Buried Treasure (1954) s01e03 Episode Script
Stonehenge
Good evening.
Our programme tonight is about a monument which is one of the wonders of the prehistoric world of Western Europe - Stonehenge.
And here it is.
Now, what was it like originally? Who built it? When did they build it and how was it built and for what purpose? We don't know the answer to all these questions.
We know some of the answers or part of the answers to some of them.
But we have in the studio tonight two people who recently completed this season's excavations at Stonehenge who are perhaps better qualified than anybody to attempt the answers to some of our questions.
On my left, first of all, is Professor Stuart Piggott Good evening.
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who is well known to those of you, those viewers, who have been watching Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? in the last few years.
And on my right, Richard Atkinson Good evening.
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who is with Professor Piggott in the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh.
Now, let's start off this evening by getting Professor Piggott to describe to us what Stonehenge consists of, its various parts and, as far as he can, the dates of the parts.
Now Stuart, can you do that for us? Well, I should say straightaway, I think, that Stonehenge belongs to three periods and I'm going to talk about those as Stonehenge 1, Stonehenge 2 and Stonehenge 3.
But first of all, the most obvious part of the monument, which is the stone structure itself.
If you look at this model - the models you are seeing this evening are lent here by the courtesy of the Salisbury Museum - you will see that Stonehenge is a ruin and rather complicated and difficult to understand.
But if you turn to the other model, which is a reconstruction of Stonehenge as it was when originally complete, you will see it more clearly.
An outer ring of sarsen stones with lintels joining them over the top.
An inner horseshoe setting also of sarsen stones, the settings being each of three stones.
A circle of smaller stones, the so-called bluestones.
And a horseshoe of these similar bluestones, of which I shall say something more in a minute.
And this is the so-called altar stone, which probably wasn't an altar stone at all.
Can you give viewers some idea of the scale of these different elements? Yes.
These are six They vary from about five to seven feet in height, these smaller stones.
These go up to 20 feet.
And these are about 14 or 15.
It's a very large structure indeed.
Now Stonehenge 1, the earliest phase, I can show you on this model here.
It's not the stone structures which you see in the middle at all.
It's a bank and ditch going round here with an entrance to the north-east and a standing stone outside that entrance.
And here are some of a series of regularly spaced ritual pits.
We don't know what they were precisely used for, but in some form of ritual purpose inside.
This, Stonehenge 1 - bank, ditch and holes and outlying stone - date from about 1800-1900 BC, something like that.
Now, to the stone structures.
Stonehenge 2, you can't actually see on this model, because we only discovered its existence in the excavations this last month.
This is the first, in fact, the first published account of them.
We discovered that instead of this circle of 60 bluestones, the so-called "bluestones", volcanic rocks from Pembrokeshire, 180 miles away, had originally been placed in two circles each of 30 stones with an entrance which was on the axis of the monument facing towards the midsummer sunrise.
And the two circles, how far apart? The two circles were about six feet apart.
Very closely spaced.
And the date of those circles we can show to belong to the time when people were making this kind of pottery, the so-called "beaker" type of pottery.
This is a reconstruction of one of these pottery vessels from small fragments very soon after the building of Stonehenge 1.
If you gave a date like 1700, you wouldn't be far wrong.
Then you come to Stonehenge 3, the stone structure as you see it today.
You couldn't put up the big sarsens - which come from north Wiltshire 20 miles to the north - you couldn't put these up without taking the bluestones away.
They must have been temporarily removed from their double circle, which we discovered by excavation.
And then the great sarsens were put up in a way which you'll see later on, demonstrated with models.
Then, after that, when the sarsens were put up and the lintels put on top of them, then the bluestones were put up, first in this circle and then this horseshoe which required an additional 19 stones, which may have been brought from elsewhere.
The date of this is about 1500, 1400 BC as we shall see from the carvings on the stones, which we'll see photographs of later.
Good.
Well, now we've seen that Stonehenge is really Stonehenge 1, Stonehenge 2 and Stonehenge 3.
And Professor Piggott has given us some idea of the dates of the three Stonehenges.
Whatever the dates of them, it was an enormous undertaking, constructing the monument.
And now .
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we can perhaps best appreciate how elaborate a structure Stonehenge was.
The best way I think we can do this, the best way we can illustrate it, illustrate the craftsmanship involved, is by getting Richard Atkinson to show you the details of it in a film we've had specially taken for tonight.
This is the view you get of Stonehenge looking past the Heel Stone and up the Avenue over the Causeway.
Past the ditch and bank, with the Aubrey holes just inside, you come first to the outer ring of sarsens.
The lintels of these had to be carefully worked, so that they fitted into each other to form a continuous ring.
Looking along the top of this outer ring of lintels, you can see first in the foreground, two of the tenons or knobs that held two now-missing lintels in position.
On the face of the next lintel is a tongue which fitted into a groove on the missing one.
