Stonehenge Research Paper

Stonehenge. One of Great Britain’s most well-known and ancient landmarks, this roughly circular arrangement of stones is visited by countless tourists each year. So well-known is Stonehenge in fact, that the geography and culture of the United Kingdom can no longer be discussed without at least a passing mention of the landmark. It is safe to say that Stonehenge has deeply rooted itself within Britain’s history and identity and yet, despite how ostensibly important it is, it is interesting to consider how little we in modern times actually know about it. To this day, it is uncertain what group of people built Stonehenge or what purpose the stone circle served, let alone any cultural information regarding Stonehenge’s creators. --THESIS (when …show more content…
As with all things that are not wholly known, there are rather outlandish notions regarding the origin of Stonehenge such as the widely satirized belief that it was “aliens” that built the monument (). After excluding these fringe theories, however, multiple more realistic and reasonable theories have been brought forward. One such idea was proposed by Richard Atkinson and Stuart Piggott (). Atkinson and Piggott, archaeologists who have been one of the few to actually conduct an excavation at Stonehenge, espoused the idea that the Mycenaeans, Greeks living during the Bronze Age, built Stonehenge (). Conversely, another archaeologist named Gordon Childe proposed the idea that Stonehenge was not built by Mycenaeans, but rather was a creation of Ancient Britons, a Celtic group that lived in Britain during the Iron Age - far after the Bronze age espoused by Atkinson and Piggott (). A third theory regarding Stonehenge’s creation was proposed by archaeologists John Aubrey and William Stukeley, that Stonehenge was created by “druids,” members of the Celtic elite who lived during the Iron Age (). As can be seen, there is no true consensus regarding who built or commissioned the building of Stonehenge. As a result, it is impossible to use the the landmark’s builders as an avenue to determine the original purpose that Stonehenge served. Despite this apparent roadblock, however, there are certainly other …show more content…
The analysis of the remains of Stonehenge’s dead revealed that those buried underneath the structure were most likely related. This, and the fact that some of the dead were buried with items (presumably some of their possessions) such as mace-heads and disk-like ceramic objects point to the idea that those buried were possibly the elite of the society to which the builders of Stonehenge belonged. The cultural implications of this idea are immense. Not only do they show that this Stonehenge-building society was organized hierarchically, with at least a hereditary upper class (who received burials) and a lower class (who ostensibly did not), but it also reveals a cultural behavior of this society to bury the dead, or at least the dead of the elite, with some of their worldly possessions - a concept that has also been observed amongst distant groups such as the Egyptians. Although it is very likely that the Egyptians are not at all related to the group under study at Stonehenge, the potential for such a relationship could certainly function as an avenue for future