After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Murder at Stonehenge

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

A body is found at Stonehenge. It's the skeleton of a man - an archer - who lived at the time when it was built. How did he die? What secrets does his skeleton reveal about his life and the purpose of Stonehenge?In today's episode, Anthony and Maddy investigate a 4,000 year-old murder mystery, as well as exploring the big questions that surround Stonehenge: how was it built? Who built it, and why?!A special thanks to Adrian Green, Director at Salisbury Museum.Edited by Tomos Delary. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Sweat the city, driving closer to the truth, while curled up on the couch with your cat. There's more to imagine when you listen.

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Hello, and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And in today's episode, we are taking you back to the conception and building of one of the world's most iconic and mysterious prehistoric monuments. That, of course, is Stonehenge. It's May 1978, and in the shadow of Stonehenge's mighty stones, raised with astonishing precision over 4,000 years ago, archaeologists are making a remarkable discovery. It's a find that

will wrench open a window into a violent and enigmatic past, the grave – and bones – of the Stonehenge archer. Buried just outside the henge's towering sarsens, this solitary individual had lain undisturbed for millennia, a Bronze Age relic shrouded in mystery. His body, excavated, analysed and to this day on display at Salisbury Museum, tells a dramatic and violent story. This was no peaceful burial. It hints, perhaps, at an execution or a brutal ambush. The Archer's final moments, just meters from the most mystifying monument in prehistoric Britain, speak to a world very different from our own, and of a man who seemingly crossed the invisible

line between the living and the dead, the everyday and the sacred. Found next to his almost complete skeleton were artefacts which possibly give us a hint as to his occupation, as well as his death. Arrowheads sat among his ribs, the same that had pierced his flesh in his final moments. But who was he? A guardian? A rival? A ritual sacrifice? Today we're still searching for answers, his presence evoking the intense drama of early Bronze Age life on the Salisbury Plain, a time when Stonehenge was not just a monument, but a magnet for power, pilgrimage, and bloodshed. Even in death, the Stonehenge archer whispers of the ancient magic etched

into this landscape, where sun, stars, and stone meet, and the shadows of forgotten lives lives still flicker beneath the soil. I'm going to be honest, and I think we've all earned and deserve this honesty. There are topics in history that all of us as historians and listeners and fanatics and whatever it might be are not as interested in as we might be in other topics. That's just natural. That's just how that's going to pan out. Stonehenge is one of those topics for me where I'm like, yeah, lovely stones. But if you were trying to grab my attention across two episodes on a podcast called After Dark, which turns out we are,

this would be a really good way to try and grab my attention with this particular little slice of a story, because this story does actually interest me. It does bring me into the story and go, hold on, what is going on there? Like, why was he there? Why is he the only one there? So there's a lot of questions that come from this. And as I say, we're going to be exploring Stonehenge in two different ways over the next two episodes. This being a look at the kind of history and mystery, ooh, that rhymes, of this particular monolith, I suppose. So Maddie, before we get into kind of the details of what you've just described there, let's talk a little bit about the construction

itself. What the hell is it? Well, hold on a minute. Oh, right, go on, sorry. We're not skipping over that. Before we have any conversation about this, I have two things. Oh, right. Go on. Sorry. We're not skipping over that. Before we have any conversation about this, I have two things to say to you. First of all, the bad news is it doesn't matter if you're interested or not, Anthony, because you have to sit here for the next two hours and make this podcast for me. So you will be talking about this. No, I know. It's good. That's a good thing, I think. I need to open my mind. I would say so. The good news is that this is one of the most exciting and interesting

sites in Britain. I'm assuming you've never been to Stonehenge? I have no interest. It's remarkable. I live 10 minutes down the road from Stonehenge and I pass it all the time on the A Road that goes right past. It is amazing. And I went last year to the winter solstice. You did. And let me tell you, that was an incredible experience. You have to get up, bearing in mind the sun rises in winter, obviously, much later in the morning, you still have to get up super, super early, because you have to sit in the solstice traffic of everyone trying to get there for about three

hours? I will say that- Maddie, you're not selling us. That's terrible. Admittedly, not the best so far. Although I will say when we set off from our house and literally a 10 minute drive that turned into hours long, but we did see a fox cross right in front of us on the road, which felt very mystical on the way to the winter solstice. It's amazing though, when you get there, you park in the giant English heritage car park, maybe not that atmospheric to begin with, but then you walk down the road and it's about a 10 minute walk to the stones themselves. When you get there, unlike if you're a tourist who goes on any other day of the year, apart from the