And beyond, looking along the lintels, you can see how they were worked into a careful curve to fit the circle.
On the end of this lintel, from one of the inner horseshoe trilithons, you can see how it was made broader on top to counteract the foreshortening effect you get when looking at it from the ground.
The lintels on these inner trilithons, are even larger than those of the outer ring.
They weigh about 15 tonnes each.
You can see how they were held in position from this fallen one.
There are the two mortises or holes, which fitted over the tenons on the uprights.
This stone, they also started to work by mistake on the wrong side.
And you can see the remains of the false mortises on what was finally the upper side.
You get a good idea of the size of these sarsens from the trilithons from which that last lintel fell, which is the largest one.
This side is still standing.
It's 21 feet high and has eight feet underground.
This side, now fallen and broken, had this lump left on its base to stabilise it because it was four feet shorter.
And to bring it up to the same height, they could only leave four feet under the ground.
Another fallen sarsen gives us a good idea of how the stones were worked.
You can see the grooves that were made with these hand mauls.
When it had been worked into grooves, the ridges in between would then be bashed away.
The stone's so hard that it will turn the blade of any but the most modern steel tool.
So this was the only way it could be worked.
This is the largest type of maul they used, weighing 43 pounds, and very hard work to use.
One man in eight hours could remove one inch from a square foot of surface this way.
This is a good resulting surface with the marks of the tooling still just showing.
It would have taken two men two months to do the whole of the sarsen face like this.
Assuming that two inches on average would have been taken off the whole surface.
A surface like this, for instance, which was part of the Heel Stone, and left unworked.
Now, let's look at the bluestones which, as you will remember, we said had previously formed part of another monument.
So even though they are now single standing stones, some of them appear once to have been used as trilithons.
This one, for instance, has the two mortise holes that mean it must once have been a lintel.
And this one has the faint remains of a tenon on top, though it's been so battered down you can hardly see it.
This one is rather mysterious.
It's got a groove worked all the way down one side, which fits a similar tongue on another stone, though nobody knows quite what for.
Our excavations this year have revealed the stumps or pits of far more bluestones than were originally thought to exist.
From the closeness of these traces to each other, it's thought that there must have been nearer 60 bluestones than 40.
Altogether, I think you will agree, that the complicated workmanship, the size, the accurate way it's laid out and the time it must have taken to put up, make this one of the most remarkable monuments in Europe.
Now you've got some idea of how the stones were dressed and shaped, we must now go on to the problem of how they were actually raised into position at Stonehenge.
And Richard, I know you are best qualified to tell us that.
Well, I think we can do this best with this model in front of me.
The scale of this is given approximately by these two human figures here.
Well now, the first job, of course, was to dig a hole in which the upright stone would stand.
That you see here with a sloping ramp on one side and on the opposite side, a row of timber stakes set against the side of the hole to prevent the toe of the stone digging into the side when it was hauled upright.
You'll see that happen in a moment.
Well, the stone was rolled up towards its hole on rollers and these were arranged so that at the right moment, the stone tipped into its hole like this.
Then, a pair of timber sheerlegs, in the shape of a tall narrow letter A were set up behind the stone.
Lashings were taken from the middle of this over the top of the stone.
And a party of perhaps 100 men or so were set to pull slowly and gently on the rope from the top of the sheerlegs, and up the stone came.
You can see how the toe of the stone is bearing on the wooden stakes at the edge of the stone hole.
Well, once the stone was up, it would be packed very quickly around the base with packing stones, most of which were hammers which had been used in dressing the stones to shape.
We have found those actually in position ourselves round the bases of the stones.
And then, the lashings and sheerlegs would be removed and the stone would be left to settle in its socket for a matter of a year or more.
This is obviously very necessary because until it had settled, it was impossible to dress the tops of the stones level.
Once the stone had settled and had ceased to sink, then there was the question of getting the lintel stone up on top.
That, we think, was done in this way with a timber staging round both sides of the pair of stones.
One section of it on this side with a sloping ramp, up which the lintel stone would be hauled, and another section on the opposite side .
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with ropes going over the top by which the lintel would be pulled up.
The lintel itself would first of all have the two mortise holes cut in it here and here, which were to fit over the tenons on top of the uprights.
And those uprights would be dressed to shape on top and the tenons made at the right distance apart.
When that had been done, and all the measurements had been checked, the lintel would be laid in position at the bottom of the ramp, the ropes taken round it and over bearers at the top.
And the same hauling party of, in this case somewhat fewer men probably, would be set to pull, and the stone would gradually roll up the slope.
It has half-round split timbers on either side lashed to it to make it roll more easily.
When it gets to the top, it falls more or less into the right position.
At this stage, most of the really difficult work has been done.
And all that would be necessary now would be for the final adjustment to be made of the mortises and tenons.
That we think was done by inserting levers beneath the stone at the top on either side, with ropes at the end by which people could pull them down at ground level and this would enable the lintel stone to be raised and lowered slightly on its mortises and tenons.
