It Probably Shouldn't be Called Stonehenge

I’m a fan of obvious questions that usually don’t get asked. Or at least not typically asked out loud. I think more of these obvious questions should be asked out loud, regardless of how silly they may sound. Which is why the question “A henge? Well, what’s a henge?” has always stuck with me. Someone brings up Stonehenge and I’m repeating the question that Michael Flanders asked years ago. Usually with my inside voice.

The topic of Stonehenge came up recently and, instead of keeping the question inside, I asked it out loud. “What’s a henge?”. Lene had her phone handy before I could get to the Internet.

“It’s a neolithic earthwork with a circular or oval mound with a ditch on the inside. It’s assumed to be used for ritual purposes as the ditch isn’t on the outside for defense.”

That got us going. We share a standing joke on how almost everything in the past was “used for ritual purposes”. Look, because we haven’t worked out what it’s for and we don’t have records on how our ancestors used it, it doesn’t mean that all our ancestors just performed rituals all the time. They’d never get anything done if they did all the ritualling and ceremonializing we assume they did.

Not that there was much else to do back then - other than ceremonializing and ritualling. And trying to find food and survive and deal with the elements. Not much else to do at all.

Anyways - back to Stonehenge. Which is, it turns out, a bit backwards. Its ditch is outside the circular mound. For defensive purposes instead of ritual ones? Probably not - it isn’t much of a ditch or a mound.

Stonehenge is also not your typical henge in another respect. It has the earthworks, the mound and a ditch, and a circle of stones. Which is odd. A henge can be a henge without the circle of stones. The henge is the earthworks with a flat bit in the middle. While some of the largest neolithic stone circles are inside henges - many more are not. You can have a henge without a stone circle and a you can have a stone circle without a henge.

Having both? And with a backwards oriented henge? That tells me that Stonehenge wasn’t built up to code. It was a bunch of amateurs. Not, as Michael Flanders suggested, an impressive bit of megalithic culture.

Stonehenge is therefore misnamed. It isn’t a stone henge. There isn’t such a thing as a stone henge. You don’t make earthworks out of standing stones - you make earthworks out of earth. Your henge isn’t made of stones - it’s made of earth. At Stonehenge the henge is made of earth, as it should be, and not stones, as it shouldn’t. Maybe we should use a more correct title for Stonehenge?

I suggest a Stoned Henge. That’ll keep those so-called druids busy for several millenia. Keeping the away the riff raff who only want to have rituals and ceremonies where they get stoned. In a circular fashion of course.

The more I think of henges in the more confused I get. How did the neolithic mind work? What were our ancestors trying to do? I can imagine their voices even now.

MAN:
I’m going out!

WOMAN:
No you’re not. You’re staying in and helping clean the mammoth carpets.

MAN:
I’m not staying. Me and the boys are doing important things.

WOMAN:
Like what?

MAN:
We’re going henging! It has to be done. And we’re the people to do it. Me and my mates.

WOMAN:
Well, alright. But only if you do some rituals along the way. (under her breath) Bloody hell I always get stuck cleaning the mammoth carpets. He always finds things to do that take absolute ages whenever the mammoth carpets need pelting. I wonder why that is?

You can picture them - can’t you. Out on the plains of ancient not-yet-known-as-England. Cold. Damp. Uncomfortable. With a few drinks in them. Ceremonial ones of course. Standing around wondering what to do next. If only to avoid having to go back home.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
So, what we do now? It’s ages until it’s dark and I don’t want to go home before I have to.

POMPOUS MAN:
I told you. We’re here to henge. You should all start henging.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
How’d we do that then? How do we “henge”?

POMPOUS MAN:
You build a mound. That’s what a henge is. A mound.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
Like a barrow? Don’t we need to have someone who’s dead so we can bury them under the mound? I don’t think any of us here are volunteering for that. We’d even rather be back home with the missuses.

POMPOUS MAN:
No. Not a barrow. Not a simple mound. A long one.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
So…. a long barrow then? It’s still a barrow. And I don’t see a dead body.

POMPOUS MAN:
Not a long barrow. No type of barrow. A henge is different. It isn’t just a barrow.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
Different? How?

POMPOUS MAN:
It’s, ummm, circular. That’s it. It’s circular.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
You mean instead of a heaped mound you want us to make a tubular pile of earth? Not easy. Won’t last. It’ll fall down from being a long tube of dirt to being a long mound of dirt. Which is still very much like a barrow. Or at least like a long barrow.

POMPOUS MAN:
No. Not tubular. Circular. We’ll pace out a large circle. And we’ll build the earthworks all around the circumference.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
Are you putting me on? A huge circle of dirt?

POMPOUS MAN:
No and yes. A huge circle of mounded dirt.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
Just a mound around the circle? Or a mound all the way through. Which is more like a giant earth mound….

POMPOUS MAN:
Nothing in the middle. Just a mound around the outside. Leave the middle plain. Maybe we’ll put something decorative and ceremonial in the middle later.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
Okay. We can scratch out a circle and then start making a mound. Wait a minute. Where’ll we find the earth to make the mound? There isn’t much around here. The place is all turf.

