Stonehenge (23 page)

This is most true of the site where Parker Pearson has been digging, Durrington Walls. This is the massive henge, about 480 yards in diameter, which lies near Woodhenge, about two miles north-east of Stonehenge itself. In 1967, despite protests from archaeologists, the road through Durrington
Walls was straightened, destroying much of it. Before work began, however, Geoffrey Wainwright oversaw large, highspeed excavations, taking bulldozers to the site in a manner that shocked some of his colleagues but yielded valuable if tantalising information about what Durrington had looked like and how it might have been used. Two circles of post holes were revealed and the latest digs have found evidence of more. They have also shown an avenue leading to the river, similar to that at Stonehenge though much shorter. It was about thirty-three yards wide, surfaced with rammed flint, animal bones and pottery and had been heavily trampled in the middle. Whatever Durrington was used for, it was used by many people.

The discovery that captured public imagination in 2006, however, was the foundations of houses within the enclosure and outside it beside the avenue. The houses were small but would have been comfortable, with clay floors, oval central hearths and in two cases beam slots for wooden box beds built in against the walls. They may have been occupied only seasonally and they may possibly have been what the press wanted them to be, a construction workers’ village for the labour force building Stonehenge, but none of that is certain. What is clear, from the number of pig bones, the almost complete absence of human bones and the other finds at the site, is that Durrington Walls was inhabited and was a secular rather than a purely ritual site. The new dates for Stonehenge make the two contemporary, prompting questions about their relationship. Of the two circles discovered by Wainwright at Durrington, the southern one has now been more fully explored using magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar, which shows a ground plan with an inner oval that closely
resembles Stonehenge in the later part of Phase Three. Clive Ruggles has established that this southern Durrington circle is ‘aligned precisely on the midwinter sunrise, corresponding almost exactly to the upper limb of the winter solstice sun in 3000–2500
BC
’. Not only does this strike another blow for astro-archaeology, it establishes an elegant and compelling link between Durrington and Stonehenge. Stonehenge is aligned on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, the Durrington circle complements it, facing the midsummer sunset and midwinter sunrise. This makes it seem likely that the same people used both places.

At Stonehenge itself the very latest findings of Parker Pearson’s team, announced in 2008, date the Aubrey Holes, those most mysterious features, securely to Phase One. They also prove that Stonehenge was used for burials, mostly cremations, throughout its existence until 2450
BC
, adding weight to the idea of it as a place essentially associated with the dead. ‘I’m very pleased’, Parker Pearson noted, ‘it seems to have been a cemetery all the way through. The small numbers (about 240 buried over 500 years from 2950
BC
to 2450
BC
) suggest that it was a pretty exclusive group of men, women and children, so it may have been something equivalent to a royal burial ground.’ This is the latest theory, suggestive but unprovable. It fits with the other most popular current archaeological view of Stonehenge as a site of ancestor worship. This suggestion derives from Parker Pearson’s colleague the Madagascan archaeologist Ramilisonina, who took one look at the stones and had no hesitation in pronouncing that it was ‘blindingly obvious’ that ‘this is all for the ancestors’. By analogy with Madagascar, he saw in Stonehenge, where a wooden structure is transformed into stone, a monument to
the once-living, now venerated in death. This idea has been taken up by Mike Pitts and Parker Pearson himself. Yet while the contrast between Durrington and Stonehenge as places of life and of death, or at least secular and sacred, looks likely, there is no evidence for ancestor worship per se. Many cultures have death rites that do not involve deification of the dead. The contrast between wood and stone may be as much practical as metaphorical, a contrast between short- and long-term constructions. Any medieval city, after all, was built on the same principle, with timber-framed houses surrounding the stone cathedral. Elsewhere the idea of the ‘hospital’, the healing stones, is still very much alive. The first dig of the new millennium, the first in fact for forty-four years, was undertaken in March and April 2008 by the main proponents of the theory, Geoffrey Wainwright and Tim Darvill. They investigated the site of the first bluestone structure in the hope of finding further evidence and Darvill also suggested, more controversially, that their work may herald a return to excavation at Stonehenge.

To Mike Pitts the sarsen stones are also sculpture, giant versions of the flaked implements used by Stone Age builders: ‘an arrangement of absurdly massive stone tools … Taking a small everyday object, using everyday technology, but in ways previously unimagined, people created something on an unprecedented scale … expanding scale does more than just make something bigger. Handled with skill it can transform the banal into the awesome.’ How intentional such a resemblance was and whether, several millennia before Pop Art, such a concept could really have existed, is debatable. Among the other possibilities that continue to float like bubbles to the surface of the media is the idea put forward in 2003 by
Anthony Perks, a gynaecologist at the University of British Columbia, a fertility theory that allowed the
Observer
newspaper to run a story headlined ‘The vagina monoliths: Stonehenge was ancient sex symbol’.

