Stonehenge's secret strength is revealed thanks to a repatriated core sample in the UK

2021-08-16T14:23:00-04:00

A team of scientists from the University of Bristol in the UK has gotten closer to solving an ancient mystery central to the country’s most famous archaeological site thanks to a “Holy Grail” core sample that has waited nearly 60 years to reveal its crystalline clues.

Led by Professor David Nash, the researchers were able to analyze two pieces of slab with help from the British Geological Survey, London’s Natural History Museum, the Salisbury Museum, and English Heritage.

One sample was returned by the family of a man named Robert Phillips who had removed it while working on the site as a stonecutter in the late 1950s.

“Getting access to the core drilled from Stone 58 was very much the Holy Grail for our research,” Nash said in a statement. “It is extremely rare as a scientist that you get the chance to work on samples of such national and international importance.”

Previously on Archinect: A judge has blocked impending highway construction around Stonehenge…for now

The analysis of...

Stonehenge may have originated in Wales, new study suggests

2015-12-08T13:52:00-05:00

archaeologists have found several recesses in rock formations in Wales that match the size and shape of Stonehenge's bluestones, leading to theories that the monument may have been erected in Wales first, before being moved to its present site in Salisbury Plain. The researchers also discovered evidence of what they described as “a loading bay" from where the massive boulders could have been dragged away.

Wales is over 130 miles / 209 kilometers from Stonehenge's current site in Salisbury Plain – a distance that would have taken Neolithic people over 500 years to transport the monoliths over, according to Professor Mike Parker Pearson, a British late prehistory professor at UCL who led the study.

Researchers involved in the project find it unlikely that, after the bluestones had been removed the quarry, the harvesters would have immediately set a course for Salisbury Plain. What is perhaps more likely is that the stones were used for a monument in Wales first, and were then transported to their current site through a massive coordination effort with people living in both areas.

“One of the latest theories is that Stonehenge is a monument of unification, bringing together people from across many parts of Britain," Pearson told The Guardian.

Archinect - News

Stonehenge's secret strength is revealed thanks to a repatriated core sample in the UK

Stonehenge may have originated in Wales, new study suggests