It is also a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. The monument itself is owned and managed by English Heritage whilst the surrounding downland is owned by the National Trust.
Christopher Chippendale's Stonehenge Complete quoted in Mike Pitts' Hengeworld gives the derivation of Stonehenge as being from the Old English words for "stone", and a word that would mean in modern English either "hinge" or "gallows".
The "henge" portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal ditch. As often happens in archaeological terminology, this is a holdover from antiquarian usage, and Stonehenge cannot in fact be truly classified as a henge site as its bank is inside its ditch. Despite being contemporary with true Neolithic henges and stone circles, Stonehenge is in many ways atypical. For example, its extant trilithons make Stonehenge unique. Stonehenge is only distantly related to the other stone circles in the British Isles, such as the Ring of Brodgar.
The Stonehenge complex was built in several construction phases spanning 2,000 years, although there is evidence for activity both before and afterwards on the site. Archaeologists have found three large Mesolithic postholes nearby, beneath the modern tourist car-park, which date to around 8000 BC, although there is no suggestion they are connected with the later monument. The burial of a decapitated Saxon man has been excavated at the site and dated to the 7th century AD. Dating and understanding the various phases of activity at Stonehenge is not a simple task; it is complicated by poorly-kept early excavation records, surprisingly few accurate scientific dates and the disturbance of the natural chalk by periglacial effects and animal burrowing. The modern phasing most generally agreed by archaeologists is detailed below. Features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right, which illustrates the site as of AD 2004. The plan omits the trilithon lintels for clarity. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles and stones visible today are shown coloured.
The first monument consisted of a circular bank and ditch enclosure (7 and 8) measuring around 115 m (320 feet) in diameter with a large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south (14). The builders placed bones of deer and oxen in the bottom of the ditch. These bones were considerably older than the antler picks used to dig the ditch and had been well looked-after for some time prior to burial. This first stage is dated to around 3100 BC. Within the outer edge of the enclosed area was dug a circle of 56 pits (13), known as Aubrey holes after John Aubrey, the seventeenth century antiquarian who was thought to have first identified them. The pits may have contained standing timbers although there is no excavated evidence of them. A small outer bank beyond the ditch could also date to this period.
Evidence of the second phase is no longer visible. It appears from the number of postholes dating to this period that some form of timber structure was built within the enclosure during the early 3rd millennium BC. Further standing timbers were placed at the northeast entrance and a parallel alignment of posts ran inwards from the southern entrance. The bank was purposely reduced in height and the ditch permitted to silt up. At least twenty-five of the Aubrey Holes are known to have contained later, intrusive, cremation burials dating to the two centuries after the monument's inception. It seems that whatever the holes' initial function, it changed to become a funerary one during Phase 2. Thirty further cremations were placed in the enclosure's ditch and at other points within the monument, mostly in the eastern half. Stonehenge is therefore interpreted as functioning as an enclosed cremation cemetery at this time, the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles. Fragments of unburnt human bone have also been found in the ditch fill. Late Neolithic grooved ware pottery has been found in connection with the features from this phase providing dating evidence.
Many early historians were influenced by supernatural folktales in their explanations. Some legends held that Merlin the wizard had a giant build the structure for him, while others held the Devil responsible.
In 1615, Inigo Jones argued that Stonehenge was a Roman temple, dedicated to Cnelus, a pagan god, and built following the Tuscan order. Later commentators maintained that the Danes erected it. Indeed, up until the late nineteenth century, the site was commonly attributed to the Saxons or other relatively recent societies.
The first academic effort to survey and understand the monument was made around 1740 by William Stukeley. As was his wont, Stukeley incorrectly attributed the site to the Druids. He contributed measured drawings of the site, which permitted greater analysis of its form and significance. From this work he was able to demonstrate an astronomical or calendrical role in the stones' placement.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, John Lubbock was able to attribute the site to the Bronze Age based on the bronze objects found in the nearby barrows.
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