Seeing Stonehenge with different eyes

I’m coming to the end of my on-line archaeology course from Brown University; I’ve really enjoyed it and i think I’ve learned quite a lot. However it isn’t facts or even skills I’ve learned most, it’s much more fundamental than that. I’ve learned to use my eyes in a different way. I realised this gradually, as I walked round our little village, focussing not on the particular but looking at the familiar places as a ‘site’. This new way of appraising what I saw really impacted when we went to Stonehenge last week.

Stonehenge, that mysterious and atmospheric place, a wonder of the world. Many answers have been revealed about its construction, its age, its chronology and maybe even its purpose or function, through archaeology and archaeological research. it was built about 5,000 years ago, although the first construction on the site (the first known at the moment)  was an earthwork of ditches and banks and wooden posts. There were several stages in the erection of the circle as we know it, made from local stones, but also huge stones brought somehow from Wales; no-one can be certain how these huge, 4 tonne bluestones were brought 150miles from the Preseli Hills, but they were erected into a circle on Salisbury Plain.

Stonehenge is the centre of a vast site which includes other monuments and features, some of which seem to be linked to the henge (henge means earthwork, and can be just banks, or a stone edifice, or wooden timbers – there is even a Seahenge in Norfolk on the coast) There are over 700 recognized features on the site, including more than 350 burial sites. There is a huge amount written about Stonehenge, which you will soon discover if you search the internet, or go into a bookshop.

I had visited Stonehenge several times before, the first time when I was about 16 and in those days you could walk right up to the stones and touch them, sit on them, climb on them. They were amazing, but there was no mystery when I went on a beautiful sunny day along with a swarm of other tourists. The next times I saw the stones the weather was not as nice and the way they were displayed was unsympathetic so again there was no mystery and they looked less impressive, hunkered down in the gloomy landscape.

Now visitors are kept well away, but only by a low rope, nothing intimidating or intrusive, and there is a walkway around it with no notices, signs, or information boards, just a little post indicating a number which links to an audio-guide you are given. It was phenomenally busy on the lovely sunny day we went; literally thousands and thousands of visitors and we had to wait over half an hour to get to the site (after parking the car, this was waiting in a queue)

We walked round the site… and suddenly it was wonderful. Despite the number of other people, by the time they had spread out along the path and anyone could just stand and look, and wonder. The stones are set on a slight rise in the landscape and the path was below the rise so we looked up at them; this meant that quite often you couldn’t see the other visitors on the other side, and the stones seemed alone and marvellous in the vast ancient landscape. The commentary on the audio-guide was excellent; there was a brief version, or extra features if you were interested.

Despite the throng, it was wondrousness, wonderful, moving and in fact, having people from almost every corner of the world was wondrous too. So how did I see it differently because of the course? I saw the henge within its landscape. I kept turning round so my back was to the stones and looking around, imagining what else would have been visible, following the line of the Stonehenge Avenue sweeping away, noticing the burial mounds along the rise in the landscape, imagining approaching the henge from below and seeing it gradually appear on the horizon, seeming to levitate as it was neared… I saw it not in isolation and just as itself but as it fitted into a context of a network of special and reverenced places.

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge/world-heritage-site/why-is-stonehenge-a-world-heritage-site/facts-and-figures/