I. Modern opinion has for some time been tending to the conclusion that Stonehenge was erected, or at least began to be erected, in the Bronze Age. Excavation has proved that it did not exist before the use of copper or bronze, however uncommon it may have been, was known in this country;[2171] and the arguments of Rickman,[2172] James Fergusson,[2173] and others who contend for a Roman or post-Roman date have been or can be demolished. To refute them in the text of this article would be useless; for no competent archaeologist now regards them as worth discussion.[2174]
Dr. Arthur Evans maintains that Stonehenge was built in the earlier half of the third century before Christ, although some parts of it may be of later date; that ‘sun worship was at most a secondary object in its structure’; and that it was ‘one of a large series of primitive religious monuments that grew out of purely sepulchral architecture’. Let us first consider the question of date.
Dr. Evans has no difficulty in establishing, what has already been demonstrated in Part I of this book,[2175] that ‘Stonehenge was at least begun before the close of the Wiltshire “Round-Barrow” Period’.[2176] At the same time he holds that ‘its foundation belongs to the conclusion of this period’. He points out that ‘of 36 disk-shaped barrows [in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge] 35 contained cremation interments.... The number of glass beads contained in these barrows is also,’ he continues, ‘evidence of their comparatively late date[2177].... The general inference which we draw from the intimate structural connexion between Stonehenge and these disk-shaped barrows is, that the great stone circles themselves were erected towards the close of the Round-Barrow Period. The proportionately frequent occurrence of gold relics in barrows in the immediate neighbourhood of Stonehenge, 4 out of 5 such discoveries having been made within half-a-mile of this monument, points in the same direction.’ And if it should be argued that the barrows may have been built after the erection of Stonehenge, his answer would be that ‘the barrows themselves, with the exception of the two within its own area, are disposed without any reference to Stonehenge, and do not in any way cluster about it, as we might reasonably have expected them to do had the bulk of them been reared after the Stone Circle’. Dr. Evans then observes that an amber collar ‘found in one of the Lake barrows about two miles from Stonehenge ... is of a form and arrangement identical with the amber necklaces found in the great cemetery at Hallstatt, and from the similar character of the boring of the beads must in all probability have come from the same centre of manufacture’; and he endeavours to show that we may infer from recent discoveries that ‘a large proportion of the Hallstatt remains reach down to the period between the approximate dates of 450-300 B.C.’[2178] On the other hand, Late Celtic antiquities, which began to appear in Britain ‘at least as early as the second century B.C.’, are absent from the barrows of Wiltshire; and the latest date which can be assigned to these barrows is about 250 B.C. Dr. Evans concludes that ‘we may approximately refer the foundation of Stonehenge to the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century’.[2179]
Some of these arguments do not appear to have much weight. Dr. Evans himself admits that there is a great structural distinction between Stonehenge and the disk-shaped barrows:[2180] in the latter the surrounding ditch is inside the bank; in the Stonehenge vallum it is outside. Those barrows at all events in which chippings of the stones were found were later than Stonehenge;[2181] and whatever conclusion may be drawn from the arrangement of the barrows, their number is so great as to suggest the inference that many of them were erected there because Stonehenge was regarded as a holy place. In a recent article,[2182] however, Dr. Evans has reinforced his argument, pointing out that the circle called the Rollright Stones, which stands on a hill overlooking the valley of the Warwickshire Stour, also stands ‘in immediate relation to a large group of [disk-shaped] sepulchral barrows’, and giving additional and conclusive evidence as to the late date of these particular monuments. He would not, however, I believe, now assign to Stonehenge quite so early a date as the ‘beginning of the third century’; for the commencement of our Early Iron Age is commonly referred to about 400 B.C.[2183] Of the two barrows in which Hoare found chippings of the Stonehenge stones one was bell-shaped,[2184] the other belonged to the kind which he called ‘flat’,[2185] but which, as Thurnam points out,[2186] is simply a variety of the bowl-barrow; but Thurnam has given reasons for believing that many barrows of this form may not have been earlier than disk-shaped mounds.[2187]
