1. Stonehenge
What is the date, approximately, when Stonehenge was erected? The data are that it lies in a part of Salisbury Plain which is dotted with a large number of barrows, early and late in date. How can the building, the stones and the ground be made to give up evidence as to date?
In 1889 Sir Arthur Evans investigated the question in a paper in the Archæological Review for January in that year.
1. Many of the barrows, two of which are in obvious connection with the great stones, are shown by their forms and contents to be of the largest type of Bronze Age barrows, known as Round Barrows (for instance, gold relics, glass beads, ivory and cremated remains are signs of lateness). This being so, it is significant that chippings of the stones brought from a distance to Stonehenge are found even in undisturbed barrows of this kind, where the action of earthworms and rabbits in introducing foreign elements is hardly possible. It is clear, therefore, that the building of Stonehenge was at least begun late in that period. There is the point also that with the exception of two, the circumjacent barrows are not in any relation with the great circle, and are therefore not later.
2. The contents of the barrows earlier than Stonehenge have some imported articles which must have come from the continent not before the fifth century B.C. One even is stated to have contained a socketed celt, pointing to the late fourth century. But late Celtic antiquities are wholly absent, which makes it hardly possible that the barrows should be as late as the second century B.C.
3. The skilful hewing and fitting of the huge blocks of Wiltshire Sarsen stone are of the same stage in technical development as the triliths of Syria and Tripoli, and the great Doric temple of Segesta in Sicily, which latter was constructed about 415 B.C.
From these and similar indications he concludes that the gradual building of the great monument was probably between 300 and 150 B.C. He is now inclined to place the date earlier.
In 1901 a small committee of the Society of Antiquaries and two other societies reported on the desirability of setting upright a very large leaning stone at Stonehenge, which showed signs of breaking up as well as of falling still further down. It was successfully raised in September of that year, and it is from the necessary excavations—which were very carefully and scientifically conducted—that various data were collected by Mr. William Gowland, and printed in Archæologia, vol. 58 (1902).
No object of metal was found, except one small trace of bronze or copper. From this circumstance he concludes that Stonehenge was constructed at the time when the Neolithic Age was passing into the Bronze Age, and that has been tentatively placed at about 1400 B.C., or not later. Sir Norman Lockyer, he mentions, had recently attempted to determine the date on the hypothesis that the monument was a solar temple, since, as is well known, the midsummer sun rises exactly in the line of the chief avenue from the temple, and exactly over a large detached stone placed no doubt for this very purpose. He deduced a date as early as 1700 B.C.
It is disappointing to observe the discrepancy between these results. But it is particularly instructive, and a salutary warning to all who attempt scientific enquiries into historical problems, to note that both results are based on sound method. Good method, in short, is not sufficient: the data must also be adequate, and where indeterminate they must, as in this case, be approached, tested and used with the greatest caution. For instance, the absence of bronze tools is not conclusive evidence that the Bronze Age had not begun, and therefore that Stonehenge was earlier than about B.C. 1500, for the stone implements found were sufficient for their work and much more easily obtained than bronze tools. Moreover, the stone implements are stated not to be of the characteristic late Stone Age types, and may therefore have been improvised.