Archaeology

Professor Michael Parker Pearson (University College London)

Wednesday 28/09/2022 @ 7pm

GGLT (Geography Lecture Theatre)

Much new research has been directed at Stonehenge in the last two decades by numerous teams and organisations. We now have a better understanding of its constructional sequence and of its context within its surrounding ceremonial and inhabited landscape as well as of its wider setting within the British and European Neolithic - Early Bronze Age. Scientific analyses of isotopes, aDNA, bluestone and sarsen geology, following on from recent archaeological excavations, have helped to transform our understanding of the people who built Stonehenge, where they obtained its materials, and where they came from. Stonehenge's origins and purpose continue to be debated, attempting to account for its various astronomical, funerary, architectural, and contextual elements that make it such an enigmatic monument - the most elaborate and labour-intensive of all of Britain and Ireland's stone circles. Yet some interpretations now appear less plausible than others. Whilst some archaeologists have been convinced that it could have been built only by a deeply hierarchical, chiefdom-type society, the increasing evidence for collective and cooperative organisation suggests otherwise. Its origins also now appear to be bound up with long-distance relationships to the sources of the bluestones 240km away in west Wales.