00 BC*), and not one but many different groups of people were involved in the process. How they came about plays an important role in understanding them. Some of the first men to come to England that are connected to the Stonehenge builders came when the

The last major group to put time into the construction of Stonehenge was the Wessex culture group. They arrived on Salisbury plain around 1400 BC, and were involved in building the most prominent part of Stonehenge- the great stone circles (Niel, 86). These people were well organized, and probably less aggressive than their predecessors, while more industrious. The people of Wessex were less concerned with war than they were with art, peace, and trade. In the graves of their chieftains (the only members of society who were preserved for afterlife), were goods such as daggers, bows, and various other ornaments. Their access to such treasures can perhaps be attributed to their great international traders who probably traded with people from the Mediterranean Sea area (Hawkins, 37). They built the final phase of Stonehenge, and perhaps brought about many cultural changes to the monument such as giving the monument visual magnificence and more astronomical precision (Service!

It is necessary, in order to understand the complexity involved in the assembling of Stonehenge, to know the process by which and the environment in which the monument was built. By the time Stonehenge was built, the landscape around the area on Salisbury Plain was rather open with more farmland and grazing land, and less forest. Underneath the first few feet of soil on Salisbury Plain there was a substantial layer of hard chalk, which made building rudimentary structures somewhat easier for the people of the era.

Stonehenge represents the evolving and changing society of prehistoric times that gradually changed into a well-developed society with rulers, priests, and a working and farming class, as well as relations with other cultures from far away with which to engage in trade and associate. The idea that men from the Stone Age were unintelligent, ill-mannered barbarians is far from the truth in the case of Stonehenge.

The complexity and intelligence of the peoples of Stonehenge can also be seen in surrounding monuments created by them and their neighbors. Most of the enclosures and round barrows in the vicinity of Stonehenge were created for burial purposes, with one or two people buried within them, usually accompanied by valuables such as daggers, pottery, and in some cases, gold ornaments (Souden, 44). These treasures often represent high status or high political position, indicating a structured government and system of beliefs that the cultures of Salisbury Plain possessed.

There is an outermost circle (still considerably inside the ditch and bank) of 30 of the sarsen stones, each averaging 13 feet 6 inches tall (Niel, 28), and each connected by a lintel stone to each stone on either side. Just inside that circle of sarsens is a circle of bluestones, smaller stones which are usually not too much more than 6 feet tall. Inside of the bluestone circle is the trilithon horseshoe, or a horseshoe-shaped setting of sarsens in trilithons, or two sarsens standing next to each other with one lintel across the top. The open end of the horseshoe faces the northeast. Inside the trilithon horseshoe is a bluestone horseshoe. Inside the bluestone horseshoe, somewhat towards the center, is the altar stone, which might not have been used for that purpose. At the entrance to the monument, the heel stone stands just south of the line that runs down the center of the avenue, and not far off lies the slaughter stone, laying on the ground in the break of the circ!

The next group to contribute to Stonehenge was the Beaker people, known for the beaker-like pottery they would frequently bury with their dead. These people did not practice the ritual of collective burials, rather single or double burials, and the dead were accompanied by more weapons such as daggers and axes. These single burials were in the form of round barrows. The Beaker people wer

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