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The Book Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #17874 in Books
Published on: 2000-06-05
Original language: English
Binding: Paperback
592 pages

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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.co.uk Review
From the earliest times, human beings have looked at the sun and the moon, and at life and death, and have imagined gods who control such things, and looked for ways to control those gods. In Stonehenge, Bernard Cornwell, famous for his novels about Rifleman Sharpe’s adventures in the Napoleonic wars and for a sequence of brutally realistic Arthurian novels, considers the men and women who built Stonehenge and Avebury. These stone circles are impressive enough today; but all the more so if you imagine shifting stones from Wales to Salisbury Plain by raft and roller, dressing them with burning fat and grindstones, hauling the lintel stones up tiers of platforms.

“The oxen were goaded again, and, finger’s breadth by finger’s breadth, the huge stone eased forward until half of it was poised and then the oxen tugged once more and Saban was shouting at the beasts’ drivers to halt the animals because the stone was tipping at last. For a heartbeat, it seemed to balance on the ramp’s edge, then its leading half crashed down onto the timbers, then the great boulder slid down the ramp to lodge against the hole’s face.”
It is the story of Saban, made architect against his will; of his brothers Lengar, the aspiring conqueror and Camaban, the cripple-turned-magician. It is the story of Derrewynn, princess-turned-witch, and Aurenna, sacrifice-turned-priestess queen. Stonehenge is an epic tale of people as smart as us, inventing religion and mythology and forcing their wills on the world and each other. –Roz Kaveney

Review
‘An epic story told with a master’s skill. Bernard Cornwell now burrows into prehistory to suggest an answer to the puzzle of why and by whom Stonehenge was built. The result is an epic story told with a master’s skill, presenting powerful personalities, high dramas and terrific climaxes with colour and pace.’ TLS

The Economist
“A rich mix of bloody conflict amid political and religious turmoil- what a very fine writer Mr Cornwell has become”

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Customer Reviews
A Neolithic swashbuckler!
The only thing harder to research than a historical novel is a pre-historical one. Cornwell has made a serious effort to understand the how the Neolithic looked in southern Britain, then fit plot and characters into that landscape. It’s an exciting story, full of duplicity, heroics, deeply held feelings and almost convincing people.

Centred, as the title suggests, on the great stone monument on Salisbury Plain, he builds a narrative suggesting the motivation and labour involved in building this ancient site. He uses two trinities to develop his story. One trinity is comprised of brothers who represent material, mysticism and morality. The other is three who, by stretching your imagination, might be Mother, Maiden and Crone of the slassical witchcraft Sisterhood, although those identities shift drastically as the story progresses. The clash of greedy warlords with messianic figures is like something out of Sir Walter Scott. Cornwell’s technique makes thrilling reading while upholding modern standards of justice and rewards for the good. The good, of course, don’t come through unblemished or painlessly, but they survive. All the excitement and maneuvering raise this book a step above the modern fantasy novel, but the step is a small one.

If you’re looking for adventure with an unusual twist, this is the book for you. You will be taken back in time, through some spatial adjustment, but most importantly, view a society very different from the one you know. Prepare yourself for a harsh existence while remembering that “progress” is a word with many definitions. Perhaps there’s some benefit in reading the “Historical note” at the back first, then delving into Cornwell’s sources, before returning to this fictional account. All of his resources are at least as readable as this book, and infinitely more informative, if not as imaginative. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Disappointing
I must concur with other reviewers who have expressed disappointment in this novel. Having previously just finished Excalibur by the same author, Stonehenge was not in the same league. I felt the story was far too long with a relatively weak plot.

