Stonehenge was not an observatory used by druidical astronomer-priests. It was, instead, a monument in which the moon and the sun and the dead were joined together. In this book the author explains how people in the British Isles, four thousand or more years ago, identified life and death with the cycle of midwinter and midsummer and with the risings and settings of the sun and moon. This is why so many megalithic monuments have astronomical sightlines built into them. This book describes how astronomical customs developed in the British Isles. Unlike other works about 'megalithic astronomy' technical explanations about azimuths and declinations are kept to their simplest. The emphasis here is upon people rather than pertrubations and eclipses.

William Stukeley (1667-1765), one of the first to conduct fieldwork at Stonehenge and to recognize its historic importance, meticulously recorded his findings in a manuscript that has remained unpublished for hundreds of years. That manuscript is transcribed here, accompanied by detailed annotations that confirm the value of Stukeley's archaeological research and set it apart from his later unsustainable theories and obsessions with Druids, which appeared in 'Stonehenge', the book he published in 1740. Trained as a medical doctor, Stukeley's interests were antiquarian and archaeological, with a particular enthusiasm for evidence of early sacred ritual. His Stonehenge field notes include careful measurements, drawings and plans as well as original analyses and remarkable discoveries, among them the enigmatic cursus which no one before him had seen. Stukeley's manuscript provides a fascinating review of what could be said of the stone circle and its landscape in the early eighteenth century. Aubrey Burl was formerly principal lecturer in archaeology, Hull College of Higher Education, East Riding of Yorkshire.His many books on stone circles include 'Prehistoric Avebury' and 'A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany'. Neil Mortimer edited the archaeology folklore journal '3rd Stone' between 1996 and 2003. He is a columnist for 'British Archaeology' and the author of 'Stukeley Illustrated'.

Britain's leading expert on stone circles turns his attention to the greatest example of them all - Stonehenge. Every aspect of Stonehenge is re-considered in Aubrey Burl's new analysis. He explains for the first time how the outlying Heel Stone long predates Stonehenge itself, serving as a trackway marker in the prehistoric Harroway. He uncovers new evidence that the Welsh bluestones were brought to Stonehenge by glaciation rather than by man. And he reveals just how far the design of Stonehenge was influenced by Breton styles and by Breton cults of the dead. Meticulously research sets the record straight on the matter of Stonehenge's astronomical alignments. Although the existence of a sightline to the midsummer sunrise is well known, the alignment and the viewing-position are different from popular belief. And the existence of an earlier alignment to the moon and a later one to the midwinter sunset has been largely unrealized. One almost unexplained puzzle remains. The site of Stonehenge lies at the heart of a vast six-mile wide graveyard, but before it was built there appears to have been a mysterious gap two miles across on that site.Burl argues that earlier totem-pole style constructions served a ceremonial purpose for the living - to celebrate success in the hunt.