Note 2217 — STONEHENGE

Professor Montelius accepts and endorses Sir Norman Lockyer’s conclusions. Most of the barrows near Stonehenge belong, he says (Archiv für Anthr., N. F., ii, 1904, p. 140) to the earliest period of the Bronze Age, which, in the south of England, began, in his opinion, about 2000 B.C. He goes on to speak of the chippings of the Stonehenge stones which have been found in two of the surrounding barrows, and affirms that to those who know the epoch to which Stonehenge belongs it is evident that it was a temple, for sepulchral monuments ‘have a different appearance’ (sahen nicht so aus); and finally he mentions the results at which ‘some of England’s greatest astronomers have arrived’.

Alas that a great archaeologist should meddle with what he does not understand! ‘Some of England’s greatest astronomers’ is presumably a rhetorical synonym for Sir Norman Lockyer: at all events the results which so appeal to Professor Montelius’s and Sir Norman’s imagination stand to Sir Norman’s credit alone. Let me recommend the professor to read the article in the Nineteenth Century of June, 1903, in which another astronomer has demolished them. The only novelty in the professor’s article is the implied statement that the barrows in which the chippings were found are not much later than 2000 B.C. On this point he is of course entitled to a respectful hearing: but the mere amateur who remembers that the two barrows in question are assigned by one of England’s greatest archaeologists to about 300 B.C. will, I fear, shrug his shoulders; and Mr. Abercromby (see p. 183, supra) has proved that many of the Wiltshire barrows were later than 800 B.C. The remark that sepulchral monuments have a different appearance from Stonehenge is not helpful, seeing that Stonehenge is unique among megalithic circles. I can only repeat that many such circles have been proved to be sepulchral monuments; and, as I shall show presently, there is evidence that Stonehenge was a scene of sepulchral rites.