In 1901 excavations were made at Stonehenge, but only in ‘a fraction of the whole site’, under the superintendence of Professor W. Gowland.[2188] The principal objects discovered were chippings from the ‘sarsens’ and ‘blue-stones’; more than one hundred stone implements, many of which were of flint, and had evidently been used for dressing the softer stones of the monument, while others consisted of ‘the hard quartzite variety of sarsen’; bones of domestic animals; ‘splinters of antlers of deer’; ‘a portion of a large antler with its lowest tine worn away,’ apparently from its having been used as a pick; and Roman coins, which, however, were only found in the superficial layers.[2189] ‘The layers of the excavations,’ says Professor Gowland, ‘in which the flint and stone tools were found was absolutely undisturbed ground’;[2190] and the chippings were found as far down as the surface of the bed rock. Only one trace of copper or bronze was visible, namely a stain, described by the formula CuCO₃ on a sarsen block, seven feet below the surface. The work of trimming the stones appears to have been done with stone implements only. The copper stain, however, proves that copper or bronze must have been in use at the time when the builders of Stonehenge were at work. Professor Gowland[2191] affirms that the stain ‘can only have been produced by prolonged contact with some very small object of copper or bronze or some material containing copper.... It may perhaps have been an ornament, but cannot possibly have been an implement.’ He argues, further, that ‘even if metal tools were of no use for this particular work, it is difficult to believe that, if the monument were of the Bronze Age, no bronze implement would have been lost in the course of its erection’.[2192] I, on the other hand, would remind him that no bronze has been found in the hut-circles of Dartmoor or in various cemeteries which undoubtedly belonged to the Bronze Age,[2193] and I suggest that if the workmen who built Stonehenge had no use for bronze tools when they were building it, they were not more likely to lose them on the site than the masons who built St. Paul’s Cathedral to drop their table knives within the area of the churchyard. However, Professor Gowland does not pin his faith upon this argument. He points out[2194] that many of the flint implements which he discovered at Stonehenge closely resemble those which were discovered by Canon Greenwell at Grime’s Graves, and which were attributed by him to the close of the Neolithic Age, or, at the latest, to a period when bronze had not come into general use.[2195] But nobody who has learned the ABC of archaeology needs to be told that stone implements were used long after the introduction of bronze;[2196] and no expert sees anything improbable in the theory that such tools were used in constructing Stonehenge towards the end of the Bronze Age. Besides, as Professor Gowland admits, Dr. Maskelyne has pointed out that ‘bronze tools would not work sarsens’;[2197] assuming, then, that Stonehenge was erected in the Bronze Age, how could the sarsens have been dressed except with implements of stone? But the discovery upon which Professor Gowland lays the most stress is that of the deer-horn pick. Similar picks were found in large numbers at Grime’s Graves. The one which Professor Gowland found, if it really was a pick, must have been used for excavating the pits in which the stones of Stonehenge were erected; and Professor Gowland argues that if bronze tools had been in use at the time, ‘it would seem not unreasonable to assume that they would have been employed, as they would have been so much more effective for such work than the picks of deer’s horn.’[2198] But no bronze pick has ever been found in this country; and deer-horn picks have been found in interments of the Bronze Age,[2199] and even in a Romano-British deposit in the village of Woodyates on Cranborne Chase.[2200] Professor Gowland provisionally assigns the date ‘about 2000-1800 B.C.’ for the erection of Stonehenge; and he adds that Sir Norman Lockyer’s astronomical calculation ‘gives an approximate date ... of 1680 B.C., with a margin of error ± 200 years’.