Summer Solstice, of course, you can't get near the stones any other time. On the winter solstice, much like the summer solstice, you can get close to the stones, you can walk amongst them. And it is a really, really special experience. And by this point, it's a little bit light, the sun's not fully come up yet, there are people milling around, there's a real atmosphere. I will say I did see one guy who had brought an axe with him and he was leaning against the stones just humming to himself, which was a little bit alarming. Still not Senegate. Sorry. Nope. But we stood there and we watched the sun come up and it felt like time had collapsed.

It felt like being at one with whoever the people were who built this monument and that we were looking essentially at the same site that they would have seen thousands of years ago. It's amazing. I often talk about standing in the place where other people have stood and certainly in the work that I've done on historical graffiti, you get to do that. You get to go to these sites and you get to be in these spaces that people felt the need to leave their mark in. Stonehenge is one of those spots really where you feel close to the past. Let me tell you about the construction. Stonehenge has

different phases of being built right, so the monument we see today is not necessarily what people at various points in history would have seen. The earliest activity is in the Mesolithic period and this is roughly between 8500 BC and 7000 BC. I'm already struggling with the dates going the wrong way as someone who resolutely works in the 18th and sometimes the 19th century. In this period, the Mesolithic people were erecting wooden posts. This is not a stone site at all. It is wooden posts. This was potentially already a special place. Now, cut to 3500 BC, which is later in time. Just the odd 4000 years later. Yep. Excellent. Adding, subtracting? Who knows. Early farming communities built earthworks and the earliest burial mounds in this landscape. Now I'm listening. Burial mound. Yes, you have me there.

You like a bit of death. Yeah. So I mean, that's the other thing about Stonehenge, right? It's part of a very complex landscape of all these layers of history, including, I mean, you cannot move for burial mounds. I say this about Wiltshire all the time, you can't move for Iron Age, Hillforts, and prehistoric burial mounds. They're everywhere. If you walk in a hedgerow, there's one sticking out of a hedgerow. They're in the lines of the trees on the edge of fields. They're just everywhere. They're in the lines of the trees on the edge of fields. They're just everywhere.

This is the beginning of this where communities are... We think of prehistoric people maybe in a very basic general way as being sort of transitory that they are hunter-gatherers, at least to begin with. By this era, people are starting to farm, they're starting to set down roots in certain places and this site on the Salisbury Plain is already important to them. Okay, so now we're approaching phase one. This is the earliest recognisable phase of the Stone Circle, and this is the earthwork enclosure, right? So there's a ditch all the way around Stonehenge. This is made around about 3,100

to 3,000 BC. So only a hundred year window there, which is nice and precise when you're dealing with prehistory. This is a ditch in a bank, and this would have been dug. And this never ever fails to impress me, probably using antler picks. Okay, that I like that detail. Now inside this enclosure, this earthen enclosure, you can always tell if a prehistoric site is defensive or religious, depending on which order the ditch and the bank is in. So if the bank is on the outside and then there's the ditch, that is ritualistic, because it's not defensive. And if the ditch is on the outside and the bank is on the inside,

anyone attacking would need to go down into the ditch and then try and go over the bank bit. So it's harder to attack basically. So that's how I think archaeologists do correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Oh, they will. I'm sure. I'm sure. And please feel free to, but I believe that's the case.

