All archaeologists are united by their common interest in studying humanity in the past. Whether they focus on the earliest humans or on those of recent times, they all agree that archaeology has three main goals:

• To study archaeological sites and their contents in a context of time and space, to describe long sequences of human culture,

• To reconstruct past lifeways, to deduce how humans made their livings, and

• To explain why human cultures changed, or why they remained the same, over long periods of time.

Many people think that archaeology is an expensive luxury in a world where grinding poverty and hunger are commonplace. Why, they ask, is it important to dig up and study the past? Archaeology is unique among all the sciences, as it is the only reliable way of studying and explaining how human societies have changed-or remained the same-over very long periods of time. Quite apart from studying our origins among the nonhuman primates, the long time frame of archaeology allows us to trace the origins of modern humanity.

The story of Stonehenge is one where we begin to see that people such as those at Skara Brae worship ancestors and create chambered tombs as central unifying places for communities. The society is egalitarian in nature and some craft work and trade is emerging. The chambered tombs of the Orkney Islands are found in southern England where they are known as Long Barrows. Long Barrows are places where people collected the bones of their ancestors just as in the Orkneys. They also began to build places where the deceased was taken and body allowed to rot before the bones were collected and then placed within the chambers of Long Barrows. What is clear from this segment of the story is that the amount of labor to construct Long Barrows and what are called Causewayed Enclosures is extensive. A process of change was to emerge. Driven by population growth and other changes in the nature of society, archaeologists are able to see that the megalithic tombs began a process of change that were to lead to henges such as Stonehenge. Ultimately Stonehenge was only one stage in a larger processual change within southern England.

The megalithic world emerged throughout the Mediterranean and was clearly part of what we have observed already in the Orkney chambered tombs and the Long Barrows of southern England. We have to look at the Long Barrows for some answers.

Society was larger in this part of England than in than in the Orkneys, and therefore, could afford larger monuments and some of these Long Barrows were very large in deed. Yet there was something else that the people of southern England were constructing and that was called a Causeway Enclosure. These required far more effort and seemed to take on a greater significance in drawing people together collectively. These seem to be central places for people to come to and were clearly important for remembering ancestors. Enclosures were places where the body of the dead were left to decompose. Offerings were placed within the ditch surrounding the enclosures and perhaps even within the confines of the large "cemetery". Once the bones were defleshed, however, they were collected and put into the Long Barrows within separate chambers.

This was a period when tribal ways of life were clearly evident. Trade and commerce were present and people lived in relatively small villages. There is evidence in southern England that some items were obtained from relatively long distance trade and interaction. The evidence tends to point to a society, however, that was still largely egalitarian in nature. The collective tombs seem to still indicate that equality was important within the social fabric at this time. Still, Stonehenge is yet to be built. Yet it is about to be started. Stonehenge starts as an enclosure and then construction and use stop for a while. The ditch is not typical of other enclosures and is on the outside of the ditch. Why this is the case and why Stonehenge was started but never completed are mysteries. But there appear to be changes occurring in society that may have led people to stop construction.

It was at this time that people began to construct henges. Some of these were constructed out of wood and others were formed around large stones. We can look at the site of Avebury to see what henges looked like. Yet, the most important part of what we know about this period of time is that society was undergoing a major change. The scale of construction and the logistics of organizing the manpower necessary to build henges required a more formal leadership. Society required what was a strong central leadership and a form of society anthropologists call a chiefdom emerged in southern England.

Stonehenge was started then abandoned for a period of time. Then, people began to build Stonehenge again and this time as a very important place. Surrounding Stonehenge on ridges around a valley are graves of important people. They are buried in single graves rather than in the collective manner they had been before. People at this point where buried in cemeteries or in what are called Round Barrows. Some of the people buried around Stonehenge were very important in deed. Yet, stonehenge was constructed in a sequent that was going to take several hundred years.

The final construction sequence is one that we can see in this movie clip:

The story of Stonehenge is more than just when and what was constructed. While there is a sequence and process by which Stonehenge was actually built, there were fundamental issues that we can see in terms of how society was not organized. It was very different than before and clearly what we found at Avebury provide clues to those changes. Society was not longer egalitarian but ranked and structured. This is an important shift within societies that are more complex than tribal societies. It means that some mechanism was causing society to structure and to become unequal. The driving force for that is something like trade and access to wealth. Society was unequal in terms of access to some resources and therefore some people began to accumulate wealth at the expense of others. This shift to unequal access and then unequal possession is significant in terms of how society organized itself. Some people were wealthier and more powerful than others. No longer could you bury your dead in a collective tomb as if they were equal. Now the Round Barrows were necessary because they marked important people in society who were buried in special places like surrounding Stonehenge.

So what did Stonehenge represent? It clearly represents a central place - perhaps unifying the society. It is clear from the labor and geography involved to bring the Blue Stones to Stonehenge that there was a political system that controlled a large area and could mobilize a large work force. We know this is true because of what we see at Avebury and places like Silbury Hill and Maze Howe, both of which are large construction projects that required huge amounts of labor. The Blue Stones came from a long distance away.

We also know that Stonehenge is ringed by burials that seem to be very important. One burial in particular can illustrate the respect that people at the time gave to one individuals.

What is less clear is how Stonehenge may have been used. We now recognize that ancestors were important in the Neolithic. This is a fundamental beginning point. What we know is that Megalithic tombs and Causeway Enclosures were monuments to the ancestors. We turn to two issues that seem to be very important. The first of these is that Stonehenge does have some alignments that seem to have significance to the Sun and Moon. Clearly, elsewhere during the Megalithic time, both of these were important. The second issue is that of the ancestors - a recurrent theme and one that should not be left out as we become intrigued by alignments and astrological phenomena.

The Sun and Moon

The Worship of Ancestors

The Story of Another Monument

Stonehenge is by far a monument and legacy to human acheivement. Yet we today continue to search for meaning to why it exists and what it meant some 2600 years ago. Some of what we know is supported by the evidence that scientists can gather, but there is always a bit of our imagination that makes us wonder what else we may discover in the future.