Interesting and clever in places
I’m a big fan of Bernard Cornwell so bought this book as soon as it was released. I found it to be his worst book, but don’t let that make you think it’s poor, because it ain’t. Set in Neolithic times, the book tells the story of brothers, sons of the tribal king, battling it out for supremacy over the tribe. One, slightly mad, is driven away from the village and wonders the country looking for his religious message. He finds it in Wales and thus begins the building of Stonehenge.
The time frame is too short for considered actual events, merely a few years, but it is an interesting idea and who knows; it might be somewhere near the truth!?
I haven’t re read it unlike other Cornwell novels but is a cherished part of my collection of his books.
If you are new to Cornwell, try one of the Sharpe stories or better still his Arthurian trilogy first, they’ll grip you far more.

Some archaeologists have said that there are problems when trying to date the site because the stone circle has been rebuilt so many times. Artifacts have been dug up and reburied so many times, it is very hard to determine an exact date for construction.

But Mike Parker Pearson is sure of a link between the settelment and Stonehenge. “In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards,” he explained.

Mr Parke Pearson said this was based on the fact that these houses have exactly the same layout as Neolithic houses in Skara Brae, Orkney, which have survived because, unlike these dwellings, they were made of stone.

They think the could have been atleast 100 houses in total, Each one measures about 5m (16ft) square, was made of timber,
with a clay floor and central hearth. The archaeologists have found 4,600 year-old rubbish covering the floors of the houses.

“The rubbish isn’t your average domestic debris. There’s a lack of craft-working equipment for cleaning animal hides and no evidence for crop-processing,” he said.

“The animal bones are being thrown away half-eaten. It’s what we call a feasting assemblage. This is where they went to party - you could say it was the first free festival.”

Plan of Stonehenge and the Town

Plan of Stonehenge today. After Cleal et al. and Pitts. Italicised numbers in the text refer to the labels on this plan.Plan of the central stone structure today. After Johnson 2008

Earlier explanations, including the view proposed by Inigo Jones in 1630, that Stonehenge was built by the Romans such was its sophistication and beauty, were disproved in the late seventeenth century. It was proved that Stonehenge was the work of indigenous neolithic peoples. From this period onwards artists made images of barrows, standing stones and excavated objects which increasingly drew on highly imaginative ideas about the prehistoric people that created them. These helped to create the image of Britain that a broadening audience was becoming aware of through illustrated books, prints and maps. Poets and other writers deepened the impact of this visual material by imagining ancient pasts and mythologising the distant roots of the growing British Empire. Debates about British ancestry and national identity saw a growing conviction that the British were an ancient people, and that the newly named ‘United Kingdom’, of which Scotland had become a part in 1707, might find greater harmony through searching for a common past. For the English, this past was to be found in the West, starting around Stonehenge and stretching into the ancient Gaelic regions of Wales and Cornwall.

During the early nineteenth century it was artists such as John Constable and J.M.W. Turner who helped to make the megalithic sites a part of the popular imagination and understanding of Britain’s past. The philosopher Edmund Burke proposed the idea of the ’sublime’ sense as being evoked by ‘feelings of danger and terror, obscurity and power, in art as well as life’. This was already a feature of artistic and literary works of the period, and provided the theoretical basis for a growing appreciation of desolate landscapes and ancient ruins. For these reasons Stonehenge became of particular interest for artists. Burke himself wrote

Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set end on end, and piled high on each other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work.

The very nature of the barren Wiltshire landscape, and Salisbury Plain became particularly notable for the apparently miraculous powers that created Stonehenge. William Wordsworth wrote:

Pile of Stone-henge! So proud to hint yet keep
Thy secrets, thou lov’st to stand and hear
The plain resounding to the whirlwind’s sweep
Inmate of lonesome Nature’s endless year.

John Constable Stonehenge Painting

Turner and Constables’ paintings deviated from the actual state of the stones. Turner particularly added stones that were not there in reality, and those that were, were incorrect in their dimensions. The paintings were arranged for a romantic effect popular at the time however. Throughout the nineteenth century, a new motive emerged in the depictions of Stonehenge, that of an anti-pagan approach, with paintings by the likes of William Overend Geller, with his painting The Druid’s Sacrifice in 1832. In the novel “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy, the main character, Tess, is captured by the police at Stonehenge, the ‘heathen’ nature of the setting being used to highlight the character’s temperament.