And once those had been adjusted properly, the levers would be removed, the ropes taken away, the half-round timbers against the stone removed .
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the lashings taken off .
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and the lintel stone lowered finally onto its tenons.
Then the staging, timber staging, would be dismantled piece by piece for re-use on the next pair of stones and the trilithon would be left with its lintel on top as you see it at the present day.
I should add that all the digging of holes for these stones seems to have been done with antler picks of this kind, red deer antlers, which were used, not like a modern pickaxe, but by hammering here so that the point went into the chalk and then levering with this end, so that you broke lumps of chalk off.
It's a very simple implement, but one which seems to have been used very effectively in the hands of people who understood it.
Well, that's a most interesting account of how Stonehenge was built.
I think viewers should appreciate, as I certainly do, that I have never seen before such convincing experiments put out.
It's really a form of experimental archaeology of exactly how this monument was constructed.
We are very grateful to Mr Atkinson for doing this.
Now we must turn on to the bluestones, a form of spotted dolerite.
Here you see a piece of bluestone.
It's a particular kind of rock, which comes only from one area, from the Preseli Mountains in North Pembrokeshire, which we see here.
Now, as you've heard, from Preseli to north Wiltshire in a straight line is 180 miles.
A very complicated operation.
What route did that operation take? Many routes have been suggested.
Which, Richard, do you think are the possible routes? Well, I think there are two probable routes, we can't really choose between them, but I think one is more probable than the other and I'll show you these on this map.
Here are the Preseli Mountains in north Pembrokeshire.
Here is Stonehenge in Wiltshire.
In any case, I think the stones were brought down to Milford Haven over land and then round by sea along the south Welsh coast to somewhere in the Bristol Channel.
Then they may have taken them coastwise down the north coast of Cornwall, of Devon and Cornwall, to Padstow and across from Padstow over land to Fowey, and up around the south coast .
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to the mouth of the Wiltshire Avon at Christchurch, up the Wiltshire Avon to Stonehenge.
On the other hand, I think it's more probable that instead of going all the way round by sea, they went up the Bristol Channel as far as the mouth of the Bristol Avon, down the Bristol Avon and up towards Frome.
Then, a short distance over land between the Frome water and the headwaters of the Wylye.
Down the River Wylye .
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to meet the Avon, the Wiltshire Avon and up again to Stonehenge.
I think one or other of those routes is fairly certain to have been used.
Well now, there's the possibility of the two routes.
Which remains the difficult question of how the stones were brought along one of these routes.
To try out the various methods, we organised an experiment with the assistance and help of Richard Atkinson which we filmed specially for this programme.
We had a copy of a bluestone especially made of reinforced concrete and we first of all tried taking it upriver on a type of raft.
This is the raft we devised for the experiment.
It's made out of three long, narrow punts, the equivalent of dugouts, lashed together to a rough wooden platform.
We know they had dugout canoes then, of course, and they would have been about this size.
In fact, being solid, they would probably have stood up to it better than these punts.
The craft is 17'6" long and 8'6" wide.
And with the copy of the bluestone on it, it was nine inches deep in the water.
The copied bluestone was made of reinforced concrete and weighed nearly a tonne and a half.
With it sitting securely on the platform, we set off punting upriver with some boys of Bryanston School as crew.
Even though they weren't perhaps the most expert punters in the country, we had no trouble moving it upstream, even where there were shallow parts and bends.
Taking this craft to sea would have been another matter.
There, they might have slung the stone underneath the dugouts, where it would have acted as ballast and would have let the dugouts ride higher in the water.
But on a river, it would have grounded more quickly, so they would be more likely to have used this method.
With the raft towed instead of punted, which of course could only have been done where there was a firm bank available, and not in marshy or overgrown country, the raft moved at a fine pace, with the help of a man on board to steer.
In fact, this part of the experiment showed there would have been no difficulty in transporting the bluestones upriver with just a few men, even if the river was narrow and shallow.
Now for the experiment on land.
For this we used a rough wooden sledge, which would probably have been made of oak like most wooden objects we've found from this period.
The cross pieces are slotted into each other and held by wooden pegs, with no metal or nails, of course.
The rope lashings would probably have been made of plaited cowhide.
With the copied bluestone lashed in position, the weight to be moved is about a tonne and a half.
Now, with 24 gallant volunteers from Canford School hauling, off we go! But no, 24 can't do it.
Can 28? No, it's still too much for them.
Can 32? Yes, they can and off the sledge goes.
The crossbars are both to make hauling easier and to get more haulers on the single rope.
It's pretty hard work for the boys, so I calculate that to allow for sustained pulling up slopes, this stone would need 40 men to handle it like this, while 100 men could handle the largest bluestone, which weighs between four and five tonnes.
Now suppose one puts rollers, consisting of roughly cut logs, under the sledge.
What happens then? This time, the hauling is being done by four .