More than one attempt has been made to determine the date of Stonehenge from the orientation of its axis; and these attempts have been founded upon the assumption that one, at all events, of the objects which the builders had in view was the worship of the sun. ‘The chief evidence,’ as Sir Norman Lockyer and the late Mr. F. C. Penrose have observed, ‘lies in the fact that an “avenue” ... formed by two ancient earthen banks, extends for a considerable distance from the structure, in the general direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice.’[2201] On the avenue, 100 feet from the so-called Slaughter Stone, stands a large monolith, called the ‘Friar’s Heel’, or the ‘Heel Stone’. At one time it was generally assumed that on Midsummer Day, at the time when Stonehenge was built, an observer, standing on or behind the ‘Altar Stone’, could see the sun rising above the tip of the Heel Stone. At the present time, however, as Mr. Arthur Hinks points out, ‘the sun rises further south than it has done for the last ten thousand years’; and yet, from the point of view of an observer standing behind the Altar Stone, ‘it still rises north of the stone.’[2202] In fact ‘it is some seven days before or after midsummer day when it rises directly over the stone’.[2203] Moreover, as Professor Flinders Petrie[2204] says, the ‘skew position’ of the Altar Stone would seem to show that it is not now in its original position. Accordingly Sir Norman Lockyer felt obliged to leave the Friar’s Heel out of his calculations, and to confine himself to attempting to determine the orientation of the avenue.[2205] The method which he and his colleague adopted was to peg out as accurately as possible ‘the central line between the low and often mutilated banks’ of the avenue, and then to measure ‘the bearings of two sections of this line near the beginning and the end’.[2206] ‘The resulting observations,’ he tells us, ‘gave for the axis of the avenue nearest the commencement an azimuth of 49° 38′ 48″, and for that of the more distant 49° 32′ 54″.’[2207] But neither of these measurements was adopted by Sir Norman. He found, or thought that he found, that the mean between the two values which he had obtained, namely, 49° 35′ 51″, was ‘confirmed by the information, supplied by the Ordnance Survey, that from the centre of the temple [Stonehenge] the bearing of the principal bench mark on the ancient fortified hill, about eight miles distant, a well-known British encampment named ... Sidbury, is 49° 34′ 18″; and that the same line continued through Stonehenge to the south-west strikes another ancient fortification, namely, Grovely Castle, about six miles distant, and at practically the same azimuth, viz., 49° 35′ 51″. For the above reasons,’ he says, ‘49° 34′ 18″ has been adopted for the azimuth of the avenue.’[2208] Having regard to the rate of change in the obliquity of the ecliptic,[2209] he concluded that the date of the foundation of Stonehenge was 1680 B.C.; but he admits that this date ‘may possibly be in error by ±200 years’.[2210]
It would appear then that, if Sir Norman Lockyer’s calculations are well founded, Stonehenge was erected at some time between 1880 and 1480 B.C. Certainly the conclusion does not err on the side of excessive precision. But the foundation upon which the calculations rest has been shown by Mr. Hinks to be rotten. To begin with, the assumption that Sidbury Hill was connected with the erection of Stonehenge is absurd. Does Sir Norman Lockyer mean to suggest that the bench mark was prehistoric? ‘In our climate,’ says Mr. Hinks, ‘Sidbury is probably not visible from Stonehenge at sunrise once in twenty years.’[2211] In point of fact it is never so visible: only the trees on the top of the hill are to be seen. Furthermore, as Mr. Hinks points out, Sir Norman Lockyer has assumed that ‘for [the temple of] Karnak the moment of sunset was when the sun’s centre had just reached the horizon; for Stonehenge sunrise was the moment when the first tip of the sun appeared above the hill. It was necessary to adopt these precise yet different phases for the two cases, because any other assumptions would have led to results obviously absurd.’[2212] Finally, Sir Norman Lockyer is obliged to assume that the builders of Stonehenge could tell the exact day on which the midsummer solstice occurred. The utter improbability of this assumption must be apparent to any one who remembers that the astronomer who constructed the Julian calendar miscalculated the dates both of the summer and of the winter solstice.[2213]
Mr. E. J. Webb, whose brilliant article in the Edinburgh Review of October, 1894, demolished Sir Norman Lockyer’s theory as to the orientation of the Egyptian temples,[2214] has written me a letter in which the futility of attempting to determine the date of Stonehenge by astronomical reasoning is explained with a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired. ‘As,’ he writes, ‘the sun in our latitudes does not rise at right angles to the horizon, but with a considerable slant, it follows that the place where his upper rim begins to appear is appreciably further towards the north than the place where his centre appears, and this again than the place where he is first seen fully risen,—that is, where his lower edge touches the horizon.’ Now I think myself that, even if we could credit the builders with complete accuracy, attempts to get the date of the building astronomically would be vain, because (1) we do not know the exact place (if such there was) at which the observer’s eye was supposed to be placed. (Flinders Petrie does to some extent get over this difficulty by supposing that the observer took up a position from which the point of the Heel Stone appears exactly level with the horizon. I doubt, however, whether we have a right to be sure that the point is exactly where it was at first. Some of the stones have leaned over considerably, and why not this? But the difficulty is much greater for Lockyer, who takes no account of the Heel Stone.) (2) We do not know whether the ancients would have understood by the moment of sunrise the moment when the sun’s upper rim appears (A), or the moment when his centre appears (B), or the moment when his lower rim appears (C). (3) Even if we did know this, yet, as every one who has watched the sun rise must admit, it is practically quite impossible to be certain when any one of these moments occurs. Lockyer tacitly admits this when he arbitrarily takes as the moment of first appearance the time when 2′ (about 1/16) of the sun’s disc are risen.
