Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos

As for the number of burials, the solicitous Dr Toope missed the bones of at least forty-six individuals, for he—and even Thurnam—found only the chamber at the western end. The others were closed with blocking stones. As at other Neolithic sites, the skeletons were often incomplete. Some have held that this implies a systematic removal of certain bones—especially skulls and long bones—but on this point opinion is divided. The adult men seem to have been between 1.57 and 1.73 or even 1.80 m in height, the women from 1.49 to 1.64 m. The characteristically round skulls of the Beaker peoples are not represented, although their pottery is found among what are presumed to have been later ritual offerings. They were perhaps well represented in Dr Toope’s medicine, since the western chamber was the most readily accessible.

FIG. 29. The surprisingly systematic construction lines, abstracted from the previous figure, defined by the faces of stones. Close parallels and perpendiculars are indicated by similar marks. On this basis it is easy to make conjectures concerning slight changes of plan, forced on the builders by their materials, terrestrial and celestial. Note that four stones are almost perfectly in line with the axis, whilst five stones (including the three marked with a circle) are parallel to ditch sections.

In time, the chambers were filled to the roof with chalk rubble, stone and earth. Numerous bone objects and flints were found in the modern excavation, as well as pottery that included early Windmill Hill ware, Peterborough ware, grooved ware (Rinyo–Clacton), and Beaker types. This pottery shows that the tomb was in use for perhaps more than a thousand years, and deposits of Romano-British ware show that some sort of interest in it continued for well over three millennia. (Much material from the tomb is displayed in the Devizes Museum.) Long after the tomb ceased to be used for burial, it must have continued to function as a focal point for religious practice—much as do the cathedrals of the Christian era quite regardless of the fact that they too are the sites of burials. If it is hard to envisage such loyal devotion to a low ridge of earth and stone, that is only because we are ignorant of the systems of belief preserved by those who revered it. At what stage the enormous blocking stone 3.7 m high was placed across the façade it is impossible to say, but this must have come last, if the lines of sight of which we have spoken were precisely that, and not theoretically drawn rays, falling on the sightless dead. The massive stone sealed off the tomb’s contents, but even then did not mark an end to its ritual function.

FIG. 30. Suggested profile of the original West Kennet long barrow, looking across it from the south. The barrow might have been of constant height over even more of its length. The ground rises very slowly to the west and falls to the east. The two lowest lines are conjectural levels of the observer’s eye and the ditch floor.

The barrow tapers off towards its western end and loses height in relation to ground level, but the ground rises gradually to the west. The profile of the barrow is now degraded, but in its prime was probably not very different from that shown in Fig. 30 (#ulink_7988b36e-a81b-5a25-bef9-ba6d814bf495). Its present contours suggest that there was originally a well-defined ridge. This is borne out by Thurnam’s statement: ‘Dr Took, as they call him, has miserably defaced South Long Barrow by digging half the length of it. It was most neatly smoothed up to a sharp ridge.’ One assumes that there is intended irony in the substitution of ‘Took’ for ‘Toope’.

The rays capable of entering the five chambers do so in much the same way as the pair of rays (from the stars in the Southern Cross) at Wayland’s Smithy, being limited to a greater or lesser degree by the uprights. Those passing to the southern and northern parts of the central chamber (W and X, Fig. 28 (#ulink_d34eb058-3952-5dfa-9a69-fe0a933ba574)) have slightly more latitude than the others, but if it is assumed that at least two stones must always be involved in fixing the direction, even they are tightly governed. Most of the key uprights are carefully worked, and in this respect alone can be distinguished from the rest. In all cases a normal adult male could just have stood upright to see the rising star appropriate to the chamber, and there is no question of this being an imagined possibility only for the deceased lying on the ground. The horizon over which all these stars rose is therefore here assumed to be the natural horizon, so that extinction angles hold good.

It seems that the axis was not directed to any star, but that at least three and possibly four of the chambers were, and no doubt consciously. There is some uncertainty in the precise original positions of the stones, which are critical, and the following brief statement is made solely with a view to a date found in the following section. The alignments proposed are all valid for dates in the neighbourhood of 3625 BC, for rising stars (with azimuth, assumed extinction altitude, declination and year in parentheses): Spica, in chambers U and V (63.7°, 2.1°, 17.53°, 3630); the Pleiades in chamber Y (101.8°, 4.4°, –3.99°, 3640); and Betelgeuse in chamber Z (109.9°, 2.0°, –10.85°, 3610). It is conceivable that beta Tauri

was to be seen at W and Antares

at X in the western chamber.

