Stonehenge: Mystery of mighty stones solved by archaeologists

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. New archaeological research about the site has revealed that even 1200 years before Stonehenge was built, the West Woods area’s great sarsen slabs were used to construct a massive local prehistoric tomb. open image in gallery A large sarsen stone at West Woods, the probable source of Stonehenge’s rocks ) On the balance of probabilities, it’s perhaps more likely that the builders of Stonehenge opted for the western route, despite the need to haul the stones up a hill. open image in gallery Return of the core from Stone 58 at Stonehenge to English Heritage in 2018 ) Having discovered the source of the giant stones of Stonehenge, archaeologists may soon be in in a position to make another potentially significant discovery about more than 100 fragments of sarsen stone found at Marden. open image in gallery David Nash, from the University of Brighton, analysing the sarsen core extracted from Stone 58 ) Sarsen stone, the type of rock used to build Stonehenge and Avebury stone circle, may well have been regarded as profoundly mysterious by prehistoric people — because they normally only occur as loose or semi-buried boulders, completely unconnected to any bedrock.