The Stonehenge of the new millennium reflects, as ever, the age that shapes it. While archaeologists in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, when Britain still had an empire, tended to interpret the past in terms of violence and conquest, the post imperial age has thought more about influence. The Beaker People have turned from an invading race to a cultural shift and Parker Pearson’s findings suggest that the Beaker culture was in Wessex earlier than had been thought. The ‘howling barbarians’ of Atkinson’s day are, in an age of multiculturalism, seen as less bloodthirsty and more worthy of respect. The skull of the child buried at Wood-henge, once assumed to have been violently split in half in an act of human sacrifice, is now thought merely to have fallen apart during decomposition. It may not even be contemporary with Woodhenge. On a practical level, relations between the authorities, the Druids and the counterculture are, for the moment, harmonious, although the sad death of Tim Sebastian, founder of the Secular Order of Druids, in 2007 occasioned some tension over the question of whether his ashes could be scattered at Stonehenge. Elsewhere modern Druidry is thriving and the orders continue to multiply and divide. Since 1990 five or six a year have emerged on average, although the rumoured Police Lodge of Druids, PLOD, has so far failed to materialise. In 2002 Rowan Williams, as Archbishop of Canterbury designate, was initiated into the Gorsedd of Bards and was ‘saddened’, though he should not have been surprised, when this aroused vigorous protests and allegations of paganism at the heart of the established Church. The midsummer solstice celebrations continue to grow, while increasing awareness of the importance of the winter solstice brings ever greater numbers to the stones in December. English Heritage has allowed spectators inside the fence for the sunrise, which in 2007 attracted several hundred people, including Druids of several orders, drummers, pipers and photographers. By contrast the sunset on the shortest day, which seems more securely linked to the intentions of the builders of Stonehenge, remains almost unmarked.

34. Watching for the sunrise, 2006. Since 2000 the public has been able to celebrate the summer solstice from inside the stones under English Heritage’s policy of ‘managed open access’, which has so far proved popular and successful.

It is impossible to think about Stonehenge for any length of time without formulating a theory and so, having tried to deal fairly with the various ideas, visions and beliefs that have emanated from the stones throughout recorded history, I cannot resist concluding with a thought of my own, deduced from the research of Parker Pearson and his team. Although the archaeologists have not spelled it out in quite these terms, we might see Stonehenge as marking the beginning and the end of the darkest months of the year, while Durrington celebrates the light, the high point of summer and the turn away from midwinter. So perhaps, twice a year, at midsummer and midwinter, the inhabitants of Durrington, who were also the worshippers at Stonehenge, would have gone from one place to the other. Midsummer Eve at Durrington would be followed by dawn at Stonehenge as the year turned from light towards dark, while in midwinter the procession would go the other way, from Stonehenge at sunset on the shortest day to dawn at Durrington, to see the light return. It is a possibility, one more image to add to all the changing scenes the centuries have projected on to the mute, mysterious stones.

Despite the poor facilities at the ‘national disgrace’ of a visitor centre, Stonehenge itself never disappoints. It is located just off the A344, but for those who want to avoid adding to the traffic problems that so beset it the nearest railway station is Salisbury, 9 miles away, and the Wiltshire and Dorset Bus Company’s service no. 3 runs to Stonehenge. The site is open all year except Christmas, but opening hours vary according to the hours of daylight. Summer opening (1 June to 31 August) is 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with last admission half an hour before closing time. Most visitors stop on the path and look towards the stones, but don’t forget to look outwards as well to take in the whole site, including the bank, the ditch and the markers showing the Aubrey Holes, in addition to the wider landscape. The sites of the Mesolithic post holes, the earliest known man-made features, are marked by white concrete circles in the car park and it is worth making motorists wait while you stand on them to assess their relationship to Stonehenge itself.

Outside normal visiting hours it is sometimes possible to arrange special access to the stones. Contact English Heritage with enquiries. For the summer solstice, arrangements are, as the EH website puts it laconically, ‘subject to change’.
Look out for detailed information nearer the time about what the conditions will be for any given year. The Wiltshire and Dorset Bus Company’s website also gives details of its regular service to and from Salisbury station throughout the night. The winter solstice is growing in popularity. It is not possible (or for most people desirable) to spend the night at Stonehenge in December, but in recent years there has been an arrangement for public access to see the sunrise from within the circle. The crowds are smaller than in the summer, so it is easier to get to the stones and you will also see a higher proportion of Druids (of one sort or another) in the winter. Midsummer is now too crowded for many of them. There are so far no special arrangements for the midwinter sunset but it occurs during ordinary opening hours and can be seen – if it is visible at all – from the path.

The World Heritage Site covers 96,500 acres in all and if you have a day, or more, to explore it there is a great deal to be seen. Some areas are administered by English Heritage; the rest belongs to the National Trust, the Ministry of Defence and various farmers and private householders. The Great Cursus is on National Trust land and is accessible, but the Lesser Cursus is not. Woodhenge is an English Heritage site and access to it is free. The positions of the original posts are marked by colour-coded concrete pillars. You will often have the site to yourself and it is a good place to stand and feel something of the quietness of the landscape that is missing at Stonehenge. Durrington Walls is visible from the Wood-henge car park and partially accessible, as is the field just to the south of it, which has the cuckoo stone in it, an isolated sarsen whose purpose is unclear but is now being explored as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project. Of the barrows
many can be reached or at least seen from nearby paths and bridleways. They include Kings Barrow Ridge and some of the Normanton Down and Winterbourne Stoke Crossroads groups as well as Bush Barrow. At the time of writing, the National Trust is working to make more of its land to the west of Stonehenge accessible and hopes to achieve this by 2009. Coneybury Henge is on farmland and is not now visible on the ground, but the whole of Stonehenge Down is accessible. Avebury belongs to the National Trust.

Most of the archaeological finds from Stonehenge are now in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, which is in the King’s House, no. 65 in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury. The King’s House is a medieval and Elizabethan building that features in Hardy’s
Jude the Obscure
and is well worth visiting for its own sake. Open from Monday to Saturday, it is also now the home of the Amesbury and Stonehenge Archers and of objects varying from an exquisite macehead, made of polished gneiss, to the humble antler picks of the workers who dug the Stonehenge ditch. Visit the museum after you have been to the stones. Objects which seem dull or enigmatic in isolation become immediate and moving when you have just come from the monument itself.