448 ANNUAL REPORT SIMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1940 



At different times the Phoenicians, the Druids, the Romans, and 

 even the Sumerians have been hailed as builders of Stonehenge. It 

 has been the background of lurid descriptions of himian sacrifice, 

 with blazing wicker figures filled with writhing victims. It has been 

 described as a calendar, a great tribal meeting place, and the cere- 

 monial center of a vast necropolis. 



But most of this speculation lacks confirmation. Much is based 

 on analogy and upon similarity to other stones in other parts of the 

 world. Analogy is not always a sure guide, and certainly similarity 

 is not always identity. Because the Japanese or Polynesian may 

 erect a "Trilithon" ^ for their religious rites and ceremonies, it does 

 not follow that Stonehenge was erected for a like purpose. 



So much of this speculation has been printed and circulated, copied 

 and recopied by guidebooks, that it is very difficult for the present- 

 day visitor to disentangle truth from picturesque fiction or guess- 

 work. In addition, it is only recently that archeology has come to 

 be reckoned as a definite science and not the spare-time amusement 

 of the squire with a taste for investigating burial mounds to see 

 what was inside them. 



To see Stonehenge intelligently, therefore, the visitor should dis- 

 abuse his mind of all theories and preconceptions, and concentrate 

 on the definite evidence which scientific exploration can lay before 

 him today. The aerial photograph will reveal a vanished trackway. 

 The careful excavations of Professor Gowland, Colonel Hawley, and 

 R. S. Newall will present an array of objects which can afford a 

 definite conception as to the date of building. The petrologist will 

 decide the origin of the rocks used in construction, and finally the 

 archeologists will produce their contribution, showing the migration 

 of tribes from the Continent of Europe to the British Isles, bringing 

 with them their own peculiar customs of burial and religion. 



In this sense, then, Stonehenge may come to be regarded not as 

 an isolated monument but rather as the climax of a long chain of 

 stone circles introduced into this country by a civilization which 

 came certainly from the west of Europe, if not from some even more 

 remote source. 



Today it is impossible, even after years of patient investigation, 

 to find an answer to every problem which the circle propounds, for 

 the very good reason that the science of practical archeology, as yet, 

 is only in its infancy. But the conclusions which have been arrived 

 at during the past three decades have more than a degree of cer- 

 tainty about them which the earlier work of a past generation lacked. 

 Let us cling, therefore, to things capable of proof and supported by 



* Trilithon, a structure of three stones, two upright, with the third forming an impoat 

 or lintel. 



