Dan Snow's History Hit - The Wonder of Stonehenge
Episode Date: March 27, 2022Towering above the Wiltshire countryside, Stonehenge is perhaps the world's most awe-inspiring ancient stone circle. Shrouded in layers of speculation and folklore, this iconic British monument has sp...urred myths and legends that persist today. Dan is joined by Neil Wilkin, curator of a special exhibition housed at the British Museum, that reveals the secrets of Stonehenge, shines a light on its purpose, cultural power and the people who created it.For more about Stonehenge, check out History Hit's February book of the month How to Build Stonehenge by Mike Pitts. It draws on new research to explore why, when and how Stonehenge was built.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Stonehenge. Stonehenge has been on the subject of
this podcast before. It is in many ways the most famous monument in Britain and Ireland. It is the
one monument that Barack Obama, when he was president, asked if he could stop Marine One,
his helicopter, between some kind of G8 or whatever it's called,
meetings. And he stopped, he landed there and he toured around it. He was so keen to see it.
It's a moment I've visited time and again over the course of a career as we learn new things,
new archaeology, new insights into Stonehenge and its surrounding area. It's always a joy.
It's a place of magic, a place of mystery that draws huge crowds throughout the year but also
especially at the solstice at the equinox when people get up near the stone and can lay their
hands on the stones i've attended those gatherings i've been there in rain i've been there in shine
i've been in the sun's coming up peeking over the horizon hitting the stones i've been there
when the stones are covered in snow and the skies are overcast and it's never
ever disappointed one of the most interesting times I visited was actually not for work but
when my wife and I we're blessed we have three wonderful children you may have heard in the
podcast but we lost one baby late in my wife's pregnancy very late on it was a terrible event
traumatic event and for some reason I don't know why we just got in the car we decided to take a
day out and we just went to Stonehenge went to look at the stones and it was a very special thing to do and I think
it was a very healing thing to do as well. So Stonehenge has always been very close to my heart,
it's been a very special place for me and my family. It's wonderful that British Museum are
going to do one of their huge blockbuster exhibitions on Stonehenge. They feel that
we have all spent two years locked up on this
island. Many of us haven't done the foreign travel that we've become used to, and we've re-engaged
with what's around us. And nowhere more so than Stonehenge, which has seen huge numbers of visitors
over the last two years. I'm very pleased that Neil Wilkin, he's the curator of the Stonehenge
exhibition at the British Museum, he's coming on the podcast now to talk all about it. If you wish to watch a programme I made at Stonehenge a year
or two ago for History Hit TV, it's our own history channel. You can go and subscribe. If you click
the link in the description of this podcast, you get whisked over to History Hit TV. You can
subscribe on your smart TV, on your phone, on your laptop, on your tablet device for a very small
amount of money. And you can watch a programme I out at Stonehenge, one of my most successful programmes ever, in fact, a documentary
about Stonehenge, but also lots of other wonderful Stonehenge documentaries on there. For example,
the First Britons, in which we look at some of the oldest archaeological remains of the humans
that lived on this island. So lots and lots of Stonehenge material, lots of material right the
way through history. So please go and check it out. But in the meantime, please enjoy this discussion with Neil Wilkin,
curator of the Stonehenge Exhibition at the British Museum,
talking all about the stones.
Enjoy.
Neil, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
Well, thank you for having me, Dan.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Why did you guys decide to do a massive Stonehenge? Is it the new stuff? Is it the
fact that you realised we haven't really talked about it for a while? Like, what is it?
