STONEHENGE

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Stonehenge Stonehenge, prehistoric ritual monument, situated on Salisbury Plain in south-western England and dating from the Neolithic (late Stone Age) and Bronze Age. It is the most celebrated of the megalithic monuments in England, and the most important prehistoric structure in Europe. Although its precise purpose is unknown, it is likely to have been a tribal gathering place or religious centre connected with astronomical observations.
CONFIGURATION
Stonehenge consists of four concentric ranges of stones. In the outermost range, large rectangular sandstone blocks (sarsen stones), 4 m (13 ft) high above the ground, form a circle 33 m (108 ft) in diameter; they were originally capped with lintel stones (only a few of which remain in place today) that also formed a continuous circle. Within this outer range is a circle of smaller bluestones (consisting mainly of dolerite, a coarse basaltic rock having a bluish colour). They enclose a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of bluestones capped with lintels. These trilithons (an assemblage of two uprights capped by a lintel) are 6.5 m (21 ft) high. Within the trilithons stands a slab of micaceous sandstone known as the Altar Stone. The entire assemblage is surrounded by a circular ditch 104 m (340 ft) in diameter. On its inner side the ditch rises into a bank within which is a ring of 56 pits known as Aubrey holes (after their discoverer, the antiquarian John Aubrey) and used at a later stage as cremation burial pits. On the north-eastern side, the bank and ditch are intersected by the Avenue, a processional causeway 23 m (75 ft) wide and nearly 3 km (2 mi) long, bordered by a ditch. Near the entrance to the Avenue is the Slaughter Stone, a sarsen stone that may originally have stood upright. Almost opposite, and set within the Avenue, is the Heel Stone, which may have played a part in sightings of the sunrise at the summer solstice. ...