The image of Stonehenge became adapted in the twentieth century by those wishing to advertise using a monument viewed as a symbol of Britain. The Royal Navy exploited this sense of identification by naming an S class destroyer and one of their S Class submarines HMS Stonehenge. The Shell Oil Company commissioned the artist Edward McKnight Kauffer to paint a series of posters during the interwar period, to be used to encourage tourism by car owners. Stonehenge was one of those depicted.

The Paleoastronauts theory of Erich Von Daniken has its share of claims toward Stonehenge. Some people claim to have seen UFOs in the area, perhaps connected with the military installations around Warminster, that has led to ideas over it being an extraterrestrial landing site. Alfred Watkins found three ley lines running through the site, and others have employed numerology, dowsing or geomancy to reach diverse conclusions regarding the site’s power and purpose. New Age and neo-pagan beliefs see Stonehenge as a sacred place of worship, which can conflict with its more mainstream role as an archaeological site, tourist attraction, or marketing tool. Post-processualist archaeologists might consider that treating Stonehenge as a computer or observatory is to apply modern concepts from our own technology-driven era back into the past. Even the role of indigenous peoples in archaeology, rarely applied in Western Europe, has created a new function for the site as a symbol of Welsh nationalism.

The significance of the ‘ownership’ of Stonehenge in terms of the differing meanings and interpretations held by the many orthodox and unorthodox stakeholders in the site has been increasingly apparent in recent decades. Researchers Jenny Blain and Robert J. Wallis have pointed to the huge variety of views which show the continued and growing importance of Stonehenge today, as a symbol and ‘Icon of Britishness’, and indicate also the increased awareness of the past by many people with no training in archaeology or heritage. For many, Stonehenge and other ancient monuments form part of the ‘living landscape’ which holds its own stories, and which is there to be engaged with, as people mark the seasons of the year. Today’s mythology around Stonehenge includes the recent history of the Battle of the Beanfield and the previous Free festivals. Stonehenge has not one meaning but many. Today, curators English Heritage, facilitate ‘managed open access’ at solstices and equinoxes, with some disputes over the days on which these fall. Blain and Wallis argue that issues over access relate not only to physical presence at the stones but to interpretations of past and validity of ‘new-indigenous’ and pagan usages in the present and such ‘alternative’ views have been central in alerting public awareness to the issues of roads, tunnels and landscape.

The idea of ‘precision’ (below) demands that exact points of reference were used, both between the structural elements and in relation to the axis (i.e. that of the solstices). Johnson’s asserts that prehistoric survey markers could not have been placed within the footprint of the stones, but must have been (as in any construction) external to the stones. That almost all the stones have one ‘better’ i.e. flatter face, and that face is almost invariably inwards, suggests that the construction was set out so that the prehistoric builders could use the center point of the inner faces as reference. This is very significant in respect of the Great Trilithon; the surviving upright has its flatter face outwards (see image on right), towards the midwinter sunset, and was raised from the inside. The remainder of the trilithon array (and almost all of the stones of the Sarsen Circle) had construction ramps which sloped inwards, and were therefore set up from the outside. Placing the centre face of the stones (regardless of their thickness) against markers would mean that the ‘gaps’ between the stones were simply consequential. The study of the geometric layout of the monument shows that such methods were used and that there is a clear argument for regarding other outlying elements as part of a geometric scheme (e.g. the ‘Station Stones’ and the stoneholes 92 and 94 which mark two opposing facets of an octagon). A geometric design is scalable from concept to construction, removing much of the need for measurements to be made at all.

