Astronomy and Stonehenge

THE PORTRAYAL OF STONEHENGE in the 1960s and 1970s as an astronomical observatory or computer forms one of the most notorious examples known to archaeologists of an age recreating the past in its own image (Hawkes 1966; Castleden 1993, 18-27; Chippindale 1994, 230-1). Despite persistent popular belief, detailed reassessments of the ideas of C.A. Newham, Gerald Hawkins, Fred Hoyle and others have shown that there is no convincing evidence that, at any stage, constructions at Stonehenge deliberately incorporated a great many precise astronomical alignments, or that they served as any sort of computing device to predict eclipses (Atkinson 1966; Burl 1981; Heggie 1981, 145-51, 195-206). In short, there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that at any stage the site functioned as an astronomical observatory-at least in any sense that would be meaningful to a modem astronomer. Yet we would be unwise simply to dismiss all astronomical ideas relating to Stonehenge. People within human societies of a very wide range of types perceive certain celestial objects and integrate them into their view of the world, linking them inextricably into the realms of politics, economics, religion and ideology (Thorpe 1981; Ruggles and Saunders 1993a). The material record from Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland suggests that astronomical symbolism, in the form of rough alignments upon certain horizon rising and setting positions of the sun or moon, was incorporated into a range of prehistoric ritual monuments at various places and times. Evidence comes from certain individual sites, most notably Newgrange with its spectacular midwinter sunrise phenomenon (O’Kelly 1982, 123-5), but most compellingly from trends observed in regional groups of small, similar Bronze Age ritual monuments such as the recumbent stone circles of north-eastern Scotland (Ruggles and Burl 1985) and the short stone rows of western Scotland (Ruggles 1988; Martlew and Ruggles 1996) and the south-west of Ireland (Ruggles 1994). ‘Once we have accepted the reality of even the simplest observations . . . the question is no longer one of acceptance or rejection, but simply of degree’ (Bradley 1984, 77).