POMPOUS MAN:
(thinking quickly) Ah, well, yes, I see, we do need some earth to make the mound… aha! I know. We’ll get the earth from the part I haven’t told you about yet. The ditch.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
The ditch? Listen mate, if you want to have us do stuff between all the various rituals and ceremonial drinking we are going to be doing… you better tell us the entire plan.

POMPOUS MAN:
It’s simple. We’ll dig a ditch, circular of course, and use the dirt to make the mound. Also of the circular variety. Though we may want to leave a gap on one side so we can get in the stones for the stone circle.

INQUISITIVE MAN:
The what?

I suspect that the conversation took several hours and that ditching and mounding didn’t begin for days. After the appropriate rituals and drinking. They probably even held a ceremony. It took time to make sure you did all of those right before you started any henging.

Making mounds doesn’t seem that complicated. Getting the circle bit really round-ish is a bit of a challenge - but certainly doable. It seems to me the hard part at Stonehenge wasn’t the henge. It’s the stone circle in the middle. After all - you want standing stones that are impressive. Which means heavy. Which means cumbersome. which means difficult to move. It’s not hard to imagine there could have been accidents when dealing with those stones.

OFFICIAL MAN:
Are you in charge here?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
I suppose so. Might as well be me in charge. Can’t be Jimmy anymore.

OFFICIAL MAN:
I’m here about the accident. I take it this is the neolithic site of the accident?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Which one?

OFFICIAL MAN:
There’s been more than one accident?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Quite a few actually. What, with all the ritualling and the drinking during the ceremonializing..

OFFICIAL MAN:
What types of accidents?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Well, Andy fell into the ditch and wasn’t able to get out at first. Loose earth makes it hard to climb out.

OFFICIAL MAN:
Was he seriously hurt?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Only his pride.

OFFICIAL MAN:
Then it doesn’t concern me. I’m only interested in serious accidents causing injury or death.

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Oh we had one of those. One of the sarsens fell on Jimmy.

OFFICIAL MAN:
Saracens? There were foreigners involved? I was told this was a pre-industrial internal accident and not that it involved foreigners.

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
No no no. A sarsen. One of the stones you see all around. Some are standing. Others will be when we get them into place. That one there over there isn’t standing. Not anymore. It was standing. Then it squashed Jimmy.

OFFICIAL MAN:
Ah… so that’s the scene of the accident. I have some questions so I can fill out the appropriate forms.

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Sure. Anything you want to know. Though I hope you don’t mind me asking - who do you fill out forms for?

OFFICIAL MAN:
I am from OSHA. That’s the Occupational Stone Circling and Henging Agency. I’m here to get all the details on the accident and to make sure all henging was being done correctly. We won’t pay for the ritual entombment for an accident on a worksite where the rituals and procedures weren’t being followed.

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
I’ll have you know we’ve kept careful track of all necessary rituals and rites. We know where we stand on ceremony here.

OFFICIAL MAN:
I’m not just here to make sure you performed all the required rituals. I’m also here to ensure you followed modern prehistoric safety procedures. Has the scene of the accident been disturbed?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
We tried - but we need more levers to get the stone off of Jimmy. Those things are heavy.

OFFICIAL MAN:
(as in writing down important information) …hasn’t been tampered with… What exactly happened?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Well, Jimmy was standing to one side of the stone. We’d gotten it standing yesterday. Turns out it wasn’t as settled in as we thought. Someone leaned against the other side of the stone, and then, well, it fell on Jimmy. Most of him anyway. His feet are sticking out. I’m told there is a word that describes Jimmy and the ground. Embedded. New one for me. Embedded. Does that mean anything to you?

OFFICIAL MAN:
…embedded in the ground… fallen stone missed the feet… Was he wearing a helmet?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Wouldn’t have helped much. You can see the size of the stone.

OFFICIAL MAN:
Was he wearing a reflective vest to make him more visible to others onsite?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
What’s reflective mean? That’s a new one. Haven’t heard that one before.

OFFICIAL MAN:
…I’ll take that as a “no”… How about safety shoes?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
I think his shoes are safe. Not quite sure. See… when the stone fell on him the only part it didn’t get to was his feet. They sort of swelled up quickly and his footwear flew off. Popped off. We haven’t found them yet. I think one landed on top of that lintel stone over there. Just haven’t had a chance to climb up and take a look.

OFFICIAL MAN:
…footwear not secured properly… You the foreman?

NOT-SO-POMPOUS MAN:
Not really. There are six of us. Five now. There’s more than four of us…. and which one of us is the fourth depends on which order you count us…

It can only go downhill from there.

From now on when I see those pictures of that stone circle in the morning haze or the evening sunset I’ll think back to the people who made it, the rituals they might have performed, the possible stories behind its making, and I’ll think warm thoughts about the world famous Stoned Henge.