Much speculation has surrounded the engineering feats required to build Stonehenge. Assuming the bluestones were brought from Wales by hand, and not transported by glaciers as Aubrey Burl has claimed, various methods of moving them relying only on timber and rope have been suggested. In a 2001 exercise in experimental archaeology, an attempt was made to transport a large stone along a land and sea route from Wales to Stonehenge. Volunteers pulled it for some miles (with great difficulty) on a wooden sledge over land, using modern roads and low-friction netting to assist sliding, but it became clear that it would have been incredibly difficult for even the most organized of tribal groups to have pulled large numbers of stones across the densely wooded, rough and boggy terrain of West wales.

Josh Bernstein and Julian Richards organized an experiment to pull a 2 ton stone on wooden tracks with a group of about 16 men. They placed the stone on a wooden sledge then placed the sledge on a wooden track. They pulled this with two gangs of about 8 men. To move the stones as many miles across Southern england, the creators of Stonehenge would’ve had to build a lot of track, or move and rebuild track in pieces, as the stones migrated to their final destination.

A recent article has argued that the massive stones could be moved by submerging in water and being towed below an ancient vessel or group of vessels. This technique would have two significant advantages. It would reduce the load born by the vessel while part of the stone’s weight is displaced by the water. Secondly, the arrangement of the load below the vessel would be much more stable and reduce the risk of catastrophic failure. Naturally, this would apply only for transportation over water. The technique was tried during the Millennium Stone Project 2000, with a single bluestone slung beneath two large curraghs. The sling frayed away, and the stone plunged to the bed of Milford Haven.

It has been suggested that timber A-frames were erected to raise the stones, and that teams of people then hauled them upright using ropes. The topmost stones may have been raised up incrementally on timber platforms and slid into place or pushed up ramps. The carpentry-type joints used on the stones imply a people well skilled in woodworking and they could easily have had the knowledge to erect the monument using such methods. In 2003 retired construction worker Wally Wallington demonstrated ingenious techniques based on fundamental principles of levers, fulcrums and counterweights to show that a single man can rotate, walk, lift and tip a ten-ton cast-concrete monolith into an upright position. He is progressing with his plan to construct a simulated Stonehenge comprising of eight uprights and two lintels.

Alexander Thom was of the opinion that the site was laid out with the necessary precision using his megalithic yard.

The engraved weapons on the sarsens are unique in megalithic art in the British Isles, where more abstract designs were invariably favoured Similarly, the horseshoe arrangements of stones are unusual in a culture that otherwise arranged stones in circles. The axe motif is, however, common to the peoples of Brittany at the time, and it has been suggested at least two stages of Stonehenge were built under continental influence. This would go some way towards explaining the monument’s atypical design, but overall, Stonehenge is still inexplicably unusual in the context of any prehistoric European culture.

Estimates of the manpower needed to build Stonehenge put the total effort involved at millions of hours of work. Stonehenge 1 probably needed around 11,000 man-hours (or 460 man-days) of work, Stonehenge 2 around 360,000 (15,000 man-days or 41 years). The various parts of Stonehenge 3 may have involved up to 1.75 million hours (73 000 days or 200 years) of work. The working of the stones is estimated to have required around 20 million hours (830 000 days or 2300 years) of work using the primitive tools available at the time.[citation needed] Certainly, the will to produce such a site must have been strong, and it is considered that advanced social organization would have been necessary to build and maintain it. However, Wally Wallington’s work suggests that Stonehenge’s construction may have required fewer man-hours than previously estimated.

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.

Dr. Anthony M. Perks, a retired professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of British Columbia and Darlene Marie Bailey offered “a theory based on the resemblance of the henge to the human vulva, with the birth canal at its centre” - “Because Stonehenge was a place of life and birth, not death, a place that looked towards the future”. Dr. Perks and Darlene Bailey’s “Earth Mother and Sun Father” theory is commonly referred to as Stonehenge “human vulva” or “birth canal” theory. When viewed aerially, Stonehenge does somewhat represent the petals of a flower (a long-used symbol for the vagina).