Author(s): Rosemary Hill

History

Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric monument in Europe visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year. The great stones remain compelling because they remain mysterious. 'God knows what their use was,' Pepys wondered in 1668. To greet the winter solstice, for goddess worship, funerary temple? - all recently advanced theories. But the answer is still unknown.This is the first book to approach Stonehenge without any theoretical position. It describes what is known and believed about the monument's construction from c. 3000 BCE onwards.The Middle Ages were content with the story of it having been brought by Merlin from Ireland. The post Reformation antiquaries gave us the conception of Stonehenge as a historical monument. It played a significant role in the imagination of writers and artists. Then the Victorians invented prehistory and Darwin himself came to measure it. In 1918 it passed into public ownership and 1926 saw the first forced entry by Druids. The Earth Mysteries Movement now sees the stones as part of a greater web of ley lines and other phenomena. Archaeologists, united in their disdain for that, remain divided on many other points.