Yeah, well, it's all those things. It's the fact that we've never done an exhibition on Stonehenge,
but it is one of, if not the most iconic monument in Britain, one of the most iconic
monuments in the world. It's our version
of the pyramids, if you like. So to us, that was kind of shocking that there hadn't been an
exhibition on that subject. But you're right, there's also something else, which is the last
20, 30 years, there's been a lot of new excavation in the landscape around Stonehenge. There's been
lots of fantastic discoveries across Britain and Europe from the time of Stonehenge. There's been lots of fantastic discoveries across Britain and Europe from
the time of Stonehenge and there's been a lot of scientific discoveries, things like ancient DNA,
that have really revolutionised how we can talk about not just the monument but I think also
importantly the people who built the monument. So that was really important to us because that's
where objects come in, objects let us talk about people so those things came together and then there's a third thing I
should mention which is it feels like a great moment to do this exhibition because we've all
been in lockdown we've all been kind of going out and maybe appreciating nature a bit more
appreciating the British countryside a bit more so it feels like just that time when people are starting to ask some questions
about the kind of deep past,
the deep history of the landscape
that they've been enjoying walking around
during this kind of really difficult couple of years.
So that's the other aspect.
It feels like the right time to do the show.
Totally, man.
I think we're all reconnecting with,
well, I'm not,
because I spend my whole goddamn life
in those places anyway,
but I think lots of people are reconnecting
with the world-class heritage that is on our doorstep from Orkney to Cornwall. I
completely agree. So let's just rehearse what we think we know about Stonehenge. Where are we?
5,000 years ago, do we think? So the first monument at Stonehenge is built 5,000 years ago,
but kind of amazingly, and this is something we touch on in the exhibition at the BM, there's
lots going on in that Stonehenge landscape thousands of years before the first Stonehenge is built.
So it's clearly an important place, even before 5,000 years ago.
But it's 5,000 years ago that the first monument comes into being.
And that's with the blue stones.
Amazingly, they're brought from Wales all the way to Salisbury Plain.
Four and a half thousand years, of course, great pyramid of Giza.
So that it is, as you say, kind of pyramid contemporary.
Let's talk about that landscape, though, because that's really important, your point.
It is obviously a sacred space, even well before Slaanesh.
Now, I'm dredging up the memory banks here, but is that such because the chalked down land that would have been very fairly wooded in southern England,
that would have been a big open area of open heathland?
How do we describe that? Yeah, exactly. So when you visit today, you see a really open landscape,
and that's been very carefully managed by English Heritage and National Trust. And that really is
how the landscape would have appeared for much of the time that the Stonehenge Monument was being
visited and worshipped. And what you have to remember is that the rest of the country,
worshipped. And what you have to remember is that the rest of the country, much of it is still under tree cover, under wood, and is unimproved land. So I think as an area of open landscape, that's
really interesting if you're not used to it. But I think also as rich agricultural land, that's
somewhere you can have your animals, your cattle. But there's another aspect that I kind of really
realised when I visited this week with a group of colleagues we were visiting.
And the thing that I kind of been missing was that that big landscape means that there's a big sky.
You know, when you don't have tree cover, when you've got these sort of rolling areas, the sky is somehow more present.
You're more aware of what's happening with the movement of the sun and no doubt at night time with the stars.
So I'm sure that in terms of thinking about your place in the world,
which is what Stonehenge does,
it lets people sort of find their place in the world
and celebrate and anchor that.
The sky and its presence is a really important aspect
of why the monument's there.
What's the latest think on how they did get those stones from Wales?
I think it's a combination of sheer determination
and the use of water to help a little bit but clearly for the vast majority of the route they
had to take those blue stones over land and I think you can't underestimate the amount of effort
that was needed and I think what that tells you I mean I'm sort of moving the question on a bit but
I think what it tells you is how much people wanted to move those stones because it's such an undertaking and such a logistic nightmare.
Because remember, these people who are moving the stones have got other things to do.
They are farmers. They have to look after their crops and their animals.
and problem solve about how to get them over hill and dale,
I think you need to have a real passion and a real religious almost fervour that this is the right thing to do and that by moving these stones
you're really going to solve your problems
or at least make a real statement to the gods.
So I think while the details of how they moved them
are still a little bit cloudy, the fact they did it
tells us a lot about their investment in the plan
i think it also tells us about this idea of national identity like if you're moving stuff
from wales you're obviously kind of are you crossing a tribal familial um i don't know
states whatever the word is like boundaries and that's what's really interesting about stonehenge
it does look like it's a place for the whole of the island of Britain, doesn't it?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.
On that trip, you know, they must have encountered other villages, other people.
