STONEHENGE

Stonehenge is perhaps the world’s most famous prehistoric monument. It was

built in several stages: the first monument was an early henge monument, built
about 5,000 years ago, and the unique stone circle was erected in the late
Neolithic period about 2500 BC.
Today, together with Avebury, Stonehenge forms the heart of a World Heritage
Site, with a unique concentration of prehistoric monuments.
One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is
regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected Scheduled
Ancient Monument since 1882, when legislation to protect historic monuments
was first successfully introduced in Britain. The site and its surroundings were
added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned
by the Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned
by the National Trust.
Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest
beginnings.Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC,
when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another 500
years.
Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many
aspects of Stonehenge, such as how it was built and for what purposes it was
used, remain subject to debate. A number of myths surround the stones.
Proposed functions for the site include usage as an astronomical
observatory or as a religious site. More recently two major new theories
have been proposed. Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill, have
suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing. They argue that this
accounts for the high number of burials in the area and for the evidence of
trauma deformity in some of the graves. However, they do concede that
the site was probably multifunctional and used for ancestor worship as
well. Isotope analysis indicates that some of the buried individuals were
from other regions. A teenage boy buried approximately 1550 BC was
raised near the Mediterranean Sea; a metal worker from 2300 BC dubbed
the "Amesbury Archer" grew up near the Alpine foothills of Germany;
and the "Boscombe Bowmen" probably arrived from Wales or Brittany,
France.