Stonehenge is one of the great archaeological wonders of the world, and one of the most misunderstood places we all think we know about. First off, while all the photos we generally see depict it as this pristine place that embodies the magical feeling of fairy stories, the reality is that it is located next to a busy highway, and the land still shows the scars of prior roadways. Further, it is surrounded by a low-key fence that keeps out sheep. 

When I visited about ten years ago, I was struck by the feeling that Stonehenge is just a weird rock formation in the midst of a farmer’s sheep pasture, and that whoever designed the British highway system had no love for either farms or archaeology.

Originally built with an estimated eighty massive Sarsen stones, the structure we see today is just part of a long utilized site that has previously featured additional pits, poles, and stones whose uses aren’t entirely understood but in many cases are consistent with tracking the passage of the Sun, Moon, and seasons.

While the use of the site is a curiosity we may never fully understand, many researchers are even more mystified by the stones – how they got there and how they were leveraged into place in a time prior to cranes and hydraulic lifts. Again, many different theories abound, many of which include rolling the stones along on a conveyor belt of rounded logs and using a lot of temporary earthen berms and ramps, just like a Minecraft player using dirt instead of scaffolding.

Growing up, I was often told that these Sarsen Stones were quarried from one of several potential sites several kilometers away. As a kid growing up in a town with a granite quarry, I imagined that this meant chipping away to cut massive stones out of a larger area of stone and then transporting them, but this idea was also wrong. 

Sarsen stones are actually large sandstone blocks left during a post-glacial period and scattered throughout the landscape of Salisbury Plain, Marlborough Downs, and other areas. While they came in beds that required digging out the stones, they were already, more or less, the giant blocks that we see today. 

I say more or less because of new research coming out in PLOS One and led by David Nash. The team was able to study both the actual Sarsen stones using X-ray spectroscopy. This is a non-destructive process where they literally just shine X-rays into the rock and study how it shines back. Unfortunately, this method only lets researchers see a little way into the rock, but a chance phone call allowed the researchers to see all the way through the stones. 

It turns out that stone 58 toppled in 1797, and when it was stood back up in 1958, three core samples were removed while metal rods were inserted. Only one of these three is accessible. That sample is in the private hands of collector Robert Phillips – a worker from the restoration project – who allowed Nash and his team to study the stone all the way through. And it turns out, they are quartz all the way through. 

Originally, the stones were likely collected in Wiltshire Woods where they appeared as giant blocks with layers of weathered, cemented stone on their surface, but those layers could be polished away, and when first erected, the stones of Stonehenge were dressed to appear as glorious white quartz. Time, weather, and lichen have dulled them to today’s grey, but once upon a time, the legendary site shone in the sunlight.

And now you know! The rocks were dug up as blocks, transported, cleaned to a shining glory, and then surrounded by a highway… and sheep.

More Information

State-of-the-Art Technology, Serendipity, and Secrets of Stonehenge (Eos)

“Petrological and geochemical characterisation of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge,” David J. Nash et al., 2021 August 4, PLOS One