And can you imagine the spectacle?
All of a sudden, someone with a huge blue stone comes over the horizon.
I mean, you're not going to forget that.
That's going to be a really memorable moment.
But also, as you say, it's a moment where people are meeting and maybe joining in. So maybe the locals join in and they help move that stone for a bit of the journey. But to go
back to the kind of technology of it, because I think that is important. What we know from that
time, from things like the sweet track, is that people were very skilled at building these wooden
walkways and trackways. And there's no doubt from new research by Dr. Mike Pitts that they're
probably using these trackway-like structures to move the stones along to aid the movement of them.
So they're using their engineering skills that they've picked up in building other wooden
walkways and trackways to inform how to move the blue stones as well.
So we get this initial first stonehenge. Now, what about the really big stones
from slightly near, although still a long way away? When do they get added? Would you believe
they come to the site 500 years after the Blue Stones? And they're the Saracen stones. So they
probably come from the Marlborough Downs. And it's not a million miles from Stonehenge, it's about
20, 30 kilometres. But as you know, they're so massive that they pose different types of challenge the
sheer logistics of moving really massive heavy stones any kind of distance is one that people
have been puzzling over for a long time and again we think that wooden trackways as a kind of way of
sliding those stones along would have been really important and one theory is that there was a kind of continuous trackway
that ran like a train line, you know, that ran from the quarry site, which is we currently think
somewhere like Westwoods and near Marlborough, all the way to the Stonehenge construction site.
And that's an astonishing thing to think of this sort of trackway that's extending right across
the landscape at this really early time before roads,
before good evidence for wheeled transport, you've got this sort of trackway.
So a really major piece of engineering.
You're listening to Down to Notes History.
Talking Stonehenge.
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Okay, well, this is the big question. Do you think it was ever completed?
Yeah, I personally think it was completed.
I hope it was. I want it to have been.
Do you? Yeah, I think it's nice to think that the investment that they put into doing those,
you know, what we see today, if you're going to put that kind of investment in,
then you're probably invested in finishing the job.
And you've definitely got the skills to finish the job, let's face it.
So I like to think that it was a full circle but as you allude to because it's not complete now and there
are missing stones you can't be entirely sure that it was ever a complete circle. So we can't be sure
we all hope it was completed because it just hurts the brain if it ever even completed it
dare we wonder what it meant? Yeah so something the
exhibition does is it kind of makes the point that we've been making which is that the monument
isn't just one monument you know we've talked about two different phases but actually there
was multiple phases in the construction where stones were moved around and over that time
period of about really 1,500 years when the monument was being modified and changed, new
stones brought in, other stones moved around. During that time, there's no doubt that its meaning
also shifted. So one myth we're trying to explode in the exhibition is that it meant one thing for
all time. In fact, it's quite clear that it meant different things. And to just give an example of
that, we have objects from the first Stonehenge, that bluestone monument in the exhibition. And at that point, the monument
was a cemetery. So it was a place for the cremated dead. And amazingly, some scientific research
suggests that some of those cremated individuals were being brought, the cremated bones were being
brought from Wales. So it wasn't just the bluestones that were moving.
It was potentially people's ancestors, people's relatives that were making the same journey to this new homeland, this new area or the ceremonial area that was set aside.
So it's a very clean site
which really frustrates museum curators and archaeologists because there aren't a huge amount
of objects from that period but that's a really important fact, the absence is really important.
Like a cathedral, the monument's been kept really clean and we think by that point, its meaning, its purpose is much more ceremonial
to do with those solstice events that everyone hears about in the summer, in the winter, in the
news, you see pictures of people celebrating at Stonehenge. Those were also really important way
back in the time of the Saracens. So it was a place of ceremony and a place of gathering.
What's quite interesting is that the monument isn't massive.
That's often a comment that people make. It's not as big as I thought it would be. And that's quite
interesting too, because clearly not everyone in those ceremonies could fit within the inner
sanctum of the circle. So is there a sense in which the monument is also to do with social
relations? Who's important? Who's not? Who's religious?
Who's not?
