In addition to their mortuary monuments, the Bronze Age inhabitants of western Europe continued the tradition of marking the landscape with settings of upright stones. As with the burial chambers constructed during the Neolithic, these monuments are part of the megalithic tradition of using large stones as architectural elements. Yet they also continue an earlier tradition of building similar monuments in timber. Collectively, these round monuments are known as ‘henges’, the most celebrated of which is Stonehenge.
It is impossible to describe the Bronze Age without mentioning Stonehenge, although the monument that is visible today was the product of many centuries of construction and renovation and is only an elaborate example of the circular stone monuments found throughout the British Isles. Stonehenge is located in southern England not far from Salisbury in Wiltshire. After its relatively simple Late Neolithic origins around 2700 BC, Stonehenge developed into a complex arrangement of concentric circles and semicircles of enormous upright stones by the beginning of the Bronze Age around 2000 BC. It continued to be in use for several centuries after that and remained visible on the landscape in the form we see it today, known as phase 3. Although some have hypothesized that it served as an astronomical observatory, a more likely explanation is that Stonehenge was the regional focal point for the rituals and ceremonies that were integral parts of Bronze Age life.
An intriguing aspect of Stonehenge is the source of the stones used for its construction. The distinctive ‘trilithons’, the immense upright stones with equally immense lintels placed across them, are blocks of sarsen stone, a very hard sandstone found near Avebury, about 30 km to the north. Sarsen stone was also used for the surrounding circle of upright stones with lintels that give Stonehenge its circular form. Even transporting these blocks 30 km was a tremendous engineering feat, for they weigh up to 60 tons, but it pales in comparison with the effort needed to move the smaller bluestones that also form a horseshoe setting within the sarsen circle. These volcanic rocks, each weighing several tons, were brought from the Preseli Mountains of Wales, about 200 km away. Archaeologists have estimated that the final building phase of Stonehenge required nearly 2 million hours of labor, the equivalent of a thousand people working for a year.
Most people do not realize that Stonehenge lies amid an immense Late Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial landscape with hundreds of prehistoric sites from the third and second milleniums BC. Most of these are barrows, while others were smaller ritual features that mimic or presage Stonehenge, only built from wood long since decayed. Many of the barrows are sited along ridges to the north, south, and east of Stonehenge. Stonehenge itself is approached by an ‘avenue’ formed by two parallel ditches cut into the chalk and banks about 12 m apart that stretch in a curve down to the River Avon. During earlier phases of Stonehenge construction, other ditched features, known as the Cursus and Lesser Cursus were situated north of the site. Whatever its
Figure 4 Stonehenge, in southern England, is perhaps the most famous Bronze Age ceremonial monument that has survived to the present. The sarsen trilithons with their upright orthostats and horizontal lintels can be seen in this picture (photo © 1984 by Peter Bogucki).
Function, Stonehenge did not exist in isolation but rather was one prominent element in a landscape devoted to ceremony and burial (Figure 4).
Seahenge
At Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, England, an oval arrangement of 55 oak posts found in the intertidal zone in 1998 appears to have been an early Bronze Age ritual structure, popularly named ‘Seahenge’ soon after its discovery. The arrangement of posts was 6.8 m across at its maximum diameter. In the center of the ring was an upturned stump of a large oak tree. All of the timber posts were shown by tree ring dating to have been cut in a single year, 2049 BC - in fact, during the spring or early summer - while the central inverted stump was cut or died the previous year. Comparison of the marks left by bronze axes showed that between 50 and 60 different tools were used.
As is the case with Stonehenge, the function of Seahenge is shrouded in mystery. The many different toolmarks suggest that it was a community project. The location at the edge of the sea is probably significant, and the inversion of the stump clearly held a complex symbolic meaning, but we can only speculate on what it might be.
Flag Fen
Much later than Seahenge, toward the end of the Bronze Age around 1350 BC, an immense timber barrier and platform was built at Flag Fen near Peterborough, England. Immense numbers of trees were felled and brought to the site. Many, perhaps up to 80 000, were used to build a long wooden alignment of pilings through the swamp, extending over a kilometer, by driving them into the bottom mud. Closer to the shore, timbers were laid horizontally on the wet ground to make a trackway. The structure was maintained for several centuries, until about 950 BC.
At the deepest part of the swamp, an immense platform about a hectare in area was built with more piles across which timbers were placed. There is no evidence that it was used for dwelling, for it was probably simply too wet a spot. From the platform, wooden, ceramic, and metal objects were cast into the swamp as offerings, many after having been deliberately broken. Human and animal bones were also found. In 1994, the earliest prehistoric wheel known in England, made from three alder planks, was found at Flag Fen.
Flag Fen is a conspicuous example of the role of bodies of water in prehistoric rituals in northern and western Europe that began during the Neolithic and reached its zenith during the Iron Age in the first millennium BC. Springs, ponds, and bogs all seem to have held some sacred significance, judging from the quantities of bronze, wooden, and ceramic objects that were cast into them. At the Mauritius Spring at St. Moritz, Switzerland, renovations in 1907 led to the discovery of two complete bronze swords and a part of a third, a broken dagger, and a fibula that dated to the period between 1400 and 1250 BC. The swords are types that are found primarily in southern Germany and Bohemia, indicating that they were brought some distance to the site. These artifacts lay at the bottom of a wooden well chamber that had been determined by tree ring dating to have been built in 1466 BC to capture the effervescent water of the spring.
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