That makes sense to me. That is a way to make ditches and banks interesting. Well done. I've made them sexy. There we go. Well, maybe not sexy. We're getting there. Reserve your judgment, please. Inside the enclosure are 56 pits. These are known as the Aubrey holes. And I assume this is from John Aubrey, who is a 17th century antiquarian who was very interested in Stonehenge. But essentially they are the ghostly echoes in the earth of where wooden posts,

or potentially stones, but probably wooden posts would have been. We're starting to see there is purposeful architecture here. This isn't just a bit of land that people are flocking to, or that they are farming on or gathering in, they are creating something architectural, which is pretty important. Then we get to phase two. This is when the first stones that are now there are put in place, the blue stones. This is from 2900 BC to 2500 BC, so only a window a few hundred years. The blue stones, we know that they very likely came from a site in the Preseli Hills in Wales, which is over 200 kilometers away, which is pretty wild to think about how far they've traveled. There's an amazing, amazing documentary about this and how they discovered

that the stones had come from there. And I believe that they were already in a stone circle in Wales. That's the theory and that they were removed. The whole thing was removed to the Salisbury Plain, which is kind of wild. So do check out their documentary listeners. I'm guessing Anthony will not, but it's really incredible. There is also a theory that the Altar Stone, so the central stone at Stonehenge during this period, came all the way from Scotland. I think that's quite hotly debated and there's a lot of sort of ongoing fast moving research on this, but that is the theory. So you're starting to see these elements, these stone elements being brought into the same place. So people are therefore travelling to and from these places. Can we interpret that as a sort of

unification of the British Isles, that different parts of it are being represented, different communities are being represented, different landscapes are being represented? We see this also at Silbury Hill, which is a site just outside of Avebury, the other stone circle that I mentioned earlier, which is a colossal man-made hill. It's huge. I mean, it's bizarre in what is quite a flat landscape. As far as archaeologists can tell, there is nothing in it, but the earth that made it, the theory is potentially that it was brought from different places, i.e. all over the British Isles potentially. And so there's something there in, I can't remember the dates of Silver Hill off the top of my head, I don't know if it's exactly concurrent to this phase two of the Blue Stones at Stonehenge, but there's something in pre-history

in these big broad strokes of bringing things to one important site. I just think that's magical. I think that can tell us so much about the mentality, the communities of these people. It gives me tingles. Wouldn't it be amazing if we've just missed something really obvious? That like, you know, like there's so much mystery surrounding this, there's so much this, that and the other and just like... Like they just had a really good stone postage system. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like they were just like, no, we had these horses that no longer exist. It was no bother to them.

They could go and come in a day. It was just whatever. And here we are going, the fairies brought the lovely stones and shoved them in the ground. It was the fairies, yes. Conclusion reached the end. You are going to mention fairies. I know you are at some point in these two episodes. I defy you. Oh, they're coming up. They're coming up. Let's move on now to phase three. And this is when the monument is completed and it looks like on now to phase three. And this is when the monument is completed and it looks like what we know it today. And this is the version of the monument that our skeleton

from the beginning of this episode, who is not a skeleton would have seen. Okay. So we're going to loop this back around. Okay. So phase three happens from around 2,500 BC to. That's a bit of a bigger time window now, but this is the most recognizable phase. This is when we get the largest sarsen stones. Now, they only come from the Marlborough Downs, which are 32 kilometers from Stonehenge, so really not that far. Again, Marlborough, you're up towards Avebury, you're up towards Silbury Hill. You have to think about Stonehenge just sitting within this landscape that, yes, monuments are rising and falling over several thousand years, but it's all interconnected, it's speaking to each other, it's all sacred to the people who are moving through it

and gathering there. These are the big, big Stonehenge stones, right? Some of them weigh up to 30 tonnes. They were shaped using hammer stones, which are made of the same kind of rock sarsen or sometimes a flint. This whole landscape is predominantly a sort of chalky flint landscape. This is the moment when you get the iconic trilithon. This is the two upright stones that have that horizontal lintel going across it. So, you know, the very sort of recognizable imagery of Stonehenge. And these are amazing. Like, you look at these, and especially if you go to the site, and you just look at this massive, massive rock, sat on top of two other massive rocks, and it's meters high. And you just think,

sorry, how did they lift that? And meters high and you just think, sorry, how did they lift that? And I'll tell you, Anthony, I'll tell you how they lifted it. So they would dig pits with sloping sides, they would use wooden stakes and A-frames, there's a lot of carpentry going on to get these stones into position and they would basically leverage weights and timber platforms and gradually lift it. What's incredible is the stone that's on top and the two below are attached together through a kind of tongue and groove fitting. When you get a protrusion or a lump and then there's a corresponding hole, that's how they're stuck together. It's incredible because it shows craftsmanship and a real knowledge of how to make these big structures right. And it also,

