Neanderthals started it

Palaeolithic art spans several tens of thousand years. We tend to think of images of horses, but actually the earliest phase was non-figurative. It was marks of the body -hands being placed against walls, fingers being covered in pigment – and that probably was originated not by our own species but by Neanderthals at least 64,000 years ago.

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Paul Pettitt answers listener questions on what cave art can reveal about the palaeolithic era

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The figurative art we think of when we think of cave art appeared somewhere after 40,000 years ago, perhaps as late as 37,000 years ago, by which time Homo sapiens had been in Europe for a few thousand years and Neanderthals had become extinct. So we shouldn’t necessarily think that it was always created by Homo sapiens as we dispersed out of Africa. There was probably lots of periods in-between in which it wasn’t created for whatever reason.

When we do have what we tend to think of in terms of cave art, it is overwhelmingly dominated by images of those animals that were so important to hunt – those gregarious herbivores on the steppe grasslands of Europe.

We can see lots and lots of experiments with stylistic change. The ways you depict horses or the ways you depict bison develops a lot. This really shows that over some 25,000 years of figurative cave art, there was considerable change in the way people thought it should be done.

We think of it as art in a modern Western sense. We have to dismiss all of these modern Western notions. It was one part of a series of activities, the exploration of dangerous caves being one of them. There was probably also dance, singing, etc. Art is just the tangible part that survived of what one assumes was a ritual behaviour, perhaps with a religious underpinning, and that’s about creation of those animals that were so important to think about and to hunt.

Paul Pettit is professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Durham University and he specialises in Palaeolithic art. He is author of Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: How science is revolutionising our origin story (Thames and Hudson), which traces the origins of our own species, Homo sapiens, and our behaviour in the Ice Age

The palaeolithic period stretches across a vast period of space and time, but if there’s one thing that really brings the prehistoric era to life for us today, it’s cave art. Professor Paul Pettitt answers your top questions on what we can learn from the extraordinary prehistoric paintings and engravings found at places like Lascaux and Altamira. Speaking to David Musgrove, he delves into when and why this art was made, who made it, and how.

What is Boxing Day?

Boxing Day is also known as St Stephen’s Day – Stephen was the first Christian martyr, stoned to death in c34 AD.

Being a saint’s day, it has charitable associations. Charitable boxes – collections of money – would have been given out at the church door to the needy.

While the wider significance of St Stephen’s Day collapsed in Europe, it held on in Protestant England. “It is an Anglo-Saxon thing,” says Connelly. “As England made more and more of Christmas, it began to concentrate its rituals onto just a few days. This was happening by the 18th century.

“The English came to believe that they owned Christmas – perhaps in partnership with other ‘Teutonic/Nordic’ peoples. This was a bit of an over-exaggeration as, of course, there are plenty of southern European Christmas traditions.

“The Church of England had gotten rid of so many days. The charitable efforts that, under the Catholic calendar, would have been scattered, became tied to the one day.”

• Read more |How to host a medieval Christmas

By the late 18th century or early 19th century, Boxing Day became a day of outdoor activity.

While Christmas Day was about being at home with your family, Boxing Day was a time to get outside, to get away from the home. “People can only be cooped up for so long!” says Connelly. “There’s always been a need to exorcise – and exercise – all of that.”

In the 18th century, Boxing Day became a day for aristocratic sports – hunting, horseracing, and shooting. By the 19th century, as a result of urbanisation, it was about professional football.

As British society, particularly English society, became marked by large industrial cities, distinctive working-class leisure pursuits evolved. With Boxing Day already associated with pleasurable, outdoor activities, it was soon adopted as a key date in the professional soccer calendar.

When did the charitable side of Boxing Day end?

By the early 19th century, charitable aims became more focused around Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, “but it was a very slow petering out,” says Connelly. “There was a debate about whether inmates should get beer and beef on Christmas Day, for example. Whether they got this depended upon the attitude of local guardians.

“And by this point, there were enough poor people to be thought of as an entity. Provision for the poor turned into a local government issue, as opposed to something individuals organised.”

• Read more | Charles Dickens, champion of the poor

When did Boxing Day originate?

Boxing Day emerged quite quickly after the establishment of Christmas, says Connelly. The very early church took no notice of Christmas – it wasn’t until the turn of the first millennia that the church started to ‘push’ Christmas.

“It was a way to make sure converts stayed on board – the early church knew it could not stamp out all the winter festivals, so it decided to ‘Christianise’ them,” he explains. “So a whole series of pre-existing European mid-winter ceremonies were white-washed with Christianity. Boxing Day came quickly after.

“Christmas feast days were chipped away at – largely because of Protestantism and the development of the British economy. A more urbanised, factory-oriented economy meant that the machines and methods of production just had to be kept going.

• Read more | Shop ’till you drop: a brief history of Christmas shopping

“It was completely unlike the rhythms of the rural world which, until then, had dominated, and which allowed for more punctuation marks in the course of the year – so you ended up having to peg festivities on fewer days.”

Historically, has Boxing Day been celebrated differently in other parts of the world?

England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand are distinctive in making quite a ‘thing’ of Boxing Day, with outdoor events such as picnics, horse shows, rides and walks, says Connelly.

How did Boxing Day become a bank holiday?

The 26th of December became additional bank holiday in 1974, but in fact it had been a de facto day off for many years, Connelly explains. “This is partly because football made such a big ‘thing’ of Boxing Day that many people took time off anyway, and gradually during the course of the 20th century more and more employers realised that business would generally slow during this period and so, in effect, turned a blind eye to people taking the time off. Taking the 26th off then became a custom in its own right.”

Boxing Day today tends to be associated with shopping. When did this trend emerge?

It began in the late 1990s, when the John Major government amended Sunday trading laws.

“When you open the door to trading on a Sunday, changing the spirit of when it is morally ‘right’ to shop, you open up the possibility of trading on festival days,” says Connelly.

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in December 2013

In the second episode of this two-part special on Stonehenge, archaeologist and author Mike Pitts answers more listener questions on the most famous prehistoric monument in Britain. Speaking to David Musgrove, he discusses Stonehenge’s relationship with other prehistoric sites, its long legacy, and why we call it “Stonehenge”.

• Missed part one? Find it here

Mike Pitts is the author of How to Build Stonehenge (Thames & Hudson, 2022)

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Britain is blessed with some truly magnificent ancient sites. Every year tourists flock to the great megaliths of Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire, the Callanish Stones in the Hebrides and Castlerigg in the Lake District.  However, the prehistory in Britain goes back far longer and is far more diverse than these well-visited monuments may suggest. Author and explorer Dave Hamilton looks at some of the lesser-known ancient sites around Britain; from a Palaeolithic cave burial and an ancient axe-polishing stone to a towering broch and site of prehistoric rock art.

In a desolate, windswept corner of Bodmin Moor, in the shadow of Cornwall’s highest peaks, an unusual rectangular configuration of 56 stones set in a manmade bank of earth lies open to the elements. The site has been known as King Arthur’s Hall since the 16th century but it is doubtful it ever had anything to do with any figure connected to the legendary monarch. It is thought there were once up to 140 stones, first erected in the Neolithic period – although beyond that, its purpose remains a mystery. It has been suggested it might have been a meeting point for tribal elders, who would gather within the rectangular interior of the upright stones. Similar sites in France and Ireland were used for cremation and it is possible King Arthur’s Hall served the same function. However, there is no direct archaeological evidence to back this claim. Some have even suggested that it is not Neolithic at all but a medieval cattle enclosure.

