Stonehenge is a stone monument that has evolved over a period of 10,000 years and is located north of the modern- day city of Salisbury, England. It was built around 1700 B.C., but the structure forms a small part of a larger, sacred landscape. The mystery of how these stones were carried such long distances and the date this site was built are still being questioned. I chose this site because I wanted to be more familiar with it and the phenomenon that surrounds Stonehenge intrigues me. There is also a vast amount of research that has been done to try to uncover its creators and its purpose, which I found to be very helpful. Though mystery still remains, “the careful investigations carried out by the modern school of archaeologists, as instanced
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In 3000 BC, its creators dug a circular bank around the monument that held the bluestones, then 500 years later, the sarsen stones were placed. These excavations also revealed the dead of Stonehenge. In the 1920’s, around 60 human cremation burials were discovered. Unfortunately, during this time era archaeologists believed you couldn't learn anything from cremation, so in 1935 these same bones were reburied (Pitts 2010). Though archaeologists had an idea of when this monument was built, they still had trouble pinpointing whether it was in the Neolithic period or sometime in the late period of the Bronze …show more content…
In Grinsell’s article, The Legendary History and Folklore of Stonehenge, he talks about the supposed healing virtues of the stones reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, where he was relating beliefs current in his day: “If the stones be rubbed, or scraped, and water thrown upon the scrapings, they will heal any green wound, or old sore” this belief has obviously been (NEED WORD.. proven wrong? Rebutled? HELP) (Grinsell 1976). Stonehenge was also seen as a place of interment, showing that he considered it to be in some way a burial site, which actually wasn't far off from the truth. Where the folklore came into play most was when there was talk of the Devil. In Wood’s account of Merlin, the Devil and Stonehenge, it was said the Devil was “employed to get the stones of Stonehenge from ‘a backside belonging to an old woman in Ireland’” (Grinsell 1976). As time went by, the legendary history was “more or less believed by the educated class until perhaps the seventeenth or eighteenth century,” and the “conditions for the survival of folklore virtually ceased” (Grinsell
In 3000 BC, its creators dug a circular bank around the monument that held the bluestones, then 500 years later, the sarsen stones were placed. These excavations also revealed the dead of Stonehenge. In the 1920’s, around 60 human cremation burials were discovered. Unfortunately, during this time era archaeologists believed you couldn't learn anything from cremation, so in 1935 these same bones were reburied (Pitts 2010). Though archaeologists had an idea of when this monument was built, they still had trouble pinpointing whether it was in the Neolithic period or sometime in the late period of the Bronze …show more content…
In Grinsell’s article, The Legendary History and Folklore of Stonehenge, he talks about the supposed healing virtues of the stones reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, where he was relating beliefs current in his day: “If the stones be rubbed, or scraped, and water thrown upon the scrapings, they will heal any green wound, or old sore” this belief has obviously been (NEED WORD.. proven wrong? Rebutled? HELP) (Grinsell 1976). Stonehenge was also seen as a place of interment, showing that he considered it to be in some way a burial site, which actually wasn't far off from the truth. Where the folklore came into play most was when there was talk of the Devil. In Wood’s account of Merlin, the Devil and Stonehenge, it was said the Devil was “employed to get the stones of Stonehenge from ‘a backside belonging to an old woman in Ireland’” (Grinsell 1976). As time went by, the legendary history was “more or less believed by the educated class until perhaps the seventeenth or eighteenth century,” and the “conditions for the survival of folklore virtually ceased” (Grinsell