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eight .
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and 14 boys.
And off we go! With less than half the previous hauling party moving the sledge quite easily.
The trouble here is coping with the steering of the sledge and getting the rollers into position, which needs a lot of organisation and experience.
With more and better rollers than these, and a trained and experienced party, it's fairly safe to say 15 men could have hauled this stone up the slopes likely to be encountered and 40 men could have handled the heaviest bluestone.
Turning the stone is quite easy.
A short, sharp heave, a little help with levers and the sledge is round on its new course.
Moving off again so easily and smoothly that one would almost think it was running over prepared ground instead of a rough field.
But the giant sarsens which were brought to Stonehenge from North Wiltshire would be a very different problem.
Moved like this on a sledge made from tree trunks, without rollers, they would need perhaps a thousand men to haul them.
And even with rollers, it would take up to 300.
However, the experiment has shown that at least the movement of the bluestones from Pembrokeshire could have been done without great difficulty by a not very large number of men provided that there was no great hurry.
Well, even though the moving of the bluestones may not have been such a tremendous feat as perhaps we expected it to have been before these interesting experiments were carried out, the whole monument is the most amazing feat and we still are faced with the question, what lay behind it? Why was it constructed? Now, Stuart, what do you really think is its purpose having studied the monument yourself for so long and worked there? Well, it certainly isn't any utilitarian structure.
It isn't any form of aof a house or anything of that kind.
It's not a tomb and it must be some kind of a temple, a religious structure of some religion which we don't know and archaeology will never tell us what kind of religion that was.
It just That isn't the kind of thing archaeology can tell one.
But it must have been the result of a compelling religious force that caused the site not only to be built in the great stone structure as we see it today, but for its sanctity to have endured for so long.
After all, it did go on from the early Stonehenge 1, which we talked about, right through to Stonehenge 3 over several centuries.
One thing we can say, of course, is that it is in its final form and from Stonehenge 2 onwards, in fact, that it is directed towards the rising sun on Midsummer Day.
That is an inescapable fact, whatever deductions we may draw from it, here you see in a charming 19th-century photograph, when the sun actually appeared and wasn't covered with cloud, the sun appearing between two of the uprights of the outer sarsen circle and you can see the one remaining upright of the great trilithon.
You are looking right along the axis of that summer sunrise.
- But no druids? - But no druids, I'm afraid we can't have the druids.
The druids were a priesthood, who only existed around the first few centuries BC and AD.
They were attached to Stonehenge as a result of the Romantic movement really in the late 18th and early 19th century.
And they've simply become a part of the monument since that time, but I'm afraid a very modern part of it.
And hence the name like Altar Stone and Slaughter Stone and so on, which are entirely invented, attached out of this idea that there might be a connection with druids and sacrifices.
Actually, of course, there was no connection at all.
Well, Professor Piggott has exploded several old wives' tales for us and left us with Stonehenge as a prehistoric temple.
Now, finally, we must direct our attention to some most interesting discoveries, which Professor Piggott and Mr Atkinson made during their excavations.
Now, Richard, tell us about these interesting engravings.
Well, this was something discovered quite by chance last year when we were digging at Stonehenge.
I was photographing modern - that is to say 17th and 18th century - inscriptions on the stones.
And as I was focusing my camera on one of the modern names, I saw the outlines of a prehistoric dagger and an axe.
Some of you may remember seeing these on Newsreel last year shortly after the discovery was made.
Here they are.
Those are the stones on which the main carvings lie.
Here is the dagger on the left and the axe on the right.
The dagger appears to be a form unknown in Britain or northern Europe.
It may be Greek.
The axe, on the other hand, is a local British type.
This is the sort of bronze axe which is represented on the stones made in Ireland in the middle of the 16th century BC or thereabouts.
But this is entirely a chance discovery and one that one is very grateful for for luck of getting.
Well, now there you are, and before we finish, Stuart, can you outline what you think the present position is with regard to our knowledge of Stonehenge? Well, our knowledge of Stonehenge has certainly advanced very much since the excavations of the 1920s and partly as a result of our recent excavation that we've been carrying out there.
I think at least we've got the main outlines clear, but there's a great deal of detail which we've got to fill in and I hope that we may have an opportunity of doing that in future years.
I think, eventually, we ought to be able to get at least the structural sequence of the monument, its main dates of the phases of construction straight, and that will have advanced our knowledge a very great deal.
Well, now, on your behalf, viewers, I am sure you would want me to wish Professor Piggott and Mr Atkinson all the success in any future campaigns they may have at Stonehenge and thank them very much for coming to the studio and telling us tonight.
It really is the first publication of much of what they've been telling us, telling us this news of Stonehenge.
You may find yourselves one day at this remarkable monument.
When you do, remember how complicated it is - Stonehenge 1, 2 and 3.
And some of the complicated archaeological techniques outlined to you tonight by which the buried past of Stonehenge has been revealed to you.
