I Love Stonehenge

Over the semester we have learned about many interesting archaeological sites, but my favorite by far has been Stonehenge. Perhaps I’m a bit biased, I am a total Anglomaniac and have taken several courses on British history and culture, but even with my obsession with all things Great Britain Stonehenge is still pretty amazing.
The builders of Stonehenge were able to construct creations that involved moving tons of stone from miles away and building it in a way that much of it still stands today. This isn’t unique to Stonehenge, there are many examples of entire cities such as Machu Picchu or the Pyramids that are made of stone and still exist, but the difference is that these were built by great civilizations rules by kings or emperors. Stonehenge was built by a society that was nowhere near as powerful as the Egyptians or Incas, but it is still there today. Additionally, Stonehenge has been studies for centuries now and researchers are still finding more and more about it. As we watched in Operation Stonehenge, there is so much more that some rocks in a field. Stonehenge was a site of spiritual worship, burial, maybe human sacrifice, but also had practical uses like aligning with the solstices.
The site was lived by and worked on by different groups of people over thousands of years and was added to, not torn down and redone. This means that this spot was obviously important to multiple groups of people, and they stayed there because of it.
Stonehenge is arguably one of the most recognizable sites in the world, but hardly anyone knows anything beyond the stone circles. Everyone know that the pyramids have mummies, but almost nobody would be able to tell you about the Stonehenge burials such as the Archer or the evidence of human sacrifice found at Stonehenge. The fact that the image is so well known but hardly anything is known about the rest of it is amazing to me, considering that a good portion of the English landscape is covered in remnants of the history behind Stonehenge.
As much as it has been studies, there is still more being discovered today and that is very exciting. Stonehenge is the perfect example of how an archeological site can unearth so much about the culture beyond just some rocks. Even if nothing new surfaces about Stonehenge, you can still tell that it is a special place. Clearly the people who built it thought so, and having been there myself, you can definitely tell that there is something very significant about Stonehenge by just standing next to it.