• Read more | Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap

The consensus seems to be that it is at least 4,500 years old and probably served some sort of ritual purpose – although this is often shorthand for “we don’t really know”!  It does seem to be one small piece of a larger landscape of sites, with associated stone circles; cists (stone coffin or burial chamber) and monoliths dotted around the surrounding moor.

The climate on the moor can be unforgiving, so the centre of the site is often flooded and boggy. Nevertheless it is a magical place to visit and quite unlike any other ancient monument in the country.

On Fyfield Down, just off the Ridgeway path near Avebury in Wiltshire, there is a large field containing hundreds of glacial deposited stones. It is a spectacular site, often known as the Grey Wethers (but also known as Mother’s Jam), as from a distance the grey sarsen stones resemble countless grazing sheep. Not to be confused with the Dartmoor stone circle of the same name, these rocks provided easily accessible building material for the Neolithic people who erected the great stone circles of Avebury and the Long barrow at West Kennet.

Among the deposited sarsens, one stone particularly stands out (if you can find it!): the ‘Polisher Stone’. A series of grooves were carved into this recumbent stone by generations of people polishing their stone axes. Stones marked in this way are a common sight in France but are much rarer in Britain. Polished axes were traded throughout ancient Britain and it is thought most were never used for cutting down trees or any other practical purpose. Instead, current thinking is they were both a status symbol for Neolithic man (akin to the modern-day Swiss watch), and an item of ritualistic practice, perhaps like a ceremonial mace.

Although we will never know for certain, the Polisher Stone’s proximity to the ancient Ridgeway path might suggest the rock formed part of a ritualised walk toward the end of the pilgrimage to Avebury during the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Look for the stone on the hill between the main field of Sarsens and the Ridgeway path, or see my book, Wild Ruins B.C. (Wild Things Publishing, 2019) for more detailed instructions.

Around 33,000 years ago the body of a man was placed into a cave that overlooked a vast, flat plain of grazing mammoths, deer and antelope. Around his neck were shell necklaces and on his wrists were rings made from mammoth bone. The funeral party may have covered his body with red ochre, or he may have been laid to rest in clothing dyed with the pigment.

The man would have been in his 20s and, although perhaps a little larger, physically he would have been no different to you or me.

He was part of an upper-Palaeolithic group of people known as Cro-Magnons – modern humans, who followed on from, and perhaps crossed over with, Neanderthals, appearing in Europe 40,000 years ago. Significantly, he was buried with grave goods and a mammoth skull was placed, like a headstone, above the body, making this the oldest ritualised burial ever found in Britain. We cannot know how the man died but the presence of the ochre and jewellery, along with the mammoth skull, have led some to believe he was either a shaman or celebrated hunter.

Thousands of years later, long after his body had decomposed, the ochre remained, staining his bones red. In 1823 the remains were discovered by the theologian and geologist William Buckland. The staining of the bones along with its proximity to a Roman camp, led him to believe these were the bones of a female, Roman-era prostitute, living in isolation to solicit her trade. With a belief system centred around the teachings of the Bible, much like his peers at the time, Buckland simply could not have contemplated the true age of the skeleton. To further fit this view, he suggested the ‘woman’s’ mammoth bone jewellery was fossilised ivory dug up by her kinsmen. Because of this gender confusion and the red-stained bones, he came to be known as ‘The Red Lady of Paviland’.

• Read more about life in the Iron Age

Sea levels are much higher today than they were in Palaeolithic and the cave now stands on the shores of the Gower Peninsula. Although the cave is well documented, it can be difficult to find and is a treacherous place to get to. A visit needs to be timed with the retreating tides, as many have found themselves cut off from land, forced to spend the night in the cave!

A series of three, 240-metre diameter henge circles, 1,000 paces apart, the Thornborough Henges would have been constructed with nothing more than antler and bone tools and signifies many thousands of hours of labour. The central henge of the three would have been covered in gypsum, which glowed a brilliant white both in daylight and under the glow of the full moon. As with all Neolithic sites, we cannot know its true purpose, but it is thought to have astrological significance, being linked with the rising of Orion’s Belt in the night sky. This may have seen the henge (or henges) used for ceremonies during key times of the year.

Whatever its purpose, it did not sit alone in the landscape. An associated cursus (or large dug out), ceremonial walkway and six henge circles have also been found in the local area, along with countless burial mounds. Such is the extent of the site, it must have rivalled Stonehenge for its importance to the people of the Neolithic period and it is likely people came to visit from far and wide. Two of the henge circles are found on open grassland with a third – the most atmospheric – now hidden amongst a large grove of trees.

The Scottish brochs were large towers thought to have once housed elite tribesmen along with their families, and perhaps even their animals. Situated mostly in the north of mainland Scotland – the Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands – they look like modern-day cooling towers. Midhowe itself is one of many brochs densely packed on the shores of Eynhallow Sound – the stretch of water which separates the island of Rousay from Orkney mainland.

Its strategic location and the presence of holes, through which spears can be thrust, suggests it was used for defensive purposes. However, just as with the hillforts to the south, these may have been used as a mark of status or a show of power, rather than serving solely as a stronghold.

Despite the remote, northern location of Midhowe, Roman artefacts have been found on the site, suggesting direct or indirect trading links with the Roman Empire. Around a third of the defensive wall still stands, along with stairs; proposed kennels for guard dogs either side of the entrance; flagstone furniture and even a working water cistern. The completeness of the broch gives a remarkable insight into life during the Scottish Iron Age.

Tucked away in a small woodland, just off the river Ayr, about 10 miles due east of Prestwick and 25 miles southwest of Glasgow, lies one of the most enigmatic prehistoric sites in Britain. Etched into a large outcrop of red sandstone are some of the most extensive examples of rock art made by a pre-Christian civilisation found in Britain. Thought to date to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, the markings are referred to as ‘cup and ring marks’, as they often show a series of rings emanating from a cup-like indentation. They can be found elsewhere in Scotland, Northern England, Ireland and continental Europe, with similar markings also found in Australia and Mesoamerica.

During the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, rivers would have been an important way to navigate through a sometimes densely-populated area. The proximity of the Ballochmyle rock art to the river therefore could suggest these were way-markers or etchings made to appease the river gods to grant their safe passage. Others say they could have been signposts for lost travellers, star-charts, or even an ancient form of writing.

• Britain’s 7 most amazing ruins

It is rare to find Neolithic monuments of any kind in the Midlands, let alone one like the Devil’s Ring and Finger. It is one of only a handful of circular stones found in Britain and Ireland. It contains perhaps the largest carved hole of any prehistoric monument in the country, much larger than the far more famous Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall. However, unlike its Cornish counterpart, the Devil’s Ring and Finger has only one, rather than two associated monoliths, in addition to the circular stone – hence the name ring and finger.

However, as the monument was removed from its original site some time in antiquity to make way for the plough, we can never really know what the original configuration looked like, or indeed what it was for. It has been suggested that it may have been part of a stone circle or the only surviving part of a chambered tomb, much like Cotswold Severn family tombs south of the site.

