Abstract
The Date of Stonehenge.—In the September issue of Man Rear-Admiral Boyle T. Somerville discusses a previous article in that journal by Mr. Stone on the date assigned by Sir Norman Lockyer, through astronomical means, for the building of Stonehenge. He points out in detail the limitations which surround the dating of prehistoric monuments by means of bearings of sunrise or sunset. There are also at Stonehenge two circles, one apparently considerably more ancient than the other. Neither of these stands on the arc of a true circle, and consequently it is not possible to discover the accurate centre, nor any given diameter of either of them. The remains of the earthwork vallum do not lie on parallel lines, nor does either wall appear to be straight. A difference of date of iooo years is effected b}^ the movement of the observer of only one foot to left or to right of what may originally have been the true point of observation within the circle. The result is that the attempt to date either of the circles at Stonehenge by the azimuth of the midsummer sunrise is useless, as the present condition of ruin of the monument is too great to lay out from the ground-plan of either circle an orientation line of sufficient accuracy. If the orientation towards Silbury Hill can be considered a probability, as it was by Sir Norman Lockyer, the limits of date given by him, namely 200 years on either side of 1680 B.C., are justified for whichever circle to which it related.
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Research Items. Nature 110, 429–430 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/110429a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/110429a0