page_title: Theories about Stonehenge
section_title: Stonehenge as part of a ritual landscape
hierarchical_section_title: Theories about Stonehenge / Stonehenge as part of a ritual landscape
caption_attribution_description: English: Stonehenge sunset photo by Graham Burnett (quercus robur). If re-used a credit would be appreciated but is not compulsory!
context_page_description: Stonehenge has been the subject of many theories about its origin, ranging from the academic worlds of archaeology to explanations from mythology and the paranormal.
context_section_description: Many archaeologists believe Stonehenge was an attempt to render in permanent stone the more common timber structures that dotted Salisbury Plain at the time, such as those that stood at Durrington Walls. Modern anthropological evidence has been used by Mike Parker Pearson and the Malagasy archaeologist Ramilisonina to suggest that timber was associated with the living and stone with the ancestral dead amongst prehistoric peoples. They have argued that Stonehenge was the terminus of a long, ritualised funerary procession for treating the dead, which began in the east, during sunrise at Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, moved down the Avon and then along the Avenue reaching Stonehenge in the west at sunset. The journey from wood to stone via water was, they consider, a symbolic journey from life to death. There is no satisfactory evidence to suggest that Stonehenge's astronomical alignments were anything more than symbolic and current interpretations favour a ritual role for the monument that takes into account its numerous burials and its presence within a wider landscape of sacred sites. Many also believe that the site may have had astrological/spiritual significance attached to it.
  Support for this view also comes from the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, who compares the site to other megalithic constructions around the world devoted to the cult of the dead (ancestors). 
  
  Like other similar English monuments [For example, Eliade identifies, Woodhenge, Avebury, Arminghall, and Arbor Low] the Stonehenge cromlech was situated in the middle of a field of funeral barrows.   This famous ceremonial centre constituted, at least in its primitive form, a sanctuary built to insure relations with the ancestors.  In terms of structure, Stonehenge can be compared with certain megalithic complexes developed, in other cultures, from a sacred area:  temples or cities.  We have the same valourisation of the sacred space as "centre of the world," the privileged place that affords communication with heaven and the underworld, that is, with the gods, the chtonian goddesses, and the spirits of the dead.
  In addition to the English sites, Eliade identifies, among others, the megalithic architecture of Malta, which represents a "spectacular expression" of the cult of the dead and worship of a Great Goddess.
  Radar mapping also reveals that three chalk ridges in the Stonehenge area are aligned by geological accident on the midsummer sunrise/midwinter axis. This natural solstitial alignment would have symbolized cosmic unity to the ancients, a place where Heaven and Earth were unified by some supernatural force. This seems to have set the blueprint for solstitial alignments in Stonehenge and the timber circles at Durrington Walls and Woodhenge as well.
  Mike Parker Pearson also believes that the Stonehenge was a monument of unification, bringing together different groups with different ancestries. He surmises that the five trilithons in the centre of Stonehenge could have symbolized five tribal lineages charting their descent from five original ancestors. The Preseli Hills might have had some ancestral significance for the stonehenge builders as well (perhaps this was their place of origin), this may have been the motive behind dragging the bluestones all the way from Preseli Hills to Wiltshire. The trilithons may have also represented a D shaped meeting house of which similar structures have been found at other Neolithic sites in Britain. This may have represented a meeting place for the ancestors of the Stonehenge builders. Others have suggested that the trilithons represented doorways to another world.
caption: Sunset at Stonehenge
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