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Stonehenge
An aerial view of Stonehenge showing the parched areas where the stones once stood. Photograph: Damian Grady/English Heritage/Damian Grady
An aerial view of Stonehenge showing the parched areas where the stones once stood. Photograph: Damian Grady/English Heritage/Damian Grady

Stonehenge was circular? Well, blow me down

This article is more than 9 years old

It’s great that we have evidence the Salisbury Plain monument was round – but did anyone seriously ever think otherwise?

It is often hard to make sense of archaeological stories in the news. Are we, the public, being patronised by a profession that assumes we’re completely ignorant and must be spoon-fed information that doesn’t add up to much? Or has archaeological science wandered so genuinely far from common sense that it sees news in what may, to interested outsiders, look blindingly obvious?

At the very end of the summer silly season comes the “news” that Stonehenge may have been a complete stone circle after all.

People who work at the site noticed something that has passed professional archaeologists by: traces of two vanished stones. Though they had watered the rest of the site throughout the hot summer, their hosepipe was too short to reach an outer section of the enclosed area on Salisbury Plain. As the ground dried up, the Stonehenge staff saw distinctive parch marks that turned out to be tell-tale signs of the lost megaliths.

This is a great day for amateur archaeologists. Enthusiastic, untrained eyes have discovered something really significant.

But how exactly is it significant? Here, we are told, is apparent evidence that Stonehenge was built as a circle, not as a cresent-shaped enclosure. It is excellent that such evidence has been found. But is it really a surprise?

Most people outside the archaeological profession do actually tend to imagine Stonehenge as a circle. It’s famous for being, y’know, a circle of stones.

I am not just being a philistine here. We can deduce the circular nature of Stonehenge from solid evidence that is visible to everyone.

For one thing, Stonehenge is not just the stones. Around the surviving megalithic structure is a circular ditch and bank that defines the entire site as … that’s right, a great big circle. Why would this circularity be abandoned when it came to putting up the stones? It’s the case against the stones’ arrangement being circular that needs proving, not the other way around. The common sense assumption has to be that this was a circular structure.

The wider context of ancient Britain backs up that assumption. For Stonehenge is not the only stone circle raised in Neolithic Britain. The village of Avebury in Wiltshire is surrounded by a vast stone circle as well as a huge circular earthwork. There’s no question the stones at Avebury form a circle. So do those at Stenness, Orkney, at the other end of the British Isles.

These “Henge” monuments and others around Britain are so consistently circular that the existence of circles must surely be part of their meaning. The geometric feat of mapping out a circle, presumably using pegs and cord, was no mean achievement for a pre-literate people.

Many prehistoric mounds like Silbury Hill near Avebury are also circular. Are all these cosmic circles meant to mirror the shapes of the sun and moon as they look to the naked pre-scientific eye?

Stonehenge is full of mystery, but the suggestion that it was not a complete circle of stones was surely always a bit eccentric. Apparently some researchers have nevertheless argued just that. So, the sensational evidence that Stonehenge was a circle is proof of the bleedin’ obvious, and of the sometimes perverse theories that people come up with in the face of this ancient enigma.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Stonehenge researchers discover site is much larger than previously thought

  • Dry spell at Stonehenge reveals secret that has eluded archaeologists

  • Barack Obama strolls among the sarsens at Stonehenge – in pictures

  • British family's joy at meeting Barack Obama near Stonehenge

  • Stonehenge used to be a free day out

  • Summer solstice at Stonehenge – in pictures

  • Will Self: has English Heritage ruined Stonehenge?

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