The monument now lies on the edge of a farmer’s field and in all but the winter months is almost completely obscured from view by a small copse of trees and crop growth. The present owner of the farm tolerates walkers visiting the site – as long as they respect his crops and livestock by sticking to the field boundary.

• From magnificent ruins to imposing forts: 10 must-visit British castles

Also known as Scarista, the Borvemore standing stone sits on a wild, windswept, Hebridean headland between two long, often deserted, white sandy beaches. Below the stone, the azure blue waters which wash onto the beach are some of the most unpolluted in the world. At times, if it wasn’t for the changeable climate, you could be fooled into thinking you were in the Seychelles rather than Scotland.

It is likely that the stone was not erected as a monolith, and was instead part of a larger stone circle. There are signs of others in the area and it may be that Borvemore was once part of a much larger ritualist landscape. We know from climate surveys that when the stone was erected the weather was far more favourable than it is today. With this in mind, it is not difficult to see why ancient people would have favoured a life on these idyllic islands.

Dave Hamilton is the author of Wild Ruins B.C.: the explorer’s guide to Britain’s ancient sites (Wild Things Publishing, 2019), which reveals Britain’s extraordinary ancient history, from 10,000 years ago to the birth of Christ. It is the sequel to his first travel book, Wild Ruins (Wild Things Publishing, 2015)

Stonehenge is, for many of us, the one place that represents Britain’s prehistory. The celebrated stone circle standing proud on Salisbury Plain with its trademark lintel-topped sarsens has been an enduring source of fascination for millennia. The first monument there, a circular ditch and bank, was dug in c2900 BC, and a timber or stone circle erected inside it. Then, much later, in c2400 BC, the first monoliths of local rock were brought in. Over the course of the next several hundred years, stones were put up, taken down, moved around, added to, and then finally re-erected to the shape we see today.

Stonehenge is undeniably a stone circle, but it’s not a henge, even though it has lent its name to the group of monuments that go under that title. The concept of the ‘henge’ was introduced by a man called Thomas Kendrick in 1932 and technically, a henge is a circular earthen bank with a ditch inside it and one or more entrances through the bank. At Stonehenge, there is a circular bank, but it is inside a ditch, so these elements are the wrong way round. Nevertheless, stone circles and henges do appear to be connected parts of a tradition that developed in Britain from around 3000 to 2000 BC – in other words, during the later Neolithic period (when agriculture began here) and moving into the earlier Bronze Age (when we see the first use of metals, from about 2400 BC).

Stone circles are often positioned within henges, sometimes in replacement for earlier timber circles, so there is a link between the two types of monument, though it’s not an absolutely clear one, as Richard Bradley explains: “Henges and stone circles are separate things that often coalesce. You’ve got plenty of stone circles that don’t have henges, and plenty of henges that don’t have stone circles. They each can pursue an independent existence but they are both different expressions of a more basic idea that special places ought to be circular, which seems quite natural to us, but large parts of Europe don’t have circular monuments in prehistory.”

• Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap
• 8 little-known prehistoric sites in Britain 

It’s possible that the tradition has its origins in northern Britain, perhaps in Orkney, and spread south from there. Stone circles number 1,000 across the country, while there are around 120 henges known. Given the large size of some of these places, the construction of these monuments would have required a considerable number of people to build them. They indicate a “massive control of labour” in the view of Richard Bradley, and what’s particularly odd is that we don’t know where these labourers lived. Their monuments survive, but their houses (rare exceptions aside, particularly in Orkney) are lost to us, so in the later Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age, these henges and stones circles seem to have been the prime concerns of the people who built them.

What we do know is people were coming from a distance to these places. Settlements are not always found in their immediate vicinity. Combined with finds of exotic objects in and around the circles, the evidence from isotope analysis of the bones of animals eaten at these sites points to the fact that people were travelling to get to them. “I think we can start to talk about pilgrimage,” says Richard Bradley. What were they coming to do? Well, eating seems to have been a big thing. Feasting, particularly on pork, is attested by excavated remains of animal bones.

Similarly, archaeological finds indicate that burial and commemoration of the dead also appears to have been going on. There was the deliberate deposition of unusual objects in the ground. Also, the observation of basic astronomical events would appear to have been practised, as many of the monuments have alignments that lend themselves to the solstices. Those are the main things that we can talk about with any sense of certainty, but of course that hasn’t stopped archaeologists and others from coming up with a multitude of theories about the purpose of these places.

What’s interesting is that their role seems to shift over time, notes Richard Bradley: “There’s a gradual change from public buildings – big houses I call them – where we see wooden structures with a lot of animal bone and a lot of debris, to stone settings usually with cremation burials. Then there’s a very last phase of use at stone circles which is perhaps more northern than southern. They were used all over again in the late Bronze Age (1200–800 BC) as cremation cemeteries and cremation pyres.”

So these circular monuments have had a long life and no doubt have meant different things to different people. That’s an attribute they maintain to this day, as anyone passing Stonehenge on a solstice will be able to confirm.

9 places to visit

Where you can see how stone circles sat within ritual landscapes

One of the interesting points about henges and stone circles is that they don’t exist in isolation. They are often surrounded by burial mounds, to create wider ritual landscapes. At The Hurlers, on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, there are three well-preserved stone circles arranged over open ground in a line, a grouping which is unusual in itself.

As with many of these sites, we don’t have definite dates for their construction, but they are assumed to be late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Not far away at Rillaton was an early Bronze Age burial mound, which was dug into in the 19th century. It turned out to be one of the richest early Bronze Age burials discovered.

A skeleton was found along with a fabulous gold cup, the Rillaton Cup, and numerous other objects. Curiously this cup found its way into the royal household where it was used to store the collar studs of King George V, before it was passed on to the British Museum, where it can still be seen today.

Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

Where stones replaced timber circles

In and around this small village south of Bristol, there are three stone circles grouped together, along with a three-stone cove (a cove being a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of stones) in a pub garden, plus some bits of avenues of paired stones leading into the circles. It adds up to one of the largest collections of prehistoric standing stones in the country.

There doesn’t seem to have been a substantial earthwork here, but geophysical survey
has suggested that the stones replaced timber structures, one of which is probably the biggest timber setting that we know of from the Neolithic. The process of replacing timber with stone is repeated elsewhere across the country and might be associated with the idea of moving away from the use of public places linked with the living to more private sites of the dead. Interestingly, the stones used here come from a number of different local sources, so it may be that different groups of people were contributing labour and materials.

Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

Where the tradition of henge building may have begun

Orkney is a paradise for Neolithic enthusiasts, so much so that a large part of it has been designated as a World Heritage Site. Aside from the astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic village at Skara Brae and the magnificently atmospheric chambered tomb of Maes Howe, there’s a stunning pair of stone circles – the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness – opposing each other across an isthmus. The sharp, sometimes triangular, standing stones are set in breathtaking scenery and are worth visiting for that alone.