FIG. 31. Section of the northern ditch of the West Kennet Long Barrow near the end of the section marked B in Fig. 26 (#ulink_8ca8362e-e6fe-551a-9918-fb9608e1bd96). An adult male (eye at M) of average stature would have stood in the ditch bottom to see the brief appearance of Sirius over the tomb. A woman or shorter person (eye at W) or even a child (eye at C) could in principle have seen the same phenomenon. Of the two rays marked, the upper is at 13.5° to the horizontal, and the lower at 12.5°.

FIG. 32. Years at which the two stars Sirius and Arcturus could have been seen at right angles to the various sections (A to F) of the West Kennet barrow, plotted against altitude. The years corresponding to equal altitude viewing in opposite directions are marked with circles. Azimuths from north are marked on the graphs. The broken lines in the neighbourhood of points 1 and 3 represent shifts in azimuth of half a degree.

It is assumed here that the star Spica entered chambers U and V, although once the chambers were surrounded by the rubble of the mound, the ray could not pass into V at all. At the time of foundation it might have been allowed free passage, and in entertaining this possibility one is reminded of Wayland’s Smithy, where there was a strong presumption that the vertical stones of the chamber were set up astronomically before the building of the mound was begun around it, and without any hope of astronomical use thereafter. (The capping stones were presumably—but not necessarily—dragged up some sort of inclined plane, but even this need not have been the mound itself.) Surely the same is true at West Kennet. Several of the stones there are notable for their relatively flat faces, and the very fact that there are so many good parallel lines in the plan of the chamber might be thought to hint at alignment on common stars. In fact three stones (chambers U and V) seem to align on the setting alpha Centauri, three stones (chamber W and the western chamber) on the setting Procyon, and three (chambers Z and Y) on the setting Deneb. All this holds good for dates within two centuries of 3600 BC; and there are potential alignments too on Spica, Bellatrix, and Antares. The greatest problem here is that it is impossible to quote azimuths without an inordinate number of qualifications: the stones are at most a couple of metres across, they have been moved slightly in their long history, and in some cases their hidden sides were possibly those used in aligning them. Uncertainties of two or three degrees (even of one degree, taking averages) leave too much room for doubt over specifics. That the plan of the chamber has a definite geometrical rationale can hardly be denied, however; and we are certainly not short of independent evidence that Neolithic geometry and stellar astronomy were closely allied.

The West Kennet Ditches (#ulink_72391473-b7e2-519e-a80a-c9f7c70662f0)

There is good reason for assuming that viewing would have taken place across the West Kennet barrow, in accordance with the double principle of viewing at right angles to the barrow—here closely parallel to the line of the nearby ditch—at equal altitudes from opposite sides. Any lingering doubts as to the broad correctness of these ideas should fade as the pairing of the ditch-sections stipulated earlier is investigated. As before, in all cases an initial search is made for possible stars, within the limits set by the barrow’s form and age. There can be little doubt that the star observed across sections A and D looking north was Arcturus, while looking south across any of the four northern sections, Sirius was most probably the main object of attention. (Rigel is a candidate that initially falls by the wayside, since it seems to provide dates between 3222 and 3057 BC. These dates are much too late, if the radiocarbon dates available are to be believed.) Here are the two brightest stars in the sky.

In discussing similar cases at an earlier stage, little was said about the errors involved in the method. At West Kennet the situation is precarious, for the only part of the ditch so far excavated is close to being in the worst of all possible places, that is, near the change of direction from B to C (Fig. 26 (#ulink_8ca8362e-e6fe-551a-9918-fb9608e1bd96)). Putting everything aside for the time being except the directions of the ditch (and matching barrow edge), all of them involving averaging over sizeable lengths, our principles lead to the following results—quoted with pseudo-precision, without any regard for their qualities. Viewing at right angles to edges near at hand (this will prove to be the likelier option):

FIG. 33. A supplement to Fig. 32 (#ulink_0d95e687-d4b8-5064-8d4d-1df0349b55e2), with the graphs for Rigel (across C) and Vega (across A), both observed by observers at ground level, but at the same period as Sirius and Arcturus from the ditches.

(1) across sections A and B, viewing at 13.5° in 3638 BC

(2) across sections A and C, viewing at 12.5° in 3447 BC

(3) across sections D and E, viewing at 13.3° in 3624 BC

(4) across sections D and F, viewing at 12.7° in 3512 BC.

