‘Stonehenge was cemetery first and foremost: From the start 5,000 years ago, the site was a burial ground-perhaps for prehistoric rulers-and it remained so for centuries.’

When most people think of Stonehenge they imagine the huge iconic stones, not the site on which they were raised (which began as a relatively simple circular earthwork some 500 years earlier). The idea that it (i.e. Stonehenge) was a ‘cemetery first and foremost’ is not correct. True there were cremation burials inserted earlier features from the outset, but by the time Stonehenge itself was constructed new inhumation burial practices were prevalent. Barrow mounds began to appear in the wider landscape and despite the fact that Stonehenge itself remained a focus of activity for almost another 1,000 years hardly any further Bronze Age burials were added on the site. In conclusion we might say that the site on which Stonehenge was built was used as a cemetery prior to the construction of the stone monument. The iconic structure appears to mark the end of that period, heralding a new and dynamic regime whose ‘cosmological model’ was quite distinct from that of the communities who used the earlier earthwork as a focus for cremations