Their significance in this story is great. The radiocarbon dates from excavated material at the Stones of Stenness suggest that it’s towards the beginnings of both the henge and stone circle traditions. The site is also associated with a style of pottery – grooved ware – that seems to originate in Orkney and travel south with henges and stone circles. As Richard Bradley notes: “The odds are that the henge idea originates in the north and the west.” Even more interesting however is that these henges and circles lie within a much larger Neolithic landscape including several Neolithic settlements (they survive here because the paucity of timber meant that house construction was in stone rather than wood).

The late Neolithic village of Barnhouse is completely contemporary with the nearby Stones of Stenness, and another settlement near the Ring of Brodgar is under excavation now. It’s very unusual to see settlements so close to these types of monuments and the fact that the evidence survives in Orkney adds an extra dimension to the stone circles and henges here.

Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk

Where you can consider how a henge might have altered reality

One of the largest, and most famous, henge and stone circles in Britain, Avebury has one major circle, with a horseshoe-shaped cove setting inside it, and two further circles as well. There is also likely evidence of a timber circle. It had two avenues of paired stones, one of which leads to another stone circle known as The Sanctuary. The dating is not good but the site was probably created around 2400 BC.

The henge is a very substantial earthwork and there’s a great day to be had wandering around the place, being towered over by the great lumpen stones in their settings.

It’s an excellent place to consider just how much labour the creation of some of these sites would have consumed, and of course to ponder why they were built. The huge size of the henge earthworks here might get you thinking about one of Richard Bradley’s theories:

“These earthworks of henges are great screens: they make a completely excluded space, you can’t see in if you’re not a participant and you can’t see out if you are a participant. One of the things that’s very odd with henges is the internal ditch. One argument is that it’s a defence in reverse to stop something powerful escaping. Another is that in most societies, in social anthropology, rites of passage involve a phase of seclusion where the norms of normal existence are explicitly reversed, and I do wonder if we’re talking about something like that.”

The village of Avebury is not an inversion of reality – though it is partly encompassed by the stone circle – and there you’ll find the Alexander Keiller Museum, which displays finds from excavations at this World Heritage Site.

Visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk

Where the prehistoric builders seem to be leading you on a journey

This is a large henge monument boasting a substantial bank and ditch with two entrances, inside which is a circle of some 50 white limestone slabs, now lying on their sides, and a central horseshoe-shaped cove. The setting is in the high moorland of the Peak District, and Richard Bradley describes how Arbor Low might be designed with the power of the Peaks in mind: “It has one narrow entrance and one wide one. If you go in through the narrow entrance, you enter from a fairly undifferentiated landscape; then if you go across the monument you get to the wide entrance on the other side which affords you a spectacular view of a large part of the Peak District.” Whether that’s a journey the prehistoric builders wanted you to take, we cannot know, but it’s interesting to speculate on the mental voyage that might have lain behind this apparently leading layout.

The henge is, in the view of Richard Bradley, later than the stone circle, and he suspects that the recumbent position of the stones is due to later Christian iconoclasm rather than incompetence on the part of the prehistoric builders in setting them originally.

Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

Where you can think about how stones were transported

This is a very small stone circle, which is nevertheless impressive and handily just beside the road. Its location is interesting as it sits just below the Preseli Mountains, which is where the famous bluestones of Stonehenge come from. Gors Fawr is also made of bluestones and while you’re looking at this site, you might well be drawn to dwelling on the much-discussed question of how the 80 or so stones were moved the 150 miles or so east, from this part of Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire.

Henges and stone circles tend to be sited in places that were easily accessible, often in river valleys. Richard Bradley notes that this “may be metaphysical but it’s probably more to do with access”, as waterways would have served as useful transport arteries for people, and perhaps stones, in prehistory.

Visit www.megalithic.co.uk

Where the circular landscape perhaps inspired the builders

This is a very well-preserved stone circle, probably of an early date, with a peculiar inner enclosure that has never been convincingly explained, and no surrounding henge. It occupies a spectacular location, completely surrounded by a circular landscape of Lake District hills. Richard Bradley thinks this is significant: “Henges and early stone circles tend to be located in basins so that you have the optical illusion that you’ve got a circle which is built within a circle taken from nature.”

Castlerigg stands at one of the entrances to the uplands of the Lake District and it’s noteworthy this area was the biggest supplier of stone axes in Neolithic Britain, which, along with the circular landscape theory, might go some way to explaining the location of this stone circle. It certainly makes it one of the most photogenic of monuments to visit today.

Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

Where you can track the changing purpose of a circular monument

This henge is similar to Arbor Low, in that it’s on a hill and has a narrow and wide entrance, providing the same effect of a dramatic view from the wide entrance. The place has a long history – there was some sort of stone setting before 3000 BC – and the interior is complicated. Along with the henge, it had either a stone or timber circle, and it also had a cove. What is interesting is that increasingly the interior was taken up by a burial cairn. It was begun in the early Bronze Age and, as time went by, it got bigger and bigger until it occupied quite a lot of the interior, changing it from an open area to something that’s congested.

Richard Bradley sees that as an indication that here “people are taking over and appropriating a monument that was originally conceived as communal”. This is something that seems to happen elsewhere too, perhaps in association with the arrival of metal technology. If you visit today, you can see the henge, and the burial chamber of the cairn (it has been removed), which is now displayed under a concrete dome (summer opening only). Guided tours are offered and you’ll also get good views over central Scotland, assuming you’ve come on a day when the weather is kind.

Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk

Where a stone circle has been raised up once more

This is a stone circle that Richard Bradley excavated, and it’s one of the rare places where we have a good date. It’s a rubble platform on a low hilltop, which was enclosed by a stone circle about 2300 BC. There is no henge and it’s got a tremendous all-round view, with an illusion of an entrance on the south-west side. It’s illusory as it is blocked by a huge stone. This false entrance is aligned exactly on a mountaintop some 20 miles away. The circle was reused in the late Bronze Age as a cremation site.

In the early part of the 20th century, the site was threatened by quarrying. Alexander Keiller, who went on to dig at Avebury, stopped its destruction, but not before the quarry workers had taken most of the stones out of their sockets and laid them flat. Following Richard Bradley’s excavations, the stones were refitted back into their sockets. Apparently it was quite obvious which hole each stone should go in as they had a very snug fit.

Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk

Richard Bradley is professor of archaeology at Reading University and author of The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland (Cambridge UP, 2007)

This article was first published in the January 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine

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New technology is pinpointing the sources of the huge monoliths

Stonehenge shouldn’t be there. Its great standing stones – their total weight originally equivalent to that of 13 blue whales – loom starkly from a landscape without rock outcrops. So where were they quarried?

The 12th-century historian Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that giants had carried the megaliths from Africa to Ireland, and that Merlin then took them on to Salisbury Plain. Others such as the 16th-century lawyer John Rastell thought the stones had been moulded on the spot out of cement.

The 18th-century antiquary William Stukeley observed that not all of the stones were of the same type. He agreed with an earlier suggestion that the largest – sandstone blocks known as sarsens – hailed from near Marlborough, about 20 miles north of Stonehenge. But what of the other, smaller monoliths known as bluestones?

Africa and Ireland continued to be suggested as possible sources. One theory posited that they had arrived with ancient Greek tin traders, used as ballast in their ships. Perhaps they came from Brittany or Finland; British sources mooted included Dartmoor and Edinburgh. Then, in 1921, geologist Herbert Thomas established that Stonehenge’s bluestones had been quarried from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire. But how did they get to Stonehenge? Were they transported by Neolithic people, or could they have been carried east by glaciers?

