Not a fortress, or a temple, or a calendar. Stonehenge was a hospital

The new archaeological theory as to why huge monoliths were dragged from Wales to Salisbury Plain is utterly convincing

Simon Jenkins
Friday December 1, 2006
The Guardian

The Stonehenge mystery is solved. I always knew there was something odd about the "Amesbury archer". He died circa 2300BC and was rediscovered near the henge in Wiltshire in 2002, one of the most sensational prehistoric corpses ever found. His hair was laced with gold, the earliest found in England. His grave contained traces of fine clothes and implements of archery and copper-working. Analysis of his bones and teeth revealed that he came from central Europe, probably Switzerland, with possessions from Spain and France. Was this evidence of invasion? Was the Amesbury archer a Beaker lord of Stonehenge and were foreigners perhaps responsible for moving its giant bluestones from Wales?

One thing about the archer was strange. He was missing a kneecap, requiring him to walk with one leg rigid. Bone deterioration suggested that the deformity took place years before his death. He was an improbable warrior, more likely a rich trader. Besides, near him lay a younger male revealed (such being the wonders of science) as a close relative brought up in south-east England. So what was this wealthy but disabled man doing in the shadow of Stonehenge, far from his and his putative son's birthplace?

Cut to the hallowed meeting room of the Society of Antiquaries in London last October. It was packed with excited Stonehenge pundits (the serious ones), gathered to hear news from the front. The origin of Stonehenge is British archaeology's oldest unsolved mystery, its Fermat's last theorem. How the four-ton bluestones were brought to Salisbury Plain from the Preseli hills of south Wales has been answered by engineers, but nobody has found out why.

Why go to the colossal expense of such transportation, when Stonehenge's sandstone monoliths were dragged from down the road at Marlborough? What was so special about the bluestones? To this the Gog and Magog of Stonehenge studies, Professors Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill, were to give their answer. Theirs was archaeology's noblest endeavour, to pull the sword of meaning from the stone of time.

Darvill teased his audience by asking it to vote on half a dozen Stonehenge theories, many of them beloved by colleagues in the hall. Was it perhaps a fortress, a temple, an astronomical device, or a ring of ancestors turned to stone? None of these explained the need for such a gargantuan effort of trans-shipment. What was it about Wales that Wiltshire could not offer?

The answer had to lie in Preseli itself, in the hills of Carn Menyn and Carn Goedog where Stonehenge's dolerite and rhyolite bluestones were quarried. (They are still littered with the prehistoric quarrymen's discarded monoliths.) This rolling landscape has become intensive archaeological hunting ground. Wainwright, Darvill and Bournemouth University have crawled every inch. Somewhere in these wild moors and rocky outcrops must be the key to Stonehenge.

What is most remarkable about Preseli is the plethora of springs on the hillside. Many "holy wells" have been ascribed miraculous healing powers throughout history. But Preseli's are remarkable for their number and for the dolmens, enclosures and barrows surrounding the area. More remarkable still, in front of each are bluestones, rearranged and decorated as if to create an altar and a pool. This was clearly a place of prehistoric pilgrimage, and the bluestones were thought to hold its magic.

By the agrarian revolution of the third millennium BC Stonehenge was already an important site, but its extension about 2300BC was clearly intended by its guardians to make it a major pilgrimage attraction. This needed some sensational draw, and what could be more sensational than a henge composed of the fabled Preseli bluestones, fount of a hundred holy wells? It was worth any Olympian expense.

The medieval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth told of a belief in the healing power of Stonehenge's stones, brought by Arthur's magician, Merlin, "from Ireland", where stones have long had magic properties. Geoffrey's stories are ridiculed, but his folk memory might contain a grain of truth. Could the appeal of the bluestones lie not in ancestor worship or astronomical ritual but in the power these objects were thought to hold back in Preseli? In his new book, Stonehenge: Biography of a Landscape, Darvill points out that the arrangement of the stones at Stonehenge even reflects their geological location back in Wales.

Stonehenge was distinct among British henges - in its scale and spacious setting, and in the exceptional number of burial mounds round it. As Darvill says, it was "constantly being remodelled and changed over a period of perhaps a thousand years ... getting larger, more grand and more complicated". True its architecture is dominated by astronomical calculations, implying a priesthood and time-related rituals. But this would have meant nothing to ordinary mortals. What drew them to Stonehenge from across Europe must have been specific, a reputation for relief from disease and disability.

Throughout history religion has sold itself as offering salvation in this life as well as the next. The mass appeal of the early church lay in the quackery of relics and miracles. In many cultures priests are still medicine men. This may embarrass theologians, but it rarely embarrassed monks or missionaries. Monasteries were the teaching hospitals of their day and reliquaries their medicine chests. Miraculous relics changed hands for vast sums (and vast wars). Pretending to save bodies was as profitable as pretending to save souls, if more vulnerable to disproof.

That is why the 10th-century monks of Ely stole the remains of St Withburga from her church at East Dereham, eager for its large pilgrim income. That is why the canons of Windsor in 1478 robbed the tomb of "Doctor" Schorne of North Marston in Buckinghamshire. Schorne was a quack rector who invented a cure for gout (getting his patients to wash in his hugely profitable well). He was even revered as a saint. By relocating his corpse to Windsor the canons hoped to raise funds for their new St George's Chapel - and did. They were even forced to pay compensation to North Marston. The shrine of Holywell in Clwyd is still visited by devout Catholics, who change into swimming costumes to plunge into the holy waters. The line between faith healing and alternative medicine has always been a fine one.

The curative properties in wells relate, if at all, to their cleanliness and chemical composition. To the best of my knowledge there has been no analysis of Preseli's water to see if it has any "spa" components such as iron salts. Either way, moving the bluestones was a massive leap of medical faith. But it was one that clearly worked. As Darvill points out, the burial mounds round Stonehenge are not just unprecedented in their number but also in the deformities of their inmates.

I find this theory convincing. The joy of archaeology is that it licenses wild conjecture by subjecting it to the relentless test of science. Here it cries, plus ça change ... In the third millennium BC - as in the third AD - the rich would go anywhere and believe any nonsense if they thought it might win them health and longevity. The Amesbury archer was a Swiss migrant taken by his son to Europe's most famous faith healers, with their magic stones and astronomical mumbo-jumbo. Stonehenge's appeal was not religious. It answered to the simplest of human cravings, the relief of pain and the postponement of death. The Great Cursus points not to heaven but to Harley Street.