1700BC: Two more rings of pits just outside the Sarsen circle (known as the 'Y' & 'Z' Holes), the carvings of Bronze Age style axe-heads and daggers on some of the Sarsens.

 

1. The Bank and Ditch 

These were the earliest features on the site, along with a ring of 56 pits, known as the Aubrey Holes, just inside the bank. The ditch was dug around 2950BC  in a series of joined segments, and the Bank was made up from the chalk and soil removed from the Ditch. There is overwhelming evidence that the Aubrey Holes held some form of pillars, either wooden posts or large stones. The latest thinking among a number of archaeologists is that these pillars were in reality the first arrangement of the Welsh Bluestones [see The Bluestone Controversy below], pushing the links between Stonehenge and western Wales back to the very beginning of the story.

     At this time the site was used as a cemetery for cremation burials. At least 67 cremations are known from the 34 Aubrey holes excavated so far, while estimates for the total number vary between 100 and 180. It is the largest Neolithic cremation cemetery known in Britain. Only a few of the cremations have been dated, and they show a cluster in the two centuries after the Aubrey holes were dug. But at least one dates from close to the start of phase two, which has been used to suggest continuous use of the cemetery. I think it more likely that there was a renewed interest in the site around the time the new Sarsen circle was built, and that perhaps a few burials were interred as part of the construction of phase 2.

 

2. The Sarsen Temple, 

This structure, comprising the 60 stones of the Sarsen circle and the 15 stones forming the five trilithons, was almost certainly built as a single project, meticulously planned and executed - I say this because there are no broken or half finished stones around the site, there are no clear signs of mistakes on the stones - and quite possibly it was completed within a single lifetime. If as few as three stones were brought in, shaped, and erected each year, the temple would be essentially complete within 25 years; if just five were put up every year, it would take only 15 years to complete.

The stones vary in weight between about 12 tons and 40 tons, the lintels being at the lighter end of the range. They were brought from the Marlborough Downs, from a site today known as West Woods, across the Wiltshire countryside to Stonehenge, a distance of 17 - 20 miles (depending on the chosen route). There is still a theory that they may have travelled part of the way by water, but the land route is fairly direct and the problems inherent in transferring these massive blocks from land to water and back again for such a brief transit makes it seem more trouble than it was worth. That's assuming you could find a way to float a 30 ton sarsen in such shallow water in the first place.

The structure they built is unique among Megalithic monuments across Europe for two reasons: the stones have been shaped into roughly rectangular blocks, and they and their lintels are locked together by a series of joints borrowed from carpentry. It is precisely because of this link to carpentry techniques that it has been suggested that some of the many timber circles may have had lintels as well. The idea of using the technique on stone was pioneered at Stonehenge, but was never used afterwards, quite possibly because Stonehenge was one of the last of the great stone temples to be built. Or perhaps, after the project was completed, the masons dispersed around the land telling all their colleagues that under NO circumstances should they try this one at home, if they wanted to preserve their health and sanity!

Dating evidence for the outlying stones and the two pit circles is slight. although it is generally considered that most of this activity post-dates the building of the temple. The exception usually is the Heel Stone, the only completely undressed sarsen on the monument. This stone, it is suggested, may have been erected during phase 1 or even before the construction of the bank and ditch. Recent evidence that the Heel Stone also came from West Woods may mean that this idea needs rethinking, although it is always possible that the West Woods site was simply the traditional place for people south of the downs to source large sarsen megaliths. It is known from elsewhere in the world that while rights to certain material sources belong to specific groups or tribes, other sites are considered open and available for anyone who can provide the logistics to transport them; a sort of Neolithic "Pick your own" field, if you like.