Thomas had no doubt that humans were responsible, and most experts since have agreed. However, the glacier theory lingers, supported less by solid geological evidence than by disbelief that anyone would have travelled so far – 150 miles in a straight line – to source these megaliths some 5,000 years ago when they were quarried.

Over the past few years, new lab technologies have enabled geologists Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer to confirm that Pembrokeshire was indeed the main source of the bluestones. They have identified two outcrops in the Preseli Hills – Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedog – that were the sites of megalithic quarries for two specific types of bluestone known at Stonehenge.

Yet not all of Stonehenge’s bluestones were sourced from Pembrokeshire. Bevins and Ixer believe that the Altar Stone, a unique greenish sandstone megalith lying flat near the centre of Stonehenge, came from elsewhere. Their research suggests that it’s probably from eastern Wales or the Marches, though they haven’t ruled out another, more distant source.

Stone cold certainty

But what of Stonehenge’s sarsens? These were, it seems, collected around 2,500 BC – five centuries later than the bluestones. Sarsen is almost pure silica, making examples from one location all but identical to another – so defeating traditional geological attempts to use variations within the stones to help identify sources. Now, though, science has again come to the rescue, thanks to the work of David Nash of Brighton University and a technology called portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF).

Nash’s team analysed the surfaces of the sarsens at Stonehenge, firing radiation from a gadget the size of a hair dryer. By studying X-rays reflected back, they created a geological “fingerprint” that showed all the stones to be very similar to each other.

A further breakthrough arrived when a metre-long rod, or core, of sarsen unexpectedly turned up in Florida. This core was originally drilled from a Stonehenge trilithon during conservation work back in 1958; Robert Phillips, who’d been on the job, had taken it with him when he moved to the United States. In 2018, Phillips offered it back to English Heritage – and Nash and his team stepped in. Now they could compare a Stonehenge megalith with sarsen boulders they had sampled across southern England, crushing up the rock and applying sophisticated geochemical analyses.

The only match for the megalith was in West Woods, on the edge of the Marlborough Downs. So this is the source of the Florida core – and, by implication, all the other Stonehenge sarsens, which pXRF had shown to be so alike.

Sea and river voyages have been proposed – but human-powered overland treks seem most likely

Moving stones weighing up to 4 tonnes from the hills of west Wales to the plains of southern England would be a mighty undertaking even in the 21st century. That our Neolithic ancestors achieved the feat seems mind-blowing.

Yet achieve it they did. Herbert Thomas suggested that the bluestones had been hauled along an overland route of 170–180 miles, passing north of Gloucester to avoid the Severn estuary – the crossing, he thought, would have been too dangerous.

However, many archaeologists disagreed, favouring the theory that the stones had been transported by water. They argued that the Altar Stone had been quarried at Milford Haven, a natural harbour a day’s walk south of the Preseli Hills, and that this would have been the departure point for transport by sea.

The voyage might have hugged the coast to the Bristol Channel, then taken one of two routes: following English rivers to Stonehenge, sledging the short land sections; or continuing south-west along the coast, around Land’s End, east to Christchurch harbour and then up the river Avon.

On the face of it, transporting the sarsens would have been far easier. They had to travel only 15–20 miles south overland from the Marlborough Downs. But sarsens are far bigger than bluestones, weighing in at between 4 and 40 tonnes compared with the 1–4-tonne bluestones. What’s more, the sarsens were artificially shaped, and some of that carving would have been carried out on site, so they would have been heavier when they were transported.

Many archaeologists have envisioned men with ropes pulling stones across rolling logs. This idea has featured in TV programmes and numerous experiments, and is enshrined today in a full-scale model at Stonehenge. Yet research carried out by Barney Harris, an archaeologist at University College London, has cast doubt on this theory. Experiments, along with observations of people moving megaliths in Indonesia, demonstrate that rollers are uncontrollable; stationary sleepers or fixed tracks would be required.

Due to the stones’ vast size and irregular shapes, a sledge would have been essential. The biggest loads would have weighed more than 45 tonnes, which could be pulled only along a fixed trackway. The scale of this operation, particularly the volume of timber required, must have been unmatched in Eu- rope at the time.

It’s easier to envisage the transport of the smaller bluestones, dragged on sledges over sleepers or perhaps even carried with poles or wooden frames; such methods have been recorded in north-east India.

Listen: Mike Pitts answers listener questions on Britain’s most famous prehistoric monument, Stonehenge, on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast.

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The road to ruins

This is what I propose as a possible route taken by the bluestones. Following river valleys and avoiding frequent crossings and steep slopes, we traverse Wales beside the rivers Taf and Tywi, rise to near the source of the Usk north of the Brecon Beacons, and follow that river to the sea. We then paddle across the Severn estuary – a quite feasible crossing that saves us from having to climb the Cotswolds (which a more northerly crossing would necessitate). We continue along the Bristol Avon, perhaps still by boat, and reach Stonehenge via rivers and land, with a total journey of 220 miles.

By the same principles – track river valleys, avoid steep climbs – there is only one option for the sarsens: head south to the edge of the Marlborough Downs, drop into the Vale of Pewsey and follow the Avon Valley (which avoids Salisbury Plain’s forbidding escarpment), reaching Stonehenge in 17 miles.

Incredibly hard stones were shaped without the use of metal tools

Get close to Stonehenge and you’ll see that the stones are carved. Other megaliths across north-west Europe have artificially smoothed faces, but at Stonehenge the builders went further, removing quantities of rock to shape the stones to a more or less standard pattern. Not only that, but several of the sarsens are connected one to another with mortice-and-tenon or tongue-and-groove joints – techniques we can only assume were borrowed from timber construction.

Squared lintels and, in one case, stone joints are prominent in medieval illustrations of Stonehenge, but it wasn’t until 1901 that anyone seriously addressed how they were carved. In that year, the first scientific excavation at the site determined that the stones had been raised before iron tools were available; it also found stone tools that had been used in the work.

Archaeologists then looked at how sarsens on the Marlborough Downs had been shaped in more recent times: with fire and water in the 17th and 18th centuries, and with steel tools in the 19th and early 20th. They assumed that natural sarsen slabs of more or less megalithic shape would have been available to our Neolithic predecessors on site, and thus that the main tasks they would have been confronted with were edge-trimming followed by selective smoothing. The former might have been achieved by pouring cold water onto lines of burning wood on the stone; the sudden change in temperature would crack the stone. (There is no evidence that this process was used, though.) The stones would have been shaped by hammering with mauls – small boulders of very hard sarsen, up to the size of a football. Finishing and jointing, said the archaeologists, would be done by laboriously pounding to remove stone dust.

High-tech revelations

Our understanding of Neolithic techniques has improved with the development of our own technology, which has enabled the first comprehensive examination of the megaliths. By bouncing laser light off the stones and converting the data into precise distance measurements, scientists have built 3D digital models of the megaliths – and these have revealed that the sarsens were almost totally dressed. Archaeologists Marcus Abbott and Hugo Anderson-Whymark distinguished between four stages in the dressing process, employing progressively smaller hammers: first, heavy shaping at source, then coarse preparation, finishing and jointing on site. (These stages must have created large amounts of silica dust in the air, making silicosis a health hazard for those working on the stones.)

