A new British Museum exhibition portrays a Stonehenge that changed and developed over 1,500 years. But the desires of its builders still elude us
“Stonehenge: built by immigrants,” reads a sign designed by the artist Jeremy Deller – a pithy reminder of an archaeological truth: that populations have been more mobile than is often convenient to believe in our modern age of borders and the nation state. Stonehenge was indeed built by “immigrants” – by the descendants of those who had crossed to Britain from continental Europe, bringing farming techniques with them, around 6,000 years ago. And from the medieval period, when mythographer Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that it had been built by the wizard Merlin, to our own era of the druids, new age travellers and tourists who have worshipped, revelled and marvelled there, it has continued to accrue fresh new meanings and associations as each generation projects its own desires on to it.
But one of the most intriguing points made by the curators of the new British Museum exhibition The World of Stonehenge is that the monument had a long and dynamic history of development and change before it began the second phase of its life as a ruin. The Wiltshire downlands around Stonehenge were, it seems, already special to the Mesolithic people who drove wooden stakes into the ground there before Doggerland, a territory that connected Britain to the continent, was subsumed into the North Sea around 8,500 years ago. Later, 5,000 years ago, the origins of Stonehenge itself were established when a mighty circular ditch and bank were built, with wooden posts or stones set just inside it. Not long afterwards, these were removed, and huge bluestones quarried in the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire were, remarkably, transported all the way to Wiltshire and set up there. Later still, around 4,500 years ago, came the erection of the giant sarsen stones.