Good night.
Our programme tonight is about a monument which is one of the wonders of the prehistoric world of Western Europe - Stonehenge.
And here it is.
Now, what was it like originally? Who built it? When did they build it and how was it built and for what purpose? We don't know the answer to all these questions.
We know some of the answers or part of the answers to some of them.
But we have in the studio tonight two people who recently completed this season's excavations at Stonehenge who are perhaps better qualified than anybody to attempt the answers to some of our questions.
On my left, first of all, is Professor Stuart Piggott Good evening.
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who is well known to those of you, those viewers, who have been watching Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? in the last few years.
And on my right, Richard Atkinson Good evening.
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who is with Professor Piggott in the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh.
Now, let's start off this evening by getting Professor Piggott to describe to us what Stonehenge consists of, its various parts and, as far as he can, the dates of the parts.
Now Stuart, can you do that for us? Well, I should say straightaway, I think, that Stonehenge belongs to three periods and I'm going to talk about those as Stonehenge 1, Stonehenge 2 and Stonehenge 3.
But first of all, the most obvious part of the monument, which is the stone structure itself.
If you look at this model - the models you are seeing this evening are lent here by the courtesy of the Salisbury Museum - you will see that Stonehenge is a ruin and rather complicated and difficult to understand.
But if you turn to the other model, which is a reconstruction of Stonehenge as it was when originally complete, you will see it more clearly.
An outer ring of sarsen stones with lintels joining them over the top.
An inner horseshoe setting also of sarsen stones, the settings being each of three stones.
A circle of smaller stones, the so-called bluestones.
And a horseshoe of these similar bluestones, of which I shall say something more in a minute.
And this is the so-called altar stone, which probably wasn't an altar stone at all.
Can you give viewers some idea of the scale of these different elements? Yes.
These are six They vary from about five to seven feet in height, these smaller stones.
These go up to 20 feet.
And these are about 14 or 15.
It's a very large structure indeed.
Now Stonehenge 1, the earliest phase, I can show you on this model here.
It's not the stone structures which you see in the middle at all.
It's a bank and ditch going round here with an entrance to the north-east and a standing stone outside that entrance.
And here are some of a series of regularly spaced ritual pits.
We don't know what they were precisely used for, but in some form of ritual purpose inside.
This, Stonehenge 1 - bank, ditch and holes and outlying stone - date from about 1800-1900 BC, something like that.
Now, to the stone structures.
Stonehenge 2, you can't actually see on this model, because we only discovered its existence in the excavations this last month.
This is the first, in fact, the first published account of them.
We discovered that instead of this circle of 60 bluestones, the so-called "bluestones", volcanic rocks from Pembrokeshire, 180 miles away, had originally been placed in two circles each of 30 stones with an entrance which was on the axis of the monument facing towards the midsummer sunrise.
And the two circles, how far apart? The two circles were about six feet apart.
Very closely spaced.
And the date of those circles we can show to belong to the time when people were making this kind of pottery, the so-called "beaker" type of pottery.
This is a reconstruction of one of these pottery vessels from small fragments very soon after the building of Stonehenge 1.
If you gave a date like 1700, you wouldn't be far wrong.
Then you come to Stonehenge 3, the stone structure as you see it today.
You couldn't put up the big sarsens - which come from north Wiltshire 20 miles to the north - you couldn't put these up without taking the bluestones away.
They must have been temporarily removed from their double circle, which we discovered by excavation.
And then the great sarsens were put up in a way which you'll see later on, demonstrated with models.
Then, after that, when the sarsens were put up and the lintels put on top of them, then the bluestones were put up, first in this circle and then this horseshoe which required an additional 19 stones, which may have been brought from elsewhere.
The date of this is about 1500, 1400 BC as we shall see from the carvings on the stones, which we'll see photographs of later.
Good.
Well, now we've seen that Stonehenge is really Stonehenge 1, Stonehenge 2 and Stonehenge 3.
And Professor Piggott has given us some idea of the dates of the three Stonehenges.
Whatever the dates of them, it was an enormous undertaking, constructing the monument.
And now .
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we can perhaps best appreciate how elaborate a structure Stonehenge was.
The best way I think we can do this, the best way we can illustrate it, illustrate the craftsmanship involved, is by getting Richard Atkinson to show you the details of it in a film we've had specially taken for tonight.
This is the view you get of Stonehenge looking past the Heel Stone and up the Avenue over the Causeway.
Past the ditch and bank, with the Aubrey holes just inside, you come first to the outer ring of sarsens.
The lintels of these had to be carefully worked, so that they fitted into each other to form a continuous ring.
Looking along the top of this outer ring of lintels, you can see first in the foreground, two of the tenons or knobs that held two now-missing lintels in position.
On the face of the next lintel is a tongue which fitted into a groove on the missing one.
And beyond, looking along the lintels, you can see how they were worked into a careful curve to fit the circle.