‘It is clear that (A being assumed) when Stonehenge was built, an observer looking along Flinders Petrie’s line of sight would see the Friar’s Heel considerably to the south of the place of sunrise, inasmuch as, though that place has ever since been moving southwards, we see it slightly to the south even now. Lockyer therefore puts the Friar’s Heel out of his theory altogether, in the belief that a stone which did not exactly mark the place of the most northerly sunrise could be of no use. I think, on the other hand, that a stone placed a little too far south would probably suit what is likely to have been the purpose in view even better than one which exactly marked the solstitial sunrise. For if, instead of asserting that Stonehenge was roofed over, and a beam of light admitted at the moment of sunrise to its darkened sanctuary[2215]—all of which is pure guesswork—we suppose that the builders were contemplating merely such bonfires and rejoicings as, by Lockyer’s own admission, certainly have taken place in various parts of the world, may we not ask how people in those ancient days knew when these festivities were to be held. For the later days, of which we have knowledge, the answer is easy enough: then people had the Julian calendar, according to which St. John’s Day, or whatever day was selected, always recurred at the same place in the solar year, whether at, or before, or after the solstice. But we do not know whether in pre-Roman times the inhabitants of Wiltshire had any settled calendar at all; and if they had, it is probable that, as in almost all ancient calendars, the days of the month, and therefore most likely the festivals, were reckoned by the moon.[2216] The fifteenth, let us say, of a particular month meant the day when a particular moon was fifteen days old; and if this day should coincide in one year with the solstice, it would not coincide with it the next year, and could not have coincided with it the year before. How then could people tell when the Midsummer festival ought to be held? I answer that they might have very easily done so some time beforehand by the aid of a stone set up so as to mark, not the solstitial sunrise itself, but an earlier—and therefore of course also a later—one. If the Friar’s Heel stood, as on Lockyer’s theory it did, some little way to the south of the place of the midsummer sunrise, then the sun must have risen over it twice—first towards the end of his journey north, just before the solstice, and secondly on his return southward, just after the solstice. Now if the Stonehenge people looked out for the morning on which the sun first seemed to rise over the stone, and counted the days to a morning when he seemed to rise there again on his return journey, they could, by halving this number, obtain the time of the solstice with as much accuracy as they could have required. After doing this once, they could in following years always know, by watching the sun’s first approach to the Friar’s Heel, for what day to appoint the midsummer rejoicings. That these rejoicings took place at sunrise I do not assert. Bonfires, at least in these times, usually take place at night.... I do not think we have any right to say with certainty that any solstitial festival ever took place at Stonehenge or near it. For even granting that, as seems not unlikely, Stonehenge was orientated more or less closely to the solstitial sunrise, and that the Friar’s Heel was really used for the observation of the sun, it does not follow that Stonehenge was a “solar temple” any more than Milan Cathedral, which is orientated more or less closely to the equinoctial sunset, and has had a meridian line traced upon its pavement. And even if we knew that it was a solar temple, we should have no right to infer what kind of worship went on there.’[2217]
Although Dr. Evans’s arguments are not all equally strong, there can be little doubt that his view as to the date of the erection of Stonehenge is approximately correct. The stones were certainly not standing when round barrows were first erected on Salisbury Plain; for one is contained within the vallum, which, moreover, encroaches upon another.[2218] Mr. F. R. Coles has shown that ‘so far as direct evidence has been obtained by rightly conducted excavations, the outstanding feature of all the Scottish circles that have been investigated is the presence within them of interments of the Bronze Age’.[2219] That Stonehenge was erected before the close of this period, or at all events before the dawn of the Iron Age in Wiltshire, is certain; and, as it was the most elaborate and highly finished of all the stone circles of Great Britain, we may fairly infer that it was one of the latest of them all.