Though most of the bluestones were undressed, those now in the central horse- shoe arrangement (see aerial view opposite), plus a few in an outer ring, were finely carved. This was probably done using similar techniques to those used in the dressing of the sarsens.

Another aspect revealed by the laser study is just how much damage was inflicted on the stones by 18th and 19th-century souvenir hunters. When first carved, most megaliths would have had sharper corners than they do today.

• Read more | Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap

Logs and levers were probably used to raise sarsen stones

So you’ve accomplished the unimaginably arduous task of transporting the stones to their new home in what’s now southern Wiltshire. Now you need to get them in place and upright. Most modern theories on how this was achieved were shaped by a 1924 book by the aptly named Herbert Stone.

A retired engineer, Stone described in detail the creation of the sarsen circle, demonstrating his ideas with working models. Stone’s workmen tipped a fully carved megalith down a ramp into a pit. They then tied its top to a set of sheerlegs (a timber A-frame) and hauled it upright using ropes attached to the top of the frame. This process is depicted in English Heritage’s Stonehenge guidebook, and has been used in several experiments, notably for a 1990s BBC/PBS film involving two full-scale concrete megaliths. Yet it would have been impossible.

Let’s start at the beginning. We know that Neolithic people built large oak structures, some comparable to Stonehenge, so would have applied lessons learned from working with timber. In the stone monument, the sides of 30 lintels in a perfect circle curve to fit the ring. Such carving could only have been done when the lintels were still on the ground, and the ring must have been made first, assembled and then moved out of the way before pits were dug.

All erection experiments, from Stone’s models to the concrete giants that appeared in the TV documentaries, have been carried out in a field. But Stonehenge was a building site. The largest stones – the horseshoe of five trilithons (10 huge megaliths and five lintels) at the centre of the site – had to go up first; the stones were too big to pass through gaps in the outer circle. When it came to raising that circle, there was no space on the inside for sheer legs and gangs of pullers, nor to lie megaliths on the ground inside the circle to lift using sheerlegs on the outside. There had to be another way.

Polynesian precedent

I found a clue in a demonstration conducted on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in 1986 for Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl. A horizontal stone moai (monolithic human figure) was rocked with levers, and then rubble was packed in space created beneath the head end. This growing mound raised the moai to a near-vertical position, from where a light pull on ropes finished the job.

William Gowland, the archaeologist who directed the 1901 excavation at Stonehenge, proposed something similar here: a process using long wooden levers to lift the sarsens, piling up logs until each megalith slipped upright into its pit.

Herbert Stone thought that the lintels had been dragged up mounds heaped against the megaliths, but there are signs of neither mounds nor the necessary quarry pits. So Gowland’s method also appears more plausible for the installation of the lintels. One end of a lintel is raised with levers, and logs placed underneath. The same is done to the other end, then again at the first, repeat- ing until the lintel is level with the top of standing megaliths, when it is slid across.

The tops of the megaliths needed to be perfectly level to support the lintels. Stone argued that the correct heights would have been achieved by digging pits at different depths according to the size of each stone – but, with each stone typically weighing 20 tonnes, it would have been impossible to do this with any level of precision. Instead, the megaliths could have been erected to a slightly greater height than needed, and the tops then cut level with one other.

Construction of the monument may have been surprisingly rapid

The site we now call Stonehenge evolved over several hundred years. The first ditch-and- bank earthwork henge, together with a large ring of bluestones, was created around 3000 BC. These stones were later arranged nearer the centre. Around 2500 BC they were removed, the sarsens were installed, and the bluestones were replaced among them. But how long did each period of construction actually take? Is it possible to calculate how many hours this massive Neolithic construction project swallowed?

Such intangibles are hard to pin down. No one has carved a megalith, nor moved a bluestone to Wiltshire, since Neolithic times. Even so, thinking on the time and effort that went into creating the world-famous monument has evolved over the past few decades.

Archaeologist Richard Atkinson, who directed excavations at Stonehenge in the 1950s and 60s, estimated that it would have taken 1,500 men 10 years to fetch the sarsens from the Marlborough Downs. Fifty masons must then have worked 10-hour days non- stop for two years and nine months just to shape them, he believed.

In 1961, Canadian geologist Patrick Arthur Hill was less daunted by the logisti- cal challenges. He calculated that 25 men could have pulled a 50-tonne sarsen to Stonehenge in less than a week – if they dragged it over snow. Hill’s idea remains popular, but it’s worth noting that he was inspired by Inuit sledges crossing Arctic sea ice, not a frosty crust in an English winter.

• Read more | Your guide to Britain’s prehistoric stone circles

More recently, engineers interested in efficiency have taken up the case: you can watch YouTube videos showing people competing to move, erect and lift stones with as few hands as possible. But was efficiency even a consideration in the construction of Stonehenge – a monument that, let’s not forget, defies all economic sense? Recently, archaeologists have been looking at practices in places such Madagascar, north-east India and the Indonesian island of Sumba, where people have been raising stones for genera- tions. In those areas the goal – or, at least, the effect – seems to be to have as many people on the job as possible. A good crowd brings status for organisers and sponsors, and participants share in the fun, accumulating credits for their work.

Ancient efficiency

The difficulties of creating Stonehenge are sometimes exaggerated. Megaliths weighed less than Atkinson thought, and excavations reveal that Neolithic people were skilled engineers, carpenters and stoneworkers.

On the other hand, we suspect they liked to party, as people do today when moving a stone on Sumba. Bluestones would have passed through villages to be seen and celebrated. There is evidence for feasting at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge, where it is thought as many as 4,000 people gathered for the great build.

Taking all that into account, here’s a plausible scenario for the timescale of construction. Setting out with a bluestone from the Preseli Hills in late summer, a team of 25–30 (picking up others en route) could have reached the Bristol Channel in 45 days – 30 if using a boat down the lower river Usk. Crossing the sea, paddling upriver and moving to a sledge as necessary, they’d arrive on site by mid-October, two months after departure.

Moving a sarsen demanded more effort: perhaps 200–300 people would take a few weeks to haul one to Stonehenge (assuming a track was in place). So a thousand workers could have moved all of the sarsens in 6–18 months – or perhaps twice that long, depending on rituals and extraneous events.

Dressing-time is almost impossible to estimate. The required shape of one megalith depended on that of another, and the project had to maintain momentum. Erecting trilithons and fitting lintels could be done in one season; with 1,000 people working in 15 teams of 60–70, the circle could be constructed the next season. The whole thing might, then, have been completed in five spectacular, never-to-be-forgotten years.

This article first appeared in the March 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine

In the first episode of a two-part special, archaeologist Mike Pitts answers listener questions on the most famous prehistoric site in Britain. Speaking to David Musgrove, he discusses how Stonehenge was built – and why.

Mike Pitts is the author of How to Build Stonehenge (Thames & Hudson, 2022)

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Four years ago two amateur fossil hunters uncovered an extraordinary cache of mammoth remains in the West Country. The discovery offered up a whole host of questions: Why were the mammoths here? How did they die? And could the Neanderthals have killed these Ice Age giants?