I suppose, reflects just how highly organised this society was. This isn't a couple of lads in a field doing this. This is big groups of people coordinating, often having to move stones from hundreds, if not tens of kilometres away, based on which are the stones you're talking about, and to get organized enough and determined enough to do this. You know, I think in this, this AI inflicted, I'm going to go off on a rant now, but you know, this sort of digital age of self obsession, we could not coordinate and get together to do something like this, we'd all lose interest in five minutes, I reckon. Oh my god, you have a lovely time. I'm not going like no way. I'm I am staying inside where it's cool. It might get too warm for me if I was lifting stones. In fact, I don't lift stones. I don't know who you think I am. I'm never going to go

there and do that. Never. I just don't like lifting stones. It'd be quite a workout, wouldn't it? Who cares? I'm not doing that either. mail, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at Fizz.ca. You searched for your informant who disappeared without a trace.

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years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History hit. So, let's talk about the kinds of people who were living near this site. This is good. You need some human beings. Literally this. This is what I want from this. This is exactly what I want.

Who are these people? Why did they do this? Were they living there? Were they living nearby? Did they travel three and a half miles? Who? Who? Who? Okay, so the earliest structures at Stonehenge were built by communities of Neolithic farmers, and then their descendants. People who were living in Britain during the late Stone Age,

and then the early Bronze Age. And amazingly, these are not people who originate from the British Isles. These are Neolithic migrants. These are people who've travelled through continental Europe from places like what is present day Turkey and the Aegean coast almost around sort of 6000 years ago. They're closely related to the populations in Iberia and central Europe. And all of these people have sort of migrated westward and have reached Britain around 4000 BC, right? Coming over here, stealing our stones. Stealing our stones, arranging them in nice little patterns on the Salisbury Plain. I think this is a really important and interesting

point actually that, and we'll talk about this in episode two, that Stonehenge has so often been an icon, part of the iconography of Britishness, right? Specifically Englishness, ironic considering most of the stones are from Wales and possibly from Scotland. But it has been co-opted for all different purposes, some nefarious, others artistic, but the people who made this monument, this icon of Britishness, did not originally come from Britain. So next time your racist uncle's going on about people coming here and stealing our jobs, talk to him about Stonehenge. I can see the reviews of us being too woke coming

in immediately. So these are, by the time these people arrive, these migrants arrive in Britain, they are communities that bring farming techniques with them. Never mind what did the Romans do for us, it's what did the prehistoric migrants do for us? They brought domesticated animals. They bring new forms of social organisation, including let's build monuments everywhere. As you might imagine, there's been a lot of archaeology done in the landscape around Stonehenge, not just at the site itself, which is of course one of the reasons why people are protesting a possible tunnel there. There's just so much still to find. There's so much delicate evidence of how these early inhabitants of the landscape lived. There's a site nearby called Durrington Walls, which we're going to go on to talk about because it relates to Stonehenge itself. But there, there is evidence of large scale feasting, of cooking practices that are pretty

elaborate. They're clearly feeding a lot of people. Evidence of these big communal gatherings. Interestingly, archaeologists can, I believe, date some of these meetings to things like midwinter festivals. So there's something about, we're already getting this idea of the landscape and Stonehenge itself being tied to the seasons, right? That is a really important idea that we're going to hear again and again in this. You said Durrington Walls there. That is not something I've ever heard of. I don't know what that is. I don't know how that links to Stonehenge. What's the connection there? Yes. So Durrington Walls is another prehistoric site nearby Stonehenge. It's close to the River