On the end of this lintel, from one of the inner horseshoe trilithons, you can see how it was made broader on top to counteract the foreshortening effect you get when looking at it from the ground.
The lintels on these inner trilithons, are even larger than those of the outer ring.
They weigh about 15 tonnes each.
You can see how they were held in position from this fallen one.
There are the two mortises or holes, which fitted over the tenons on the uprights.
This stone, they also started to work by mistake on the wrong side.
And you can see the remains of the false mortises on what was finally the upper side.
You get a good idea of the size of these sarsens from the trilithons from which that last lintel fell, which is the largest one.
This side is still standing.
It's 21 feet high and has eight feet underground.
This side, now fallen and broken, had this lump left on its base to stabilise it because it was four feet shorter.
And to bring it up to the same height, they could only leave four feet under the ground.
Another fallen sarsen gives us a good idea of how the stones were worked.
You can see the grooves that were made with these hand mauls.
When it had been worked into grooves, the ridges in between would then be bashed away.
The stone's so hard that it will turn the blade of any but the most modern steel tool.
So this was the only way it could be worked.
This is the largest type of maul they used, weighing 43 pounds, and very hard work to use.
One man in eight hours could remove one inch from a square foot of surface this way.
This is a good resulting surface with the marks of the tooling still just showing.
It would have taken two men two months to do the whole of the sarsen face like this.
Assuming that two inches on average would have been taken off the whole surface.
A surface like this, for instance, which was part of the Heel Stone, and left unworked.
Now, let's look at the bluestones which, as you will remember, we said had previously formed part of another monument.
So even though they are now single standing stones, some of them appear once to have been used as trilithons.
This one, for instance, has the two mortise holes that mean it must once have been a lintel.
And this one has the faint remains of a tenon on top, though it's been so battered down you can hardly see it.
This one is rather mysterious.
It's got a groove worked all the way down one side, which fits a similar tongue on another stone, though nobody knows quite what for.
Our excavations this year have revealed the stumps or pits of far more bluestones than were originally thought to exist.
From the closeness of these traces to each other, it's thought that there must have been nearer 60 bluestones than 40.
Altogether, I think you will agree, that the complicated workmanship, the size, the accurate way it's laid out and the time it must have taken to put up, make this one of the most remarkable monuments in Europe.
Now you've got some idea of how the stones were dressed and shaped, we must now go on to the problem of how they were actually raised into position at Stonehenge.
And Richard, I know you are best qualified to tell us that.
Well, I think we can do this best with this model in front of me.
The scale of this is given approximately by these two human figures here.
Well now, the first job, of course, was to dig a hole in which the upright stone would stand.
That you see here with a sloping ramp on one side and on the opposite side, a row of timber stakes set against the side of the hole to prevent the toe of the stone digging into the side when it was hauled upright.
You'll see that happen in a moment.
Well, the stone was rolled up towards its hole on rollers and these were arranged so that at the right moment, the stone tipped into its hole like this.
Then, a pair of timber sheerlegs, in the shape of a tall narrow letter A were set up behind the stone.
Lashings were taken from the middle of this over the top of the stone.
And a party of perhaps 100 men or so were set to pull slowly and gently on the rope from the top of the sheerlegs, and up the stone came.
You can see how the toe of the stone is bearing on the wooden stakes at the edge of the stone hole.
Well, once the stone was up, it would be packed very quickly around the base with packing stones, most of which were hammers which had been used in dressing the stones to shape.
We have found those actually in position ourselves round the bases of the stones.
And then, the lashings and sheerlegs would be removed and the stone would be left to settle in its socket for a matter of a year or more.
This is obviously very necessary because until it had settled, it was impossible to dress the tops of the stones level.
Once the stone had settled and had ceased to sink, then there was the question of getting the lintel stone up on top.
That, we think, was done in this way with a timber staging round both sides of the pair of stones.
One section of it on this side with a sloping ramp, up which the lintel stone would be hauled, and another section on the opposite side .
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with ropes going over the top by which the lintel would be pulled up.
The lintel itself would first of all have the two mortise holes cut in it here and here, which were to fit over the tenons on top of the uprights.
And those uprights would be dressed to shape on top and the tenons made at the right distance apart.
When that had been done, and all the measurements had been checked, the lintel would be laid in position at the bottom of the ramp, the ropes taken round it and over bearers at the top.
And the same hauling party of, in this case somewhat fewer men probably, would be set to pull, and the stone would gradually roll up the slope.
It has half-round split timbers on either side lashed to it to make it roll more easily.
When it gets to the top, it falls more or less into the right position.
At this stage, most of the really difficult work has been done.
And all that would be necessary now would be for the final adjustment to be made of the mortises and tenons.
That we think was done by inserting levers beneath the stone at the top on either side, with ropes at the end by which people could pull them down at ground level and this would enable the lintel stone to be raised and lowered slightly on its mortises and tenons.