In an upcoming BBC documentary, Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard, Sir David Attenborough and evolutionary biologist Professor Ben Garrod meet with a team of experts to unpick the fascinating secrets behind the mammoth graveyard. Ahead of its broadcast on BBC One on Thursday 30 December, journalist Jonathan Wright caught up with Professor Garrod to learn more about the rich archaeological site and what it tells us about Pleistocene Britain…

Jonathan Wright: Until a forthcoming BBC documentary, Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard, was announced, there was little or no information about this discovery in the public domain. Was there a need to keep it secret?

Professor Ben Garrod: Absolutely. Tusks will sell for a lot and even individual mammoth bones are extremely valuable. So yes, there is a problem with looters, unfortunately.

Just as importantly, the site is special because the level of disturbance is next to zero. Just as the Mary Rose tells you what life was like in Tudor England, this one site tells you what life was like in Pleistocene Britain, 200,000 years ago. It’s not just a hand-axe on a beach or an individual mammoth exposed from a cliff. Any disturbance will potentially lose data. We were quite strict, but it had to be that way because the site is so bloody important.

JW: How did the site come to light?

BG: It is the most surreptitious discovery. The site is at a gravel quarry near Swindon. The operators had gone a little bit deeper than they anticipated and they started to get into a muddy layer, and straight away they started getting teeth and bones coming out.

At the same time, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, who are amateur fossil researchers, were at the site looking for Jurassic remains, dinosaur-era stuff. And as well as finding that material, they found this Pleistocene material. Suddenly, you’ve got what potentially looks like a herd of mammoths there, as well as steppe bison and early human artefacts. In a sense, this combination takes it from prehistory to an archaeological discovery.

JW: So why are all these bones and human artefacts together?

BG: If you come back in 10 or 15 years time, I might know the answer! We are the first stage of what might be decades of research. This is effectively the biggest crime scene I’ve ever seen. It’s wonderful. What led a herd of mammoths to die at this one site?

JW: What was the site like 200,000 years ago?  

BG: Imagine the Norfolk Broads: slow and meandering water, reed beds, lots of mud. There’s no evidence of flooding in the sedimentary remains, the mud, so these mammoths weren’t washed down to the site. So does early human hunting explain the site? We don’t know. To prove that, you’d have to find a hand-axe embedded into a bone in a kill zone, which, realistically, you are never going to find.

Or did early humans, Neanderthals, come across a mammoth buffet? We have found juvenile, baby and adult mammoths together. It’s not inconceivable to think these very social animals might simply have become stuck in the mud. But did the Neanderthals cause that? If so, how?

JW: What can you tell us about the Neanderthal artefacts? 

BG: We’re finding the most incredible hand-axes at the site, and flakes of flint as well. That’s important because, when you work flint, flakes come off all the time, and there is evidence to suggest an association between bones and flakes. I have to be really cautious here, but I can say we’ve found scratch marks on some of the bones that are indicative of stone tools being used on them.

We’ve sent bones and tools to the Natural History Museum, where experts are examining them under microscopes. If they definitively say yes, the tools were used on the bones, this would be one of the earliest examples of such an interaction outside Africa.

Also, I’m from rural Norfolk and when I go home I still see old ploughs and combine harvesters. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. We seem to have seen the same thing with this site here. Where we have contemporaneous sites around Britain and Europe, they were using significantly more developed stone tools, so that makes the site important in understanding cultural transmission. Effectively, rather than using the new iPhone, they’re still using Nokia 3210s in this part of the world, but why?

Listen on the podcast: archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes answers listener questions about the Neanderthals

JW: Phone upgrades notwithstanding, has there been a change in how we see the Neanderthals? 

BG: Yes. I remember as an undergraduate being taught the Neanderthals were our simplistic cousins. But they were hugely cultured, social, cooperative people. We’re now much more advanced in terms of our understanding of our nearest cousins. They’re genetically tied to us as well. You and I both will have at least two per cent Neanderthal in us.

JW: What was it like working with David Attenborough on the documentary about the site? 

BG: David doesn’t realise his impact on people. It says a lot about David that he’s still down to earth after all the accolades he has received. He’s fun; he’s engaging; he knows his research. The documentary showcases the real science and the real David, so we’ve got him in his mid-90s scrabbling around in a quarry in a fluorescent jacket. I’ve worked with David before and it’s the happiest I’ve seen him on a production!

Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard is scheduled to be broadcast on BBC One on at 8pm on Thursday 30 December. 

Professor Ben Garrod was talking to journalist Jonathan Wright

The opening of the long-awaited Stonehenge visitor centre highlights, with unusual clarity, how much we now know, and don’t know, about ancient Britain. An ever-increasing sophistication in the theoretical and technological techniques at their disposal enables archaeologists to say, better than ever before, who built the world’s most famous prehistoric monument – and when and how they did it.

We can tell from where they came, what they ate, what they looked like, what tools they used, how they lived, and what the climate and landscape were like when they did so. The missing element, which is apparently lost forever, is what they thought. We have no better idea now than we had 200 years ago of what their political, social, legal or moral systems were like, what their gender relations were, or – this being the really big one where Stonehenge is concerned – of what their religion consisted.

As a result, each generation has had to make up answers to these questions for itself. In the case of the religion practised at Stonehenge, these answers spring from people’s attitude to religious behaviour in general, which in turn are generated by their attitudes to their fellow human beings.

In practice, the results have always been polarised. In one camp are those who want to see the monument as one inspired by an admirable spirituality, characterised by love of and care for the natural world and an instinctual understanding of its ways. In the other are those who view the monument as the product of a primitive and bloodthirsty world, representing ignorance, savagery and superstition.

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The first school of thought is what draws many people to celebrate the midsummer sunrise at Stonehenge each year. The second offers a clue as to why one of the fallen megaliths has been known as ‘Slaughter Stone’ (with no justification) since the 18th century.

The first response has tended to be manifested by people unhappy with their own society, who long for one that was simpler, more decent and better connected to the natural or the divine. It makes a neat fit with modern concerns about the environment and anxieties about the consequences of urbanised and industrialised lifestyles. It also chimes with a very old language about the degeneration of humanity from an original wisdom and happiness, based on the Bible and the ancient Greek and Roman classics.

The second, more hostile reaction is just as venerable, having been deployed for thousands of years by people who consider themselves civilised against those whom they despise as savages. The images on which it is based were originally developed by the ancient Hebrews and Romans, to condemn people who resisted the religion of the former and the rule of the latter.

Christianity then used such hostility against other faiths, while particular types of Christians turned it into a metaphor for other strains of Christianity. In particular, evangelical Protestants used vivid portraits of what they imagined had gone on inside Stonehenge to condemn by implication what they disliked about Catholicism. With equal facility, modern people who hated and feared religion in general used fantasies about prehistory as a means of attacking what they took to be the worst aspects of religious zeal.

Finally, the hostile view of prehistoric religion made a good fit with two other trends of modernity. One was a cult of progress, which decreed that – with crushing inevitability – the further back in time you go, the worse life was. The other was imperialism, which equated the imagined barbarism of the British past with the savagery alleged against modern Asians, Africans, Polynesians, Native Americans and Australian aborigines. According to this world view, the latter could be civilised and improved, to everybody’s benefit, even as the former had been before.