Avon. It was predominantly a site built in wood. Some of the working theories around Stonehenge are that the stones at Stonehenge represent death and that this is part of a longer processional route, essentially, and that Durrington Walls built in wood close to the river represents life. This is a route that people would traverse together in a ritualistic manner and that it was basically walking the line between life and death. Somehow maybe connected to the seasons, this idea of rebirth and cycles. But I think that's so interesting. I think often people visit Stonehenge and they go to the visitor centre, they go to Stonehenge, and they don't think much about the landscape around it. Often, if you've come on a coach or something, you might not have the opportunity to explore the other sites. But Stonehenge is just a part

of this complex puzzle, essentially. Will Barron That makes it far more interesting, I think, because it's that location on its own seems to me like, yeah, there's some rocks in a field, but then zoom out. And if it is, as probably seems likely to me, I mean, again, this is all new information to me, essentially, but it feels very unlikely that there would be things within reasonable distance from the same time periods, because we're dealing with a long period here, that in no way connects. That would be very strange. So it does feel like it's part now of a much broader landscape of the area. And that is more intriguing to me. That says something, as you've kind of been hinting at the whole time, about societies and cultures and people and how they're living and what they believe. And also you mentioned two of the things that I'm most interested in, that is life and death and the ritual that we invent around both

of those things. So that's kind of intriguing. Why have we started linking these monuments and Stonehenge and Durrington Walls and all this to death? What is that? Why is death so present in these places? Well, there are lots and lots of theories about what Stonehenge in particular was used for. Obviously, it was a burial site. At one point, we spoke about cremations being placed in there and we are going to get back to our skeleton who was found there. So some researchers actually believe that it may in its earliest forms have served as a cemetery for an elite family or one particular

group because there aren't that many burials there. There are burials, but considering the archaeological evidence elsewhere in the landscape of these big gatherings, you would potentially expect to see more burials there based on the population size. So it suggests that you have to be special in some way to be buried there. The other important thing about Stonehenge, and again it comes back to this idea of cycles, of seasons, of life and death, rebirth, this inevitable turning of the year of the planets as well, is that there are lunar and solar alignments at Stonehenge. So the stones align with the solstices at winter and at summer. There are theories that Stonehenge therefore functioned as some kind of astronomical observatory, as a sort of calendar. You think about these communities who rely so much

on things like the weather, the sun, who are at one with the seasons, not just because they are living within this landscape, but also because their food will not grow if the weather is not conducive to it, their animals will not survive. They live in this ecosystem, I suppose. They're hunting, they're farming, they rely so much on nature. Why would they not look to track it in some way? Why would they not look to measure it and potentially to control it? You know, is Stonehenge a way of attempting to manipulate the sun and the moon to their advantage, as well as worshipping them? I think this is a really interesting topic in so many different ways, despite my reticence. Because I think part of it, and this feeds into my reticence, I think, there are so many variables that even the diehard experts

and, you know, that is not us, but like the people who spend their lifetimes on this still don't know. And I think to a certain extent, there's too many question marks sometimes. So all of those things make sense. But I'm always left with this niggling thing of going, are we just inventing? Like, obviously not in terms of the eclipse and the solar system. That's very clearly mapped out. I don't know, it's just so ungettable. And for some people, that's really inspiring. But for me, it's a bit like, okay, well, I'll let other people try and get it then, you know. See, this is what absolutely fascinates me about archaeology is that there's this physical

evidence that you can go out and find, but there will still be huge gaps in your evidence base and that you have to fill with some conjecture and the extent to which you can do that and how you do that is just so fascinating to me. And it's an endless series of asking questions, rather than finding necessarily the answers. And I just think that's so exciting. One of the other theories about Stonehenge is that it's a place of healing. And I think this is really, really interesting, right? Because thinking about it as a kind of ritualistic site, as a almost, you know, it's the kind of Mecca that people are drawn to for whatever reason, whether that's social, whether they're, you know, going on big seasonal hunts or sacrificing animals or we are going to talk about potentially human