Viewing at right angles to far edges:

(5) across sections A and B, viewing at 13.4° in 3677 BC

(6) across sections A and C, viewing at 14.5° in 3395 BC

(7) across sections D and E, viewing at 13.8° in 3677 BC

(8) across sections D and F, viewing at 14.5° in 3514 BC.

In the case of West Kennet it appears that the two different starting points make only about forty years difference to the final results at the head of the barrow, and almost none at the tail. There is a slightly more material difference in the sizes of the derived viewing angles, however. Combining the very limited evidence of the one known ditch section with the height of the mound opposite it, an angle of about 11.9° is obtained for that point. Since some slight settlement and loss of the surface layer can be assumed, any angle between 12° and 14° must be considered acceptable. The height of the observer’s eye is taken as 1.6 m, following the male skeleton sizes at the barrow itself. Even those of smaller stature could be accommodated, for as will be seen from Fig. 31 (#ulink_88f054fd-e08e-56c2-878f-67953ed5e225), there was a viewing platform which could have been used by people of all heights above about 1.10 m—so perhaps even children were admitted to the ritual of observing the stars over the barrows. There is some later support for this intimation of democracy, in the ditches at Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Mount Pleasant, and elsewhere.

The later date is here preferred to the earlier. This preference is partly because the later dates fit better with the radiocarbon date (from three specimens of human bone from the barrow, giving a calendar range of 3575 ± 215 BC), and partly it implies marginally smaller viewing angles and a mound of reducing height in relation to the observer.

The head of the barrow seems to be a few years later than the third section. This need not be real, for it must be accepted that our azimuths are subject to error. The results spelled out above are shown graphically in Fig. 32 (#ulink_0d95e687-d4b8-5064-8d4d-1df0349b55e2), and broken lines in the neighbourhood of the points representing (1) and (3) are added to show the errors to be expected corresponding to errors in azimuth of half a degree. Roughly speaking, a single error of this amount moves the date by four years. A less superficial analysis might one day therefore easily reverse the order of building these sections.

There are two small residual problems. The year under (2), is obviously entirely spurious, as therefore is the altitude too. It would be interesting to find from future excavation how the altitude was handled in this region. Perhaps levels were changed to preserve the visibility of one star, or to substitute another. One possibility is that section C of the ditch was simply being made to change direction to link up with a section (E) that had already been—or was planned to be—cut with a different orientation from B’s. But why change direction at all? The answer had perhaps something to do with the wish to reduce the barrow’s height, and with the lie of the natural ground making up the tail of the barrow. The last date quoted, however, would seem to indicate that an addition was made to the mound, over a century after the first mound. The only other likely explanation is that viewing angles were not being kept equal, or equal enough.

There is an interesting alternative explanation, that might be extended to preserve the integrity of the entire barrow. Before explaining it, one must consider the way in which the ditches would have been used to observe Arcturus and Sirius. These stars would both have been seen behaving in a very striking and memorable way. At Wessex latitudes Arcturus did not rise and set at all over a level horizon; but here, looking from the southern ditch over the barrow, the star would have dipped down to touch the tomb, seeming to rest there, and then have risen again about half an hour afterwards. Some four and a half hours after that, Sirius would have risen over the tomb, as seen from the northern ditch, and again in much the same time would have sunk back into it at a point not far away.

The two brightest stars were not alone in these comings and goings. Vega would have copied the behaviour of Arcturus very closely, descending into the tomb and rising again, although as seen from the ditch it would have lacked the finesse of Arcturus. In fact the optimum altitude for observing Vega during the period in question (around 3620 BC) would have been a low angle of 7.8°, if the star was to be viewed at right angles to section A, as Arcturus had been viewed. Vega’s visitation would then have begun almost simultaneously with Sirius’ re-emergence.

On what grounds can it be claimed that this additional item of very striking behaviour was in fact observed? Quite simply on the grounds that the angle 7.8° is close to what should be expected—if the mound height conforms to the altitudes found from the ditch—for an observer standing at ground level near the back edge of ditch A.

Having gone so far, did the people of West Kennet leave matters in such an unsymmetrical state? Could they not find a fourth star, in the southern sky, to complete this remarkable pattern? They undoubtedly did so, and the star was Rigel. Rigel, like Sirius, rises only a little way out of the tomb and then quickly falls back in again. On this occasion an altitude of about 7.5° is needed, and this is so similar to the angle from the ground looking north that we know exactly what we must do. We must consider the possibility that equal altitude normal viewing took place from ground level across section A and the aberrant section C. The azimuths taken are 162.4° and 356.5°, and in the usual way an altitude and year are found—7.6° and 3610 BC—at which the arrangement would have been perfect (Fig. 33 (#ulink_21805d5f-c6e6-5844-ac75-5d1008ffe2fd)). It seems probable, therefore, that the ditches will eventually prove to have platforms at the back, at the same level, capable of yielding this common angle.

The anomalous date having been removed, we are now left with a series of dates. Rounding to tens they are (1) 3640, (2) 3610, (3) 3620, and (4) 3510 BC. There is no point in trying to eliminate the spread in the first three dates, in the absence of a more complete excavation. Those dates are so close that for want of better evidence we may take the date of the mound as their mean, 3620 BC. The fourth still seems to indicate a later phase.

The pattern of observing the stellar phenomena was therefore as follows: Arcturus from ditch A, Rigel

from behind ditch C, Sirius from ditch B, Vega

from behind ditch A. The seasonal limits during which these phenomena could have been seen vary from star to star, but all three could in principle have been seen on every clear night between roughly a fortnight before the autumnal equinox and a month before the winter solstice. The interval between the mid period of Arcturus’ visit, and the mid period of Vega’s visit the same night, was about six hours.

At this six-hour period, and in this way, the West Kennet people had evidently contrived a series of apparitions, involving four spectacularly well-chosen stars, of a character that might have been interpreted as somehow relating to the spirits of the dead. Only one star visible in Wessex was the equal of any of these four. (Capella was then Vega’s equal—it is now less bright—and both were brighter than Rigel. Canopus, second only to Sirius, never rose at these latitudes, and was unknown.) It would be hard to imagine a simpler monumental design showing more intellectual brilliance than this.

There is, in conclusion, a remote possibility that Sirius might have played a part in the selection of the West Kennet site many centuries before the present long barrow was built. It is a strange property of the entrance to the barrow that, from it, two low hills to the south are more or less symmetrically arranged, one 37.3° west of south, the other 38.8° east of south. Although these angles are not equal, neither are the altitudes. (With five-metre trees, for instance, the altitudes would have been 1.8° and 1.2° respectively.) This fact compensates almost perfectly in the case of Sirius, so that if it rose precisely over one hill it set precisely over the other. Without trees, this would have been so around the year 4460 BC. Trees would have brought the date a decade or two later. The hills are not prominent, and the early date must seem very improbable, but the possibility is a very curious one. Even stranger is the fact that at exactly the same period it fits the star Rigel Centauri

(not to be confused with Rigel), which has the same declination as Sirius in the year 4450 BC. Whether or not this is a pure coincidence, it seems worth putting on record.

The same property fits the star beta Centauri in the forty-second century and Rigel in the thirty-fifth. The Rigel case could not explain the choice of site, although the other might.

The West Kennet Neighbourhood. Silbury Hill (#ulink_a7025c58-7733-52b1-9f35-dbff1f857d07)

The East Kennet barrow, the later of the two neighbours, is now tree-covered, and has not been excavated in recent times. Except in orientation, it seems to resemble its neighbour: it is only a metre or so longer, there are signs of a sarsen burial chamber, and there are traces of flanking ditches. The barrow as a whole looks as though it might have been aligned on the rising of Rigel. On the basis of its direction, about 145°, it might be tentatively placed not far in time from the West Kennet barrow. In view of the sophistication of the latter it would be foolish to draw any conclusion about a cult of Rigel. Such might have lasted here until the building of the artificial mound at nearby Silbury Hill, however, for the star would have been visible from the top of that mound, rising over the East Kennet barrow in the late third millennium. Against this idea is the fact that the first stages of the construction of the hill had begun centuries before—but in the mid-fourth millennium, Sirius would have had the same property. There are too many imponderables about the height reached at various times for any specific claim to be made.

FIG. 34. The character of the internal structure of Silbury Hill (#ulink_358de80f-fa20-5d6b-9bb7-7c44e870067b).

It seems likely that when two monuments were involved in a stellar alignment, the star was seen from the newer and over the older of the two. (The converse arrangement would have been perfectly possible, of course.) The principle seems to be illustrated at West Kennet. The Sanctuary, a succession of concentric circles, first of timber and later of stone, was to the east of the long barrow, across the valley of the river Kennet, and on its own small hill. (Its name was one used by local people, according to Stukeley.) Robbed of its stone in the eighteenth century, the site was rediscovered and excavated in 1930 by Maud Cunnington. As seen from the centre of that succession of circles, the West Kennet barrow would have been in a direction about 8.5° south of west, and at about 0.5° altitude, slightly less than that of the spur of the hill behind the barrow. Aldebaran could have been seen setting over the barrow when the star’s declination was about –3.96° (taking its extinction angle of 2.0° as the deciding altitude). This was its value in approximately 2800 BC, a date compatible with other archaeological evidence relating to the early phases of the Sanctuary. There is a pair of post holes defining a diameter of the oldest structure (Sanctuary IA) in exactly the required line.

The most impressive of the monuments immediately surrounding the West Kennet barrow is Silbury Hill. Built on a spur of chalkland, its base is nearly 30 m below the level of the barrow, and yet the Hill rises 10 m or so higher. (Its top is currently about 3 m lower than the East Kennet barrow.) It is a cone, with steepest slope close to 30°—a gradient that was perhaps chosen deliberately for its ‘one in two’ property, one unit rise to two up the slope. Several exploratory tunnels have been dug into the hill, the latest of them by Richard Atkinson (1968–70), who suggested four phases in its construction. After the first two phases had been completed, the hill was still not particularly remarkable for its height. It is probable that there was never any primary burial there. Certainly none has ever been found, although some have suspected that the shaft from an eighteenth-century excavation destroyed signs of one. The third phase required a change of plan, resulting in a stepped cone. The stepping can still be easily seen by the casual observer. The last phase was an extension of the main ditch to the west, presumed to be for chalk to fill in the steps. The overall construction involved moving well over 300,000 cubic metres of chalk—less than would have been needed had part of its base not been the end of the spur of the natural hill—and those responsible for the third phase especially knew much about soil mechanics, for they gave it great stability through a series of internal walls, built out of chalk blocks, the resulting cells being then filled with rubble (see Fig. 34 (#ulink_4d1dceb8-af31-595d-a2c7-f6495d480fe9)).

What was the final purpose of this extraordinary structure? Since it is thought to have been four or five centuries in the making, one need not suppose that its purpose remained unchanged. Attempts have been made to find an astronomical explanation for it. In 1902 the American writer Moses B. Cotsworth, in his Rational Almanack, suggested that it carried a colossal gnomon to cast shadows on the world’s largest sundial, marked out on the ground below. He was evidently influenced by the Rev. Edward Duke, who in 1846 had made it out to be the centre of a vast planetarium on which the planets were represented by ‘temples’ in the neighbourhood: Stonehenge was Saturn, Avebury was the Sun and Moon, and so on. One must be charitable to all enthusiasts, in the hope of being treated likewise. Sundials and planetaria are really no more exotic than the vision of one respected contemporary archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, who sees the hill as ‘a gigantic representation of the Pregnant [Earth Mother] Goddess in a seated position’.

There is a range of Silbury radiocarbon dates running from 2725 ± 110 down to 2145 ± 95 bc. The extremes of this range correspond to 3630 and 2500 BC in calendar years. Building probably began a century or so after the West Kennet barrow, an undertaking by the same group of people.

From Silbury Hill, the West Kennet barrow is nearer and more prominent than that at East Kennet. The place where it stands is such that looking over the head of the future West Kennet barrow from a point at the centre of Silbury Hill, Rigel could have been seen rising in the thirty-ninth century. The place of rising would gradually have moved to the forecourt area, and eventually off the scene completely, but at the date accepted here for the foundation of the present barrow, namely 3625 BC, beta Centauri rose precisely over the chamber as seen from the same point. An earlier long barrow near Windmill Hill (Horslip) is more or less on the same line, and the East Kennet barrow is near it too, so that many further possibilities are added to the list—for example, Rigel rose over the place of the future West Kennet chamber as seen from the Horslip barrow in 3710 BC. It might be thought that when barrows are not intimately related—for instance directed one towards another, as at Fussell’s Lodge—such alignments are best ignored. That they are part of a conscious strategy covering a much wider territory, however, will be demonstrated in the following chapter. (Maps will also be found there and in Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo) showing the principal long barrows and other prehistoric remains in the West Kennet region. See Figs. 69 (#litres_trial_promo) and 101 (#litres_trial_promo).)

Beckhampton Road. Stars and the Sun (#ulink_8e8c2420-e28d-5837-8f6a-16037549990f)