Book Review: Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell

Finally plowed all the way through Stonehenge, by Bernard Cornwell, for two reasons. One: we wanted to see the darn thing built. No spoiler there. You know the thing does get built.

How they raised the lintels is always a matter of controversy and as a warning for some Chariots of the Gods fans, there are no aliens involved, which is good thing. Give the humans some credit for the emergence of intelligence, and application of brute force which would have been their strength in that era.

It’s a plausible-sounding method I hadn’t heard of as a possibility. It does not involve building earthen ramps as has been proposed, due to — as one of the characters points out — a thin top soil layer over the chalk bedrock of the area; there might not have been enough earth to gather for ramps with reasonable effort. We won’t give the lintel-lifting method away. If it interests you then you are the reader the author is looking for.

The other reason we wanted to see this book through to the end was, without even peeking, we sensed there would be an afterward where the author talks about the research on which the book was based. We were looking forward to that and was not disappointed.

The author’s strength is in the knowledge — no, complete mastery – of the subject exhibited in that Historical Note afterward. He admits at the outset of the Historical Note that nothing of the plot, characters or action are anything but fiction.

Limitation of the narrative, in fact, prevents some of the more interesting findings on the site from being included, such as the fact that there are painted circles in the parking lot at Stonehenge that mark the locations of ancient post holes from 8000 BC, 5000 years prior to the start of the Neolithic Stonehenge construction.

In the story, a political/religious conflict involving early Bronze Age villages is conjured up, and all of it struggles to reach the level of contrivance. At the root of it, you find out early, is gold. In the afterward is a mention that a body had been found that had been buried with gold piece artifacts just like those in the story.

The hero, Saban, is not all that heroic, letting events wash over him pretty much exactly like a hero isn’t supposed to do, and at times, indeed, allowing himself to be pushed around and knocked about. At one point the line “Seize him!” is actually spoken. Enough said.

All in all a run-of-the-mill impetus to a plodding build-up to the construction of one of humankind’s earliest engineering achievements. Read it for the account of the gathering, transportation and placement of the stones, but don’t expect much from the surrounding story.

Market-oriented Stone Circles

You’ll have as much luck convincing your dedicated drum-pounding,  sun-worshipping, neo-druid wiccan  to buy this as you will your average Chariots of the Gods UFO fan that Area 51 had a valid Cold War purpose (which may have included spreading — or at least allowing the spread — of alien scare stories.)

Wrap your Occam’s Razor around this.  They were markets and, more ingeniously, a tool for dividing and corralling animals.

Simon Hedger — a talented man with credentials along these lines, who works with wood (really works with it well, as opposed to dilettantes like yours truly who talk a good work-with-wood who’s never planed a plank in anger) and is based in the King Arthur Country Wales, up the road from Brynn Myrddin, where Merlin his-own-self is said to sleep away the ages — has worked out a possible (and we say quite likely) down-to-Earth purpose for your basic stone circle. 

And considering ancient tendencies toward myth-making, the circles possibly carried with them some mystical appurtenances. After all, we have the all-seeing eye on our US currency, don’t we? There is something magical about money, and it surely, like the powers in all good magic stories, can be used for good or ill.

But by and large, Stonehenge likely had a mostly commercial purpose.

Be sure to look at the Figures illustrating in great detail how this would have worked.