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Stonehenge Theories:

Bronze Age Religious Site

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The Amesbury Archer in the Salisbury Museum is an example of a Bronze Age burial.

Sir John Lubbock, the influential mid-19th century archaeologist who invented the terms Paleolithic and Neolithic, was the first to date Stonehenge as a Bronze Age site, based upon bronze objects found in nearby graves and the fact that the occupants had been cremated. He also correctly deduced that the monument had been built in stages over a long period. In his 1865 book, Prehistoric Times as Illustrated by the Ancient Remains and Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, Lubbock compared and noted similarities between Stonehenge and other monolithic stone structures elsewhere in the world, in particular, to Buddhist temples in India. “In the most celebrated example, at Sanchee, the circle consists of roughly squared upright stone posts, joined at the top by an architrave of the same thickness as the posts, exactly as at Stonehenge,” he wrote. Like those temples, Lubbock concluded, Stonehenge also had been built as a place of worship.

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