So there's an element to which the monument's also telling us about the way in which people were maybe separated by access
to the monument by that point.
And then if I can go on a bit, the monument,
after it's become a ceremonial place,
becomes a focus point for burial.
So when you stand inside Stonehenge and look outside it, the landscape,
the horizon's dotted with these bumps and barrows, burial mounds where the dead were placed. And so
after it's become a ceremonial site, it becomes this sort of almost like a mecca-like sanctum
where people want to be buried close to, to gain that kind of relationship or connection to as
important members of society who are buried in that landscape.
So that's just three different examples of how over its life, its meaning changed.
And those are things that we can start to unpick through the objects that we show through the different areas of the exhibition.
I'm fascinated by the animal bones, the burials, the metal objects.
What else do we learn about relations with Europe or other parts of this island or archipelago that we live on? Keep telling
me. Yeah, very interesting. So around the time the Saracens come to Stonehenge, there's another
huge monument, which you may have heard of, called Darrington Walls, which is down the river, down
the avon from Stonehenge. And it seems to be really intimately connected with what's happening at Stonehenge around 4,500 years ago. And it's been described as a kind of part sacred site,
part camp for the workers who are building the Sarsen version of Stonehenge. And at that site,
there's lots of evidence, unlike Stonehenge, which I said is kept quite clean, like a cathedral.
Down at Darrington Walls, that's where the sort of Glastonbury style parties are happening. And you've got people
feasting on barbecued pork and probably something with a bit more of an edge, alcoholic drinks from
containers called grooveware pots. All those things are in the exhibition, there's evidence of feasting
and partying are in the show. But to answer your point about connections, some recent scientific work on the pigs that are brought to Stonehenge
for these big pork barbecues, those pigs seem to have come from pretty far away. And there's still
a bit of debate about how far away, but some people think they're coming and being driven to
Stonehenge from maybe as far away as Scotland even, that's one theory, or at least from a really
pretty far hinterland around the monument. So you've got that sense of people coming together,
perhaps around the winter solstice, that's what the pig bone evidence seems to suggest,
and having these big parties in advance of going to Stonehenge and either constructing the monument
or worshipping at the monument. We haven't said the obvious bit yet, which is tell me about its solar alignment.
Lots of really excellent work being done on different alignments with the moon and sun,
but the point I'd make is that the key solar alignments to do with the way the whole monument
is orientated, its key axes and the way you approach it down the avenue, those are on the
mid-summer sunrise and the mid-winter sunset, so the solstices. And the avenue those are on the mid-summer sunrise and the mid-winter sunset
so the solstices and the reason those are so important something we really go to town on in
the exhibition is that the sun for farmers is as you know completely critical it's the thing that
brings the calendar around that helps your crops to grow and at that mid-winter point there's that
fear I suppose and I think we still get it when we getinter point, there's that fear, I suppose. And I think we still get it
when we get the January blues. There's a fear that it's winter and it's dark and it might not get
light again. You might not get your summer. So that sort of moment when the sun is at its weakest,
that seems to be the time when people really wanted to undertake these ceremonies, perhaps
to guarantee, to ensure, to celebrate the fact that there was going to be
light again, there was going to be the return of life, perhaps to do with the ancestors as well,
the return and regeneration of the dead at that kind of critical turning moment.
I tell you, if I could have witnessed any scene in history, it would have been
one of those moments. Yeah, it'd be great.
We do know more than we used to, but we don't really
know anything about those people. I mean, we don't know how they were organised and their politics.
It's just so fascinating, isn't it? There is a frustration to it as well, obviously, and it's
something that we've been very careful to try and address in the exhibition is we don't have named
individuals. We don't even have the kind of tribe names that you get later on in the Celtic Iron Age period. So you can't really talk about
that. But what you can show is that people shared lots of things. They shared the same type of
pottery between Orkney and Stonehenge. People that visited Orkney for midwinter or midsummer
would be using the same types of pot as they did at Stonehenge.
And I find that amazing because we think, oh, well, both of those are in what we know as the UK.
