Archaeologists and astronomers to study Wiltshire site’s lesser understood connection to the moon
The rising and setting of the sun at Stonehenge, especially during the summer and winter solstices, continues to evoke joy, fascination and religious devotion.
Now a project has been launched to delve into the lesser understood links that may exist between the monument and the moon during a rare lunar event.
Continue reading...Religious site contains burial mound serving as a solar calendar as well as remains of about 60 people
Dutch archaeologists have unearthed an approximately 4,000-year-old religious site – nicknamed the “Stonehenge of the Netherlands” – that includes a burial mound that served as a solar calendar.
The mound, which contained the remains of about 60 men, women and children, had several passages through which the sun shone directly on the longest and shortest days of the year.
Continue reading...The musician and composer on a magical performance by Udo Kier, a west African drumming app and where to find a taste of Palestine
Damon Albarn was born in east London in 1968. Interested in music from a young age, he studied at East 15 Acting School and then Goldsmiths, where he co-founded the band that helped kick off Britpop. As well as recording eight studio albums with Blur, Albarn also co-created Gorillaz and the Good, the Bad & the Queen, spearheaded the collaborative organisation Africa Express and has scored stage productions including Monkey: Journey to the West and Dr Dee. He lives in Notting Hill, west London, with his partner, Suzi Winstanley. On 12 November, Albarn releases his second solo album The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows on Transgressive Records.
Continue reading...Britain is eroding global reputation for conserving its historic assets, culture bodies are warning
The UK is eroding its global reputation for conserving its “unparalleled” historic assets, culture bodies have warned, with Stonehenge expected to be next in line to lose its coveted World Heritage status after Liverpool.
Related: Unesco strips Liverpool of its world heritage status
Continue reading...Find backs theory that bluestones first stood at Waun Mawn before being dragged 140 miles to Wiltshire
An ancient myth about Stonehenge, first recorded 900 years ago, tells of the wizard Merlin leading men to Ireland to capture a magical stone circle called the Giants’ Dance and rebuilding it in England as a memorial to the dead.
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account had been dismissed, partly because he was wrong on other historical facts, although the bluestones of the monument came from a region of Wales that was considered Irish territory in his day.
Continue reading...Police and officials maintain presence at mass trespass after bypass approved
More than 100 protesters have staged a trespass at Stonehenge to raise concerns over plans for a two-mile tunnel underneath the world heritage site.
Last month the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, approved the £1.7bn project, which will include eight miles of extended dual carriageway along the A303 in Wiltshire.
Continue reading...Ancient artefacts will be lost when tunnel for A303 is built near site, campaigners claim
It has been bitterly debated for the past three decades, but the latest plans to partly bury the A303 in a tunnel beside Stonehenge may this week finally get approval from transport secretary Grant Shapps.
The £2.4bn scheme – which will see the traffic-choked road to the west country widened into a dual carriageway near the ancient site before shooting down a two-mile tunnel – has pitted archaeologists, local campaigners and even the nation’s druids against the combined might of Highways England, English Heritage and the National Trust.
Continue reading...16 September 1924 People wrongly believe that this majestic group of ruins was the Westminster Abbey of the Druids in Britain
The belief that Stonehenge, in common with other megalithic remains in the British Isles — menhirs, dolmens, and circles, — is druidical, and that the majestic group of ruins on Salisbury Plain was the Westminster Abbey of the Druids in Britain, is widely held, and especially by the non-scientific public. It has found expression in many of the older Ordnance maps, in which the term druidical is applied to groups of prehistoric remains which are now known to belong to the Neolithic or Bronze Age. This error will doubtless be erased in future editions.
It has also led within recent years to the formation of a sect at Clapham who assume that they are the heirs of the Druids, and as such claim the right to bury the ashes of their dead at Stonehenge, which they view as the Mecca of their faith. From their own account it appears that they have already buried the ashes of some of their members and the bodies of some of their children within the precincts. Whatever they do in the future, we look to the Board of Works to prevent further desecration of the noblest pre-historic monument in Europe, or any interference with the exploration now being carried on by the Society of Antiquaries and the Wiltshire Archeological Society.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Discovery of prehistoric structure is another reason to give up ‘disastrous, white elephant’ scheme
Leading archaeologists say a £1.6bn scheme to build a road tunnel through the historic Stonehenge landscape should be scrapped altogether after the sensational nearby discovery of the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.
Mike Parker Pearson, professor of British later prehistory at University College London, said: “This is just another reason to give up this disastrous, white elephant of a scheme.”
Continue reading...Public accounts committee says plan at mercy of spending review delayed by Brexit
A £2bn project to open a road tunnel beneath the Stonehenge world heritage site in 2026 is being put at risk by uncertainty over how it will be financed, MPs have warned.
Ministers have claimed the scheme is affordable, deliverable and will improve Stonehenge by taking the sight and sound of lorries and cars away from the ancient monument and reducing traffic congestion.
Continue reading...People across the UK have welcomed the summer solstice, the first day of summer. Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles were among the venues for celebrations marking the northern hemisphere’s longest day of the year
Continue reading...Britain’s favourite monument is stuck in the middle of a bad-tempered row over road traffic. By Charlotte Higgins
Stonehenge, with the possible exception of Big Ben, is Britain’s most recognisable monument. As a symbol of the nation’s antiquity, it is our Parthenon, our pyramids – although, admittedly, less impressive. Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, recalls that when he took a group of Egyptian archaeologists to see it, they were baffled by our national devotion to the stones, which, compared to the refined surfaces of the pyramids, seemed to them like something hastily thrown up over a weekend.
Unlike those other monuments, though, Stonehenge is more or less a complete mystery. Nobody knows for sure why, or by whom, this vast arrangement of boulders was erected on Wiltshire’s downlands, in the south of England, about 5,000 years ago. Into this void have rushed myriad theories, from the academically sober to the blatantly fantastic. Over the centuries, its construction has been confidently credited to giants, wizards, Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, Romans, Saxons, Danes and aliens. (According to one medieval theory, Merlin had it transported from Ireland to serve as the funeral monument for Britons slaughtered by Hengist, the treacherous Saxon.)
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