Stonehenge and its landscape

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, Stonehenge polarized academic opinion between those (mainly astronomers) who claimed it demonstrated great astronomical sophistication and those (mainly archaeologists) who denied it had anything to do with astronomy apart from the solstitial alignment of its main axis. Now, several decades later, links to the annual passage of the sun are generally recognized as an essential part of the function and meaning not only of Stonehenge but also of several other nearby monuments, giving us important insights into beliefs and actions relating to the seasonal cycle by the prehistoric communities who populated this chalkland landscape in the third millennium BC Links to the moon remain more debatable.