Stonehenge City: A Reconstruction

Stonehenge, the megalithic monument in southern England that dates in its Bronze Age phase to 2000 B.C. (but with a history stretching back yet another thousand years to Neolithic times), attracts more than a million tourists a year, but is much more than a visible array of great standing stones. The entire region includes a vast cemetery and a number of other sites that indicate the remains of sizeable wooden buildings. Stonehenge was indeed its own city, the metropolitan center of a powerful kingdom heretofore unsuspected. That city is reconstructed by the author from the archaeological evidence—royal palace, banquet hall and tomb, among other buildings. In passing, the author incisively demolishes the popular theory that Stonehenge served as a prehistoric astronomical observatory. He rather advances a political theory grounded in cultural continuities that carry forward into the early Iron Age, best documented in ancient Ireland. Here (apart from Homer) begins European literature, derived from oral traditions. The entire book is richly illustrated.