Qualla: Excavations at Stonehenge

Excavations at Stonehenge: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. In the 1620s the Duke of Buckingham, favourite of King James I, decided he wanted to know what was buried under Stonehenge. He hired men with shovels and dug a great pit in the middle of the circle. He found nothing important and went home. Forty years later the antiquarian John Aubrey could still see the central sunken hollow where the duke's pit had been hastily filled in. That impatient hole is the first recorded archaeological excavation at the most studied prehistoric monument in the world.

Image: Public domain

Excavations at Stonehenge: Gentlemen with shovels

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lt.-Col. William Hawley, Public domain. Dr William Harvey, the physician who discovered the circulation of the blood, dug at Stonehenge with a man named Gilbert North in the early 17th century. Inigo Jones, the architect, dug there too while writing his survey, the one that gave the Altar Stone its name. They were foll...

Image: Lt.-Col. William Hawley | Public domain

Excavations at Stonehenge: New Year's Eve, 1900

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 31 December 1900 Stone 22 of the outer sarsen circle toppled over, dragging its lintel down with it. Public outrage followed. William Flinders Petrie, the Egyptologist who had spent years documenting Egyptian temples, wrote to The Times demanding that the monument be properly ...

Image: Public domain

Excavations at Stonehenge: The most generous wife in archaeology

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 21 September 1915 a barrister and breeder of shire horses named Cecil Chubb walked into a Salisbury auction. He paid 6,600 pounds for Stonehenge and thirty acres of land, reportedly on a whim, supposedly as a gift for his wife Mary. Mary was not delighted, and three years late...

Image: Public domain

Excavations at Stonehenge: The healing place

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Since 2003 Mike Parker Pearson has run the Stonehenge Riverside Project, treating the whole landscape around the stones as one connected ritual complex. In 2008 Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University and Geoff Wainwright excavated a small area inside the circle to date the earlies...

Image: Public domain