More than a million people visit the Stonehenge World Heritage Site every year, pondering the stones and soaking up the surrounding landscape. When was it built? Who built it? What was it? How did it work? Here Timothy Darvill argues that around 2600 BC local communities transformed an existing sanctuary into a cult centre that developed a big reputation: perhaps as an oracle and healing place. For centuries people came from near and far, and even after activities at the site began to decline the memory lived on and people chose to be buried within sight of the stones. But Stonehenge itself is only part of a story that involves the whole landscape. People first came to the area during the last Ice Age nearly half a million years ago. Long before Stonehenge was built they were erecting posts, digging pits to contain sacred objects, and constructing long mounds to house their dead. By the Age of Stonehenge this was a heavily occupied landscape with daily life focused along the River Avon. Later, farms and hamlets were established, Roman villas came and went, and from about AD 1000 the pattern of villages dotted along the valleys and the town of Amesbury came to prominence. In the last hundred years or so the army established training grounds and camps, but the biggest battles in recent years have been over the future of the Stonehenge landscape.

Long barrows with their massive tapering mounds and hidden burial chambers, bear witness to the architectural proficiency of our ancestors. Built by early farming communities between 4000 and 3000 BC, they form part of Western Europe's earliest surviving architecture. Today they are familiar features of our landscape, with over 200 examples scattered across the Cotswold Hills, north Wessex Downs, and the hills and vales west of the River Severn. As well as exploring their design, construction and purpose, and the ceremonies that took place at these impressive structures, Professor Timothy Darvill examines their origins, considers their relationships with similar sites elsewhere in Britain, and shows how they acted as permanent focal points in a changing landscape.

A uniquely British phenomenon, the 30 or so figures cut into the turf of southern England have excited antiquarians, archaeologists, and the general public for generations. However, their origins are enigmatic. Paul Newman shows how hill-figures reveal Britain's darkest past: Druid massacres, conjectured human sacrifice, and strange phallic and pagan rites that in milder form survive even today. In recent years much has changed in the world of hill-figure studies, most significantly perhaps the absolute dating by scientific means of early silts incorporated into the Uffington White Horse, which can now be seen to date from around 1000 BC. These and other discoveries and reinterpretations are among the many features which make this book essential reading for all those who have been captivated by the potent symbolism of chalk hill-figures.