sacrifice as well, all of these things. A lot of the people coming to this place on the Salisbury Plain, who are then buried there, there is evidence that they are injured in some way. Their remains have signs of injury, of illness, of disease. Now, we are talking about a long stretch of prehistory when there is no NHS. Most people live a very dangerous lifestyle, not least if you're there building Stonehenge. Can you imagine the health and safety issues? Can you imagine the injuries of these people and the damage that would be done to your body? So it could be that that was not uncommon to bear injuries that may not have caused your death and you may have recovered from them, but you'd carry them for all your life. In the Salisbury Museum, a few cases along from the Stonehenge archer who

we started this episode with, there's the Amesbury archer who's from a nearby site and he has a kneecap missing, which is something he lived with I think for most of his adult life. So, you know, people were walking around with all kinds of physical ailments and problems, but there was a theory that they were coming to Stonehenge specifically to have these cured. The other thing is the blue stones, which are from Wales, and this again again it gives me tingles because it's like stepping because I think you're so kind of overwhelmed to a certain extent with this distance right this historical distance that we just can't get at who these people were with any accuracy like I think you find it frustrating that you can't have a concrete

answer but I think this is one of the ways we can access something of their world the stones when they are struck produce musical tones don't ask me about the science, but they're known for it, right? And I do know that in Wales, where the stones are from, there is a church that used the stones as the church bells up until the 18th century. So they are specifically musical stones. So there's a you know, there's a sense that is this kind of used for some kind of sound based ritual or music making as well. And the acoustics in Stonehenge are particularly interesting. So that's, you know, there's a question there as well. I am now going to tell you about this potential murder victim, right,

the skeleton that we heard about. Now we're talking now. Yeah. Okay, so in May 1978, archaeologists are excavating this outer ditch, and they make this amazing discovery. And it's not something they're expecting to find. And it's this skeleton. And what is interesting is that it won that the skeleton is in the ditch of Stonehenge. That's pretty unusual. But also that, you know, this is a landscape that is for all intents and purposes, a graveyard, there are ceremonial burial mounds, barrows, all around in the surrounding fields. That is a good day for an archaeologist at Stonehenge, right? You find a brand new body. Oh my god. That's an archer. Now I'm like, okay,

you can retire now. I'm heading down now. Yeah, yeah. This is an absolutely career defining moment for archaeologists. Yeah, as you say, to find something new at Stonehenge, let alone a pretty intact skeleton and a skeleton that has evidence of violence done to it. It's remarkable. And wait, did it have a bow and arrow? Is that how you know it's an archer? Well, you're going to find out because I went along to the Salisbury Museum to meet this skeleton and I was face to face with someone who saw Stonehenge in that final phase of completion. It's so remarkable.

But I also spoke to the museum director, Adrian Green, who very kindly told me a little bit more information about the remains of this person. So I'm standing in the gallery at Salisbury Museum and I'm looking at a glass case with a skeleton in. For all intents and purposes, it looks like many of the other glass cases and skeletons in this space, but I'm joined by the museum director, Adrian, who is going to give me a little bit of insight into just how unique this particular person is. So Adrian, to the untrained eye, this looks like any other skeleton, but what can we tell from these bones? Well, he's an absolutely amazing discovery. He was found in the ditch at Stonehenge by accident by some archaeologists who I think were doing some environmental sampling. And

they could see from the bones that he had been shot with arrows. That's quite dramatic. Yeah, very dramatic and it's a very rare thing to find in prehistoric burials. You actually have a defined cause of death, which is very hard to spot in human remains. Yeah, and it must be an archaeologist's dream to come across some skeleton that has a very obvious story to tell. Yeah, and a dramatic one at that, and at one of the most important prehistoric sites in

the world. Absolutely. So we know that he's male. We know that he potentially died being shot by arrows. Certainly he had arrows attached to his bones. They were found in situ. I think the most dramatic thing is you could see where these flint arrowheads, these barbed and tanged arrowheads had glanced his ribs so we could see they'd gone into him. But the most dramatic thing is his sternum, which you can see there, which has an arrow mark on the inside of the bone. It's quite incredible, isn't it? Let's move a bit closer and have a look. So this is this piece

here. It's a kind of, it's in two parts, isn't it? It's quite a long, the long bone. So this is the sternum, this is the front of the chest, right? Yeah, this is the bit in front of your heart, effectively. And I think what you can tell is that the final blow that effectively killed him actually went through his sides and penetrated, you know, his body through his side and then through his heart and then hit the sternum from the other side. It's a pretty definitive cause of death then. Yeah. He's the only complete skeleton of this date so far that's been found at Stonehenge.