So where does that leave us today?

The fact is that when we imagine the beliefs that inspired the building of Stonehenge, we draw on one or the other of these two banks of imagery. They have just proved too useful and convenient to abandon.

What is true of Stonehenge also applies to the other evidence for ritual and religious belief surviving from British prehistory. And it’s worth emphasising how very rich that evidence is.

When an inhabitant of modern Iceland, Germany, Estonia, Russia, Italy, Greece or many other European nations thinks of their pagan heritage, they tend to do so in terms of just a single pantheon of deities and set of ancient monuments. Britain, however, has impressive remains surviving from four successive ages of prehistoric religious traditions.

These traditions look very different from each other: the carved designs put onto cave walls in the Old Stone Age; the stone-chambered long barrows and dolmens of the earlier New Stone Age; the stone circles, circular embankments and burial mounds of the later New Stone Age and Bronze Age; and so- called hill forts (actually also ceremonial precincts) and ritual deposits of beautiful metalwork in water, from the later Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

When the Romans conquered most of Britain, they brought with them not only their own religion, but also those of other peoples in the Roman empire, from as far afield as Syria and Egypt. Some four centuries later, the Anglo-Saxons arrived with their own – northern – variety of paganism, followed by the Vikings with theirs. This all adds up to an inheritance of pre-Christian monuments, objects, designs and (eventually) inscriptions of a remarkable abundance and complexity.

• Read more about Anglo-Saxons’ adoption of Christianity – and why it was powered by the threat of violence

Even in the cases of the later examples of these – from periods for which written records survive – our knowledge of the nature, let alone the inner content, of the religions concerned is limited enough to leave ample room for differences of modern interpretation.

An argument could be made that this is not a problem at all, but an asset. After all, the modern British are now members of a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society that prizes individuality and choice, while enabling people to live in very different ways and with different beliefs within a common framework of loyalty to the nation. Surely, this argument runs, the enigmatic nature of prehistoric religions is admirably suited to such a situation, inviting people to take personal messages from it according to their own tastes, prejudices, judgments and needs.

To employ one example, let us suppose that the body of a young man, dated to the Iron Age, is found in a peat bog and shows signs of a violent death. Some people may conclude that he was a victim of human sacrifice. Perhaps that sacrifice was performed by the priests of the age, the druids, and so exemplifies the horrors of prehistoric religion – and perhaps of barbarism or paganism in general.

All of these readings would have an equal legitimacy and likelihood. In this context, heritage managers would retain their value as the experts who protect the evidence of the past, and display it to the public in such a way as to enable its members to make the best-informed possible choices for themselves.

Historians and archaeologists would remain the national experts in identifying and dating finds, explaining the nature of sites, reconstructing ancient lifestyles and reading, translating and editing texts. Having done this crucial work, they would then, in the case of ancient religion, stand back to allow others to form their own personal attitudes and conclusions. Who could possibly find anything disturbing, inappropriate or counter-intuitive in a situation such as this?

The answer is, a great many people, for it runs counter to some of the most deeply held instincts and values in our society. One is the belief that the state (which means its taxpayers) pays or subsidises professional experts to produce solid results, which are generally taken to mean clear answers. Just as scientists are expected to make major and lasting discoveries about the physical nature of the world, which have a practical use for humanity, so specialists in history and prehistory are expected to produce new and enduring information about the past, which enables a better understanding of it, and so of ourselves.

Talk of empowering members of the public to make informed decisions for themselves can sound like a betrayal of this trust, and recent attitudes to the funding of research, embodied in expressions such as accountability, proof of impact, and value for money, only reinforce such a response.

The policy of encouraging multiple interpretations of evidence also runs counter to a faith in progress. One of the defining doctrines of modernity is the belief that every generation should be better-informed, as well as healthier, wealthier and (so) happier than that before. The suggestion that we may never actually know more – at any rate with certainty – about major aspects of the remote past, is profoundly unsettling for those who value this doctrine.

The acceptance – or even the celebration – of indefinite individual choice also violates some deeper and older instincts. Not everybody regards the creation of a multi-ethnic, multi- faith society with equanimity, and many who do are still concerned about its potential for severing the bonds that hold a nation together. Nation states are, by definition, historical creations, often erected upon a common narrative of the past. And plenty of people still feel the need for a common national ‘story’, which everybody knows and understands in outline, to unite compatriots who now differ in so many cultural traits. This perceived need is far older than nations. Most traditional human communities are defined and bonded by a commonly held set of stories and assumptions about their collective origin and previous achievements.

Behind the historian, there’s a bard

Behind the figure of the historian lies that of the bard, whose role it was to ensure that everybody knew these tales and understood their significance. Many professional historians would probably trace their own descent from figures like Edward Gibbon (author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) or Leopold von Ranke (a founder of modern source-based history). Those with a longer sense of evolution may even regard themselves as the successors of the ancient Greek historians Herodotus or Thucydides. In a deeper and very important sense, however, they are really the heirs of bards such as Homer and Taliesin.

What’s more, the acceptance of multiple choices does not fit easily into one of the most popular and effective modes of expression for historical or archaeological research: the quest romance. This portrays the practitioner as somebody in search of the answer to a question about the past, which they finally solve triumphantly by a glittering application of the skills of their discipline. It is the easiest way to present the scholar as a heroic figure, and taps into one of the most enduring themes of world literature. There are indeed none that are older, for the most ancient surviving complete story on the planet, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, includes a hero on a quest, and so does the oldest known example of European literature, the poetry of Homer.

The Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail and Frodo’s ring represent three nodal points in different millennia of the progression of this theme to the present, and its vitality in contemporary culture owes much to the fact that it is such a fine structure within which to pitch a television documentary. By contrast, a proposal for a programme that sets out to present viewers with an open answer is unlikely to get commissioned.

Finally, offering a range of interpretations of equal legitimacy runs up against the addiction of our culture to competition. Indeed it is possible that no other civilisation has been so wedded to the competitive spirit since the ancient Greeks.

The prevailing model of academic enquiry has always been for experts to draw individual conclusions from their evidence, and then pit them against each other. From this contest, one theory emerges as the strongest, and rules until it is defeated by a still finer newcomer.

This way of doing things – in which the winner takes it all – seems better than ever suited to a society that now uses the free market as its exemplar for most forms of human activity. It is also the basis for most popular forms of entertainment, whether embodied as sport, reality TV, quizzes or games shows. It is even the basis for our whole political system. However, it is clearly a way of behaving completely incompatible with the approach to prehistoric religion that I’ve advocated here.

Nonetheless, that advocacy must still be made – not because of any liberal attachment to diversity and mutual toleration as virtues in their own right – but because those seem best suited to enquiries into the most remote aspects of Britain’s past. The study of ancient religions simply cannot deliver the certain and enduring conclusions to which we are so wedded.

We seem to be compelled to accept that the evidence left to us by the practitioners of ancient religion is ample and exciting in its own right. And we surely must acknowledge that each generation – not to mention individual people and interest groups within each generation – will read different things into it. This being so, we may as well make it a cause for celebration and utilise its benefits to the full.

Ronald Hutton is professor of history at the University of Bristol. His books include Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (Yale, 2011) and The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford, 1995)

This article was first published in the Christmas 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine