As the Director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, Mike Parker-Pearson recently found himself at the centre of one of the decade's most exciting and significant discoveries - Bluestonehenge (or Bluehenge in early reports). But this new 'mini Stonehenge' is part of a much broader understanding of the area being built up by the Stonehenge Riverside Project as they try to put together a history of the area rather than focusing on individual monuments in isolation. In an illuminating lecture at Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Parker-Pearson revealed some surprising theories about the construction and meaning of the henges.
Author and photographer Rupert Soskin is no stranger to stone circles. He visited and recorded more than 100 of them for his latest book, Standing With Stones. In this article, written specially for Heritage-Key.com, he argues that there is a whole megalithic world out there just waiting to be experienced.
Ask anyone to name a megalithic site and it's fairly certain that the first name to anyone's lips will be Stonehenge. Any visitor to this jewel of the Salisbury Plain will most likely have shared their time with vast numbers of tourists. Coaches, buses and hundreds of cars filled with curious people flock to the site, making it almost impossible to experience its grandeur with uncluttered views. This is all the more extraordinary when one considers that Britain is home to many thousands of megalithic sites, most of which remain deserted.
Submitted by Intertexty on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 09:48
It’s Britain’s favourite monument and has been attributed to Phoenicians, Romans, Vikings and even visitors from other worlds.But a fascinating new programme by Channel 4’s Time Team claims to reveal the real secrets of Stonehenge for the first time.
A Special Team
The Secrets of Stonehenge: A Time Team Special is the televised culmination of six years of dedicated work by a huge team of archaeologists.They began digging not only the prehistoric focal point itself but, crucially, the surrounding landscape.
The hour-long programme is fronted by Time Team veteran Tony Robinson.Whether you know him from his political activities with the Labour party or as the affable Baldrick from the BBC show Blackadder, his name is now synonymous with British archaeology.
Richard Colt Hoare led the first recorded excavations at Stonehenge in 1798
9 December 1758
Sir Richard Colt Hoare was an English antiquarian, artist, traveler, and archaeologist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
He was a descendent of Sir Richard Hoare - the Lord Mayor of London and the founder of the family banking business.
Richard Colt Hoare led the first recorded excavations at Stonehenge in 1798 and again in 1810. They excavated the trilithon and a fallen slaughter stone, which they stood up.
Colt Hoare also excavated almost four hundred barrows on Salisbury Plain and identified, recorded and published his findings on many other sites. As the three-age system had not been introduced he was not able to date his finds and so could not easily interpret them in a recognised manner.
Hoare lost his wife in 1785 and to distract himself from grief he decided to travel. He travelled extensively through Europe, visiting and exploring archaeological sites, filling a portfolio of drawings of the most interesting objects he saw.
Colt Hoare's most important work was The Ancient History of North and South Wiltshire which he wrote between 1812 and 1819. He also contributed to eleven volumes of the History of Modern Wiltshire between 1822 - 1844.
Author and photographer Rupert Soskin is no stranger to stone circles. He visited and recorded more than 100 of them for his latest book, 