And once those had been adjusted properly, the levers would be removed, the ropes taken away, the half-round timbers against the stone removed .
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the lashings taken off .
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and the lintel stone lowered finally onto its tenons.
Then the staging, timber staging, would be dismantled piece by piece for re-use on the next pair of stones and the trilithon would be left with its lintel on top as you see it at the present day.
I should add that all the digging of holes for these stones seems to have been done with antler picks of this kind, red deer antlers, which were used, not like a modern pickaxe, but by hammering here so that the point went into the chalk and then levering with this end, so that you broke lumps of chalk off.
It's a very simple implement, but one which seems to have been used very effectively in the hands of people who understood it.
Well, that's a most interesting account of how Stonehenge was built.
I think viewers should appreciate, as I certainly do, that I have never seen before such convincing experiments put out.
It's really a form of experimental archaeology of exactly how this monument was constructed.
We are very grateful to Mr Atkinson for doing this.
Now we must turn on to the bluestones, a form of spotted dolerite.
Here you see a piece of bluestone.
It's a particular kind of rock, which comes only from one area, from the Preseli Mountains in North Pembrokeshire, which we see here.
Now, as you've heard, from Preseli to north Wiltshire in a straight line is 180 miles.
A very complicated operation.
What route did that operation take? Many routes have been suggested.
Which, Richard, do you think are the possible routes? Well, I think there are two probable routes, we can't really choose between them, but I think one is more probable than the other and I'll show you these on this map.
Here are the Preseli Mountains in north Pembrokeshire.
Here is Stonehenge in Wiltshire.
In any case, I think the stones were brought down to Milford Haven over land and then round by sea along the south Welsh coast to somewhere in the Bristol Channel.
Then they may have taken them coastwise down the north coast of Cornwall, of Devon and Cornwall, to Padstow and across from Padstow over land to Fowey, and up around the south coast .
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to the mouth of the Wiltshire Avon at Christchurch, up the Wiltshire Avon to Stonehenge.
On the other hand, I think it's more probable that instead of going all the way round by sea, they went up the Bristol Channel as far as the mouth of the Bristol Avon, down the Bristol Avon and up towards Frome.
Then, a short distance over land between the Frome water and the headwaters of the Wylye.
Down the River Wylye .
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to meet the Avon, the Wiltshire Avon and up again to Stonehenge.
I think one or other of those routes is fairly certain to have been used.
Well now, there's the possibility of the two routes.
Which remains the difficult question of how the stones were brought along one of these routes.
To try out the various methods, we organised an experiment with the assistance and help of Richard Atkinson which we filmed specially for this programme.
We had a copy of a bluestone especially made of reinforced concrete and we first of all tried taking it upriver on a type of raft.
This is the raft we devised for the experiment.
It's made out of three long, narrow punts, the equivalent of dugouts, lashed together to a rough wooden platform.
We know they had dugout canoes then, of course, and they would have been about this size.
In fact, being solid, they would probably have stood up to it better than these punts.
The craft is 17'6" long and 8'6" wide.
And with the copy of the bluestone on it, it was nine inches deep in the water.
The copied bluestone was made of reinforced concrete and weighed nearly a tonne and a half.
With it sitting securely on the platform, we set off punting upriver with some boys of Bryanston School as crew.
Even though they weren't perhaps the most expert punters in the country, we had no trouble moving it upstream, even where there were shallow parts and bends.
Taking this craft to sea would have been another matter.
There, they might have slung the stone underneath the dugouts, where it would have acted as ballast and would have let the dugouts ride higher in the water.
But on a river, it would have grounded more quickly, so they would be more likely to have used this method.
With the raft towed instead of punted, which of course could only have been done where there was a firm bank available, and not in marshy or overgrown country, the raft moved at a fine pace, with the help of a man on board to steer.
In fact, this part of the experiment showed there would have been no difficulty in transporting the bluestones upriver with just a few men, even if the river was narrow and shallow.
Now for the experiment on land.
For this we used a rough wooden sledge, which would probably have been made of oak like most wooden objects we've found from this period.
The cross pieces are slotted into each other and held by wooden pegs, with no metal or nails, of course.
The rope lashings would probably have been made of plaited cowhide.
With the copied bluestone lashed in position, the weight to be moved is about a tonne and a half.
Now, with 24 gallant volunteers from Canford School hauling, off we go! But no, 24 can't do it.
Can 28? No, it's still too much for them.
Can 32? Yes, they can and off the sledge goes.
The crossbars are both to make hauling easier and to get more haulers on the single rope.
It's pretty hard work for the boys, so I calculate that to allow for sustained pulling up slopes, this stone would need 40 men to handle it like this, while 100 men could handle the largest bluestone, which weighs between four and five tonnes.
Now suppose one puts rollers, consisting of roughly cut logs, under the sledge.
What happens then? This time, the hauling is being done by four .
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eight .