And what are his dates? He died about 2,400 to 2,100 BC. And how unusual is it to have a human remains, a skeleton rather than a cremation in that monument, given the rest of the landscape is burial mounds, is that a mixture of burials and cremations? Why is he in the monument itself? It seems unusual. Now that's the big question. I think that's the thing we don't know the answer to actually is because as I said, this is unbelievably rare. We haven't found that another example

of a burial like this in the monument. You're right out in the wider landscape there are burial mounds. But remember, those are later. A lot of those burial mounds are sort of coming in around about 2000 BC, something like that. So he's earlier than that. In fact, his earliest dates are around about the time that the stone monument took on the form that we're familiar with today when the sarsen stones were erected in their final positions and the blue stones were realigned into the positions that we recognise today. So this was quite a big moment in Stonehenge's history to have this burial dating back potentially to that period. We know that he probably grew up in the local area looking at oxygen isotope analysis, which involves looking at teeth

and water that was incorporated into the teeth when he was younger. So we can say that he was a local chap. It's really interesting, isn't it, the distance, I suppose, between the concrete evidence that we have, the archaeological record, and the stories that we might project onto him, some based in fact, and others maybe, you know, getting slightly caught up in his dramatic story. But he is known today as the Stonehenge archer. Why is that? Because yes, he's shot with arrows. Do we have any evidence that he was shooting them himself? Well, the only thing on his body that survived, apart from the arrowheads that were embedded in him, is a wrist guard.

It's a piece of stone that may have been part of a decorative band worn on his arm, which was worn to protect your wrist from the recoil from a bow. So that's why we called him the archer. He also appears to have suffered from a bad back too. If you think about Stonehenge and the work that was involved in constructing the monument, you could jump to the conclusion that he was involved in constructing the monument. The Audible invites you to listen for the thrill. Escape the everyday with stories that leave you breathless. Whether it's heart-pounding suspense like the Audible Originals' Ten Rules for the Perfect Murder by James Patterson, or the downloaded with Brendan Fraser. Or how about a fantasy adventure like Onyx Storm or Amelia Heart, The Sirens. Audible has an incredible selection of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals all in one app.

Start listening and discover what's beyond the edge of your seat when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.ca. Wow, I love that detail of the stone. Who would have known that that was stone as well? What are we? Jesus Christ, they're using stone for everything. Like, I'll build my house with it and I'll also put a guard against arrow stuff on my arm. But that's amazing because you get this kind of insight into what he was wearing even. And yeah, like it's stone, but it's still very tantalizing. And I love, I love, I love, I love when you're watching these documentaries

and they're doing bone analysis and then they're like, well, we know what they were eating or we don't like how it is so amazing. Like it's just, it takes you so far beyond what we can do in an archive, which is just so, so incredible. I mean, what strikes me about that is that this is the time when it's obviously very much in use for whatever bloody reason. Like, there's obviously ten hundred billion reasons why or thoughts as to why Stonehenge is being used or what it's being used for.

But obviously, at some point, it stops becoming quite as pivotal and it's no longer as useful to people for whatever reason. That in itself is a bit weird. Do we know when it stopped being such a focal useful point? and the site stops attracting the large gatherings that it has previously. It seems to be not as important as a sort of communal monument. Indeed, across the landscape, these big communal monuments are starting to lose their value. Part of that is the arrival of a new group into Britain known as the Beaker People because of the pottery that they brought with them, this new technology of making pottery. And they bring with them changes in beliefs, changes in practices, changes even in communal structure. So there's a focus more on individual and

family groups rather than necessarily these sort of big, yeah, as I say, it's kind of communal settings and sort of vignettes. The other thing that happens, and I find this fascinating as someone who has studied a lot of material culture and knows the value of small objects, that spiritually speaking, people's focus, their sort of spiritual religious focus, shifts from large stone circles to smaller valuable objects, valuable to them. I don't necessarily mean gold and silver, but there's a sort of refocusing and it's smaller. And also that the dead are recorded and memorialized in smaller ways, right? Individual ways rather than communal, but everything becomes more personal, more focused on these smaller groups, these

