The great and ancient stone circle of Stonehenge is one of the wonders of the world. What visitors see today are the substantial remnants of the last in a sequence of such monuments erected between circa 3000BC and 1600BC.
There has always been intense debate over quite what purpose Stonehenge served. Certainly, it was the focal point in a landscape filled with prehistoric ceremonial structures, now a World Heritage Site.
Explore Stonehenge & its Landscape
Stonehenge stands as a timeless testimony to the people who built it, between 3000BC and 1500BC. An amazing feat of engineering and arguably the most sophisticated stone circle in the world, it remains a mystery.
The surrounding landscape is also fascinating. It contains huge prehistoric monuments, stretching over several kilometres like the Avenue and the Cursus, massive earthwork enclosures like Durrington Walls and the North Kite, and hundreds of burial mounds.
Stonehenge is a Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. It is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones and is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world. Archaeologists think that the standing stones were erected between 2500 BC and 2000 BC although the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury henge monument, and it is also a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. Stonehenge itself is owned and managed by English Heritage while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.
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