20 



Recent Excavations at Stonehenge. 



No absolutely conclusive signs of the Duke of Buckingham's 

 digging, said to have caused the fall of the great trilithon in 1620, 

 were observed. 1 But in Excavation V., in front of the leaning 

 stone, the ground was seen to have been disturbed to a depth of 

 about 3 feet ; the chalk rubble being more mixed with earth than 

 elsewhere, it is hence not impossible that someone might have dug 

 there. The excavation could not have been carried to a much 

 greater depth, otherwise the " blues tone," No. 68, would have been 

 overthrown. It might, however, have extended to the front of 

 the now recumbent stone, No. 55, as the two large blocks of sarsen 

 which acted as the supports of this stone on that side had the 

 ground entirely cut away from above and almost completely from 

 around them. Any attempt to raise or dislodge these blocks would 

 certainly have caused the fall of the monolith. 



From the position of the impost as it now lies it would seem 

 that No. 55 was the first to topple, and in its fall it dragged over 

 the other upright of the trilithon, the hitherto "leaning" stone. 

 The complete prostration of the latter was, however, checked partly 

 by the "bluestone " upright, No. 68, but chiefly by the great depth 

 to which its base was buried in the ground. 



Objects found in the Excavations. 



We will now proceed to the consideration of the objects found 

 in the excavations. They comprise chippings and lumps of the 

 stones, stone tools, bones, and a few coins and fragments of pottery. 

 The chippings and pieces of stone are those which had been de- 

 tached from the stones and the tools during the operations of 

 shaping and dressing. They were found in very large quantities. 

 All the varieties of rock, of which the sarsens and Milestones " 

 consist, were, as we have already seen, represented, and there was 

 an exceptional, quantity of the soft " fissile rock " and of porphyrite 

 considering the few remains of stones of those materials now 

 existing. 



1 In a paper, "Stonehenge : an Enquiry respecting the Fall of the Trilithons," 

 in Man, 1902, No. 97, Mr. A. L. Lewis adduces evidence to show that the 

 trilithon, of which the " leaning stone " is one of the piers, had fallen before 

 this date. 