smaller units, and Stonehenge just sort of falls out of favour. ALICE That's also, I think, just as inexplicable as everything else. Do you know what I mean? Like that feels to me unsatisfying. It doesn't feel sensible to have these huge landscape-defining things that have been there for thousands of years and for them to then just kind of go, I don't think we need that anymore in whatever capacity, do you know what I mean? Whatever it's kind of doing, it just, because we do it, we need them again now, or we use them again now in different ways, in kind of celebratory ways,

in national identity ways, in acknowledging. And obviously there's this heritage that keeps going, but it's just weird to me that we lose the thread somehow. MS It's interesting that you talk about the sort of rejection there of the landscape, because the thing as well to remember is that in this moment and going forward in history, there's a shift in terms of how society is organised. No longer do people need to come together and organise themselves to create something vast in a particular place. Actually, the psychogeography of the world is shifting. There's metalworking, there's trade, there's more long-distance connections. People are starting to move, not just to migrate now, but to go back and forth from different places and to trade with,

you know, they've shrunken down into these smaller units, but they're trading, you know, maybe more regularly. And that becomes the focus and coming together in one place becomes less and less important, certainly in the context of Stonehenge anyway. It's just strange to me that it's survived literally thousands of years of morphing by the looks of it, actually, because I think that's one of the things too, right? We're looking for what Stonehenge was, and the answer seems to me to be a multitude of things over thousands of years. And then that usefulness stops morphing at some point. Like, you can see a world in which maybe they build a roof over it, and then it becomes some kind of an enclosure or like, you know, I'm an

architect now. But do you know what I mean? Like, it stops. It stops being used. And why? Why does it stop morphing? Well, I think it's such a monument, such well, it's such a testament, a monument even, to human belief and the waxing and waning of that belief, a little bit like the moon that attracts, you're welcome. You know, that it's kind of, there are these rises and falls, these tides of certain beliefs that then ebb away and then a new idea will emerge. And maybe it's not using that monument in the same way. But I think the thing to say with Stonehenge is that it has these remarkable afterlives we're about to discuss in episode two, that it doesn't just crumble away to

nothing. It's not left to rot in a field. The stones aren't all tumbled. I mean, we can talk about they are sort of repositioned in the 19th century to make it more sort of picturesque. But in the 19th century to make it more sort of picturesque. But it's never fully out of fashion. It survives and even today it's an incredibly important thing for us in Britain and internationally. We're going to look at an episode two, some of the international fascination with it as well. But it never really dies. It certainly in the prehistoric period, it wanes briefly, but it never ever dies. Okay, listen, we'll tell us a little bit of a... We're about to wrap up today, so thank you to everybody for listening and for... I would be really interested to know where

you stand on Stonehenge, because obviously we have two differing views here, and that is the amazing thing about history, babe. You know, I'd love to hear what other people think about us, because no matter what it is in the past, if it inspires love and passion and thought and thinking, then I'm just so here for it and I love that other people love it. So share your love with us. Let us know. Or your distaste if it's a case that you don't like it. Basically, let us know if you're team Anthony or team Maddie. Oh, they're all going to be team Maddie. That's just why everyone loves this thing.

I'm just to contankerous old shite. Maddie, let us know what we're going to be looking at in episode two for people if they want to come back and discover a little bit more about the myths around Stonehenge. We're going to be talking aliens, 20th century rock stars and a weird connection to Winston Churchill. Right, so if 20th century rock stars and Winston Churchill and Stonehenge sound like your cup of tea, then come back and listen to episode two and we will be waiting here for you to discuss Stonehenge and its myths in more details. If you've enjoyed this episode and want to get in touch with us to let us know about other topics you'd like us to cover or just your thoughts on this topic and how much you love Stonehenge and hate Anthony, then you can email us at afterdark at historyhit.com. Hate Anthony? Not even hate the history? Wow!

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