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and 14 boys.
And off we go! With less than half the previous hauling party moving the sledge quite easily.
The trouble here is coping with the steering of the sledge and getting the rollers into position, which needs a lot of organisation and experience.
With more and better rollers than these, and a trained and experienced party, it's fairly safe to say 15 men could have hauled this stone up the slopes likely to be encountered and 40 men could have handled the heaviest bluestone.
Turning the stone is quite easy.
A short, sharp heave, a little help with levers and the sledge is round on its new course.
Moving off again so easily and smoothly that one would almost think it was running over prepared ground instead of a rough field.
But the giant sarsens which were brought to Stonehenge from North Wiltshire would be a very different problem.
Moved like this on a sledge made from tree trunks, without rollers, they would need perhaps a thousand men to haul them.
And even with rollers, it would take up to 300.
However, the experiment has shown that at least the movement of the bluestones from Pembrokeshire could have been done without great difficulty by a not very large number of men provided that there was no great hurry.
Well, even though the moving of the bluestones may not have been such a tremendous feat as perhaps we expected it to have been before these interesting experiments were carried out, the whole monument is the most amazing feat and we still are faced with the question, what lay behind it? Why was it constructed? Now, Stuart, what do you really think is its purpose having studied the monument yourself for so long and worked there? Well, it certainly isn't any utilitarian structure.
It isn't any form of aof a house or anything of that kind.
It's not a tomb and it must be some kind of a temple, a religious structure of some religion which we don't know and archaeology will never tell us what kind of religion that was.
It just That isn't the kind of thing archaeology can tell one.
But it must have been the result of a compelling religious force that caused the site not only to be built in the great stone structure as we see it today, but for its sanctity to have endured for so long.
After all, it did go on from the early Stonehenge 1, which we talked about, right through to Stonehenge 3 over several centuries.
One thing we can say, of course, is that it is in its final form and from Stonehenge 2 onwards, in fact, that it is directed towards the rising sun on Midsummer Day.
That is an inescapable fact, whatever deductions we may draw from it, here you see in a charming 19th-century photograph, when the sun actually appeared and wasn't covered with cloud, the sun appearing between two of the uprights of the outer sarsen circle and you can see the one remaining upright of the great trilithon.
You are looking right along the axis of that summer sunrise.
- But no druids? - But no druids, I'm afraid we can't have the druids.
The druids were a priesthood, who only existed around the first few centuries BC and AD.
They were attached to Stonehenge as a result of the Romantic movement really in the late 18th and early 19th century.
And they've simply become a part of the monument since that time, but I'm afraid a very modern part of it.
And hence the name like Altar Stone and Slaughter Stone and so on, which are entirely invented, attached out of this idea that there might be a connection with druids and sacrifices.
Actually, of course, there was no connection at all.
Well, Professor Piggott has exploded several old wives' tales for us and left us with Stonehenge as a prehistoric temple.
Now, finally, we must direct our attention to some most interesting discoveries, which Professor Piggott and Mr Atkinson made during their excavations.
Now, Richard, tell us about these interesting engravings.
Well, this was something discovered quite by chance last year when we were digging at Stonehenge.
I was photographing modern - that is to say 17th and 18th century - inscriptions on the stones.
And as I was focusing my camera on one of the modern names, I saw the outlines of a prehistoric dagger and an axe.
Some of you may remember seeing these on Newsreel last year shortly after the discovery was made.
Here they are.
Those are the stones on which the main carvings lie.
Here is the dagger on the left and the axe on the right.
The dagger appears to be a form unknown in Britain or northern Europe.
It may be Greek.
The axe, on the other hand, is a local British type.
This is the sort of bronze axe which is represented on the stones made in Ireland in the middle of the 16th century BC or thereabouts.
But this is entirely a chance discovery and one that one is very grateful for for luck of getting.
Well, now there you are, and before we finish, Stuart, can you outline what you think the present position is with regard to our knowledge of Stonehenge? Well, our knowledge of Stonehenge has certainly advanced very much since the excavations of the 1920s and partly as a result of our recent excavation that we've been carrying out there.
I think at least we've got the main outlines clear, but there's a great deal of detail which we've got to fill in and I hope that we may have an opportunity of doing that in future years.
I think, eventually, we ought to be able to get at least the structural sequence of the monument, its main dates of the phases of construction straight, and that will have advanced our knowledge a very great deal.
Well, now, on your behalf, viewers, I am sure you would want me to wish Professor Piggott and Mr Atkinson all the success in any future campaigns they may have at Stonehenge and thank them very much for coming to the studio and telling us tonight.
It really is the first publication of much of what they've been telling us, telling us this news of Stonehenge.
You may find yourselves one day at this remarkable monument.
When you do, remember how complicated it is - Stonehenge 1, 2 and 3.
And some of the complicated archaeological techniques outlined to you tonight by which the buried past of Stonehenge has been revealed to you.
Good night.