But before the UK, before the nation states, that distance between Orkney up in the north
and down here in southern England is a major trip, a major undertaking. And yet it feels like, it seems like people were capable of making
those journeys or that the culture of the islands of Ireland and Britain was similar enough that
people were doing the same sorts of things. So does that mean they're speaking the same language?
I would say there's a pretty high chance they were. It doesn't mean they understood and worshipped
the same principles and gods.
Again, I would say, given the similarities between what's happening in Ireland and Bruna Boyne, Boyne Valley, and what's happening up in Stinesse in Orkney and Brodgar there, and what's happening in Avebury and Stonehenge,
I would say that the similarities between those monuments, the things that we call henges and stone circles,
those monuments, the things that we call hengis and stone circles, you would say these people are worshipping the same sorts of ideas, principles and religious ideas. And so to me,
you're right, we can't get at the detail, but you can start to unpick the connections. And that's
what we do in the show. You can say, look at the art on tombs in Orkney. Isn't it similar to the
chalk objects that you find in East Yorkshire?
And to my mind, that's going to be a real revelation
to people visiting the exhibition,
those long distance links.
What do you think about the fall of Stonehenge?
Did it ever fall?
Did it lose its centrality in British spiritual life?
Yeah, I think there's no doubt
that it did start to lose its appeal and its power.
And I think that happened at a very
interesting time in the history of these islands. And it happened around the time that metal,
bronze, the first sort of metal to be introduced, started to become dominant. And with that,
trade links, particularly between the south of England and the continent, so France really,
particularly between the south of England and the continent, so France really,
became much more important as a way of connecting to sources of power.
But also I think we have to remember that the exchanges that are happening are not sort of dry economic exchanges.
The objects that people are acquiring have sort of spiritual
or even cosmological power invested within them.
So the people who had access to metal, particularly along the south
coast of England, start to be able to command greater power. And it's around that time that
you see modifications to Stonehenge starting to shift. And something really interesting happens
at Stonehenge, and that is that people start to almost graffiti the monument. And what they start
to carve onto the stones, and there's hundreds of these if
you can get close enough to the stones you can just about see them they start to carve metal
objects they start to carve representations of axes and daggers onto the stones and that in many
ways symbolizes this new world that's emerging around 4 000 years ago where metal is the power
that makes the world go round, if you like.
That's the time that you start to see modifications to the monument stopping.
And as I say, more elaborate burials and objects are now located further south within access of
the Channel or the North Sea. And that's a major moment. It's a major moment in the history of the
country. And it's a major moment in the history of Stonehenge as well.
It's a major moment in the history of the country and it's a major moment in the history of Stonehenge as well.
It's the kids, the kids with their new toys.
They're turning away from the old ways.
New materials and new ideas.
You know, it was always so, wasn't it?
You know, that's what always happens.
You get these revolutions of material.
You get the latest iPhone.
You get silicon chips.
It changes who has the access to the power.
So it's now Silicon Valley
rather than the industrial heartlands. It has that effect. Stonehenge is left. But what I find
fascinating is that it's not knocked down. Thank God it's not knocked down by anyone. Even in more
religious times when some of these sites are considered pagan and potentially evil, the stones
are left. And that does suggest that even after it lost its real influence,
there's still a sense of respect and wonder
for those hanging lintels, those standing stones.
Kids, they're not reading books anymore.
They're on their TikToks.
That's the problem with these kids.
Okay, Neil, thank you very much indeed.
I mean, we could do a whole separate thing
about the life of Stonehenge through recorded history,
which I think is fascinating.
And maybe you'd let us talk to you about that at some stage.
The exhibition, which I'm looking forward to coming to you very much, is when?
The exhibition closes on the 17th of July.
So a good few months for people to visit and see some of what I think are the wonders of ancient Europe.
Objects that really hopefully put Stonehenge in context.
Very special indeed. Thank you so much for coming on the pod.
Thank you, Dan.
I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.
All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,
this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished.
For more about Stonehenge, History Hits February Book of the Month
was How to Build Stonehenge by Mike Pitts.
Check it out.
Thanks, folks, for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History.
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