Re: Roof on Stonehenge | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Stonehenge 180

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Roof on Stonehenge

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CGHW1 Jan 3, 2008 23:43:53

Replying to Littlestone

In answer to some of the previous postings (in no particular order):

Quoting Gibson again:

"It is much more likely that these architectural devices were used because that was the tradition within which Stonehenge’s builders were working."

If the tradition was to make strong interloccking lintel structures out of wood, what could have been the purpose of such wooden structures if not to provide strength to support something?

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In order to create a Newgrange type experience, I would have thought both walls and a roof would be necessary....
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The ring of lintels should have provided extra strength to the entire structure causing the stones to remain standing for perhaps millenia. However, many individual standing stones have remained standing fo just as long despite the depth to which they penetrate into the ground being relatively shallow (e.g. those at Avebury have an average depth of 16 inches so I believe). The depth of the stones at Stonehenge is several feet. The question raised by Atkinson (among others) is why so many of the stones at Stonehenge have fallen. Intentional damage by Romans or early Christians has been mentioned. However, there is some evidence that at least one of the stones fell as early as 800 years after the outer stone circle was completed (stone 8). Apparently there is no Z hole opposite stone 8 and the Z holes were dug near to the time that Stonehenge was abandoned. It has been suggested that there is no Z hole 8 as stone 8 had already fallen covering the location where the hole should have been dug.
One may ask what this has to do with a roof. One must remember that the extra forces placed on the stones by the roof (especially during periods of inclement weather) would have been considerable and may have led to some stones falling over at a much earlier time than should otherwise have been the case.
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I have already mentioned the Bruce Bedlam structure in the first posting in this thread, but I will say this
(a) He has not acknowledged Vayson de Predanne who published an article where a roof on Stonehenge was considered over 70 years ago.
(b) His model does not fit the known archaelogical results
(c) He advocates the use of technologies which simply did not exist at the time
I could go on....

Happy New Year to all reading this thread!

Chris W

Andy J Feb 25, 2008 01:49:53

Replying to CGHW1

"I'm sure all this must have been discussed/printed? elsewhere"

Yes, this was also suggested by Geoffrey Grigson ie. in 'The Shell Country Book' p.73:

"Religious or secular, it is possible to think of Stonehenge as a very large roofed round house inside its enclosure, and of Avebury as a pair of roofed round houses with stone uprights inside a great circular ditch and a great stockade of stone posts, with an infilling between the posts which has long since disappeared" (Phoenix House, London. 1962)

but it does seem odd how this very reasonable idea hasn't received more critical attention. Huge wooden superstructures are routinely introduced into discussions about lifting large stones.

A few subsidiary points:

1) Stonehenge seems to have been built on - and with - an earlier prototype (perhaps originally in Pembrokeshire?). At any rate, some of the bluestones also have remnant mortise / tenon joints (indicating a similar lintelled construction) and, as there is so little bluestone dust at Stonehenge, it seems likely that these were fashioned - and probably assembled - elsewhere.

2) A good candidate for main roof timbers would be Scots pine (lightweight, available in straight lengths >20m, and present in the archaeological record at Stonehenge / Durrington etc.). It's unclear, however, where the nearest source for such large timbers might have been, since Scots pine disappears from the pollen record in lowland Britain around 6,000 BP (probably more through human clearance than by 'climate change', as popularly supposed). It's possible, therefore, that Stonehenge - and other sites - involved the long-distance movement of huge pieces of timber, in feats easily rivalling the transport of smaller (though much denser) megaliths.

3) Moving these quantities of stone and timber would have been much easier if people used draft-animals but, for some reason, reconstructions - like the farcical attempt to move a Pembrokeshire bluestone in 2000 - seem to only envisage manpower. There is, though, clear archaeological evidence of oxen at Stonehenge (in the vast quantity of shoulder-blades used as shovels) and many early depictions of animal-haulage in the near East, where these beasts were first domesticated - nb. also: pictures of oxen apparently hauling objects in the 'axe-plough' motif at Gavrinis / Table des Marchand, Brittany, and legendary association of oxen with haulage eg. at Llyn Fan Fach, Llyn Wyth Eidion, Gwyr-yr-Ychen-Bannog earthwork etc.