Hello my name is Neil Wilkin and I'm the curator of early Europe at the British Museum
Welcome to Stonehenge.
Susan we're standing in the middle of Stonehenge can you tell us a bit about what we can see...
So what we're looking at is really the the center of the monument
so these large stones are the Sarsen stones and there's a horseshoe of them
so we've got one trialathon here that's three stones together, another one there,
one at the top of the horseshoe a fourth one and a fifth one.
Some of them have partly fallen down these boulders that you can see around us of the fallen sarsens.
Now we also have the smaller Bluestones these are these pillars that you can see
and they're the ones that have been bought from Wales so those ones that we know
have come from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire in Wales.
All of these stones were put up in around 2500 BC
so that's when the Sarsen stones were put up in the arrangement that we see them today
the Bluestones were later then rearranged about two/three hundred years later
they moved the blue stones from their original positions into the ones that we see them today
but pretty much the monument they've stopped moving stones around
and they've stopped constructing new parts of it by 2300 BC so the late Neolithic
so it's that the right at the end of the Neolithic period.
Although everyone focuses on the monument it's the barrows around it that catch my eye
because in those barrows were found some of the most significant objects
that have ever been found from the Bronze Age in Britain
and they tell a piece of the puzzle about the actual people who visited this monument during its history.
Through the burial mounds and the objects, the grave goods that were buried with the dead
we can learn lots about the identity of people, how they saw themselves in terms of status
but also how they saw one another as as men and women of the period.
We find precious metal and exotic materials brought from all over Britain and Europe
we also find ceramics that tell us of particular cultural identities
and we also find that the human remains that have many secrets to tell us
using studies of ancient DNA we can we can track their mobility
many of the people buried in these mounds were very mobile
and moved across Britain and even indeed came from the continent.
At the beginning before the monument was built but while the landscape was still important
people were bringing into Britain from the continent jadite axes,
beautiful green stone axes from the Italian Alps and they came with the idea and the practice of farming.
Later on around the time the monument started to become significant people started to make objects
and decorate objects with a kind of art that's found right across Britain and Ireland
and in my hand I'm holding a replica of an object that was decorated with the type of motifs
and decorative artwork that's found right across Britain and Ireland at this time over relatively large distances
from here at Stonehenge, right up to Orkney and into Ireland.
Around the time that the monument takes the form that we recognize today
people carrying Beaker pots arrived on these shores and they bring with them new technologies
and new ideas the technology of metalworking and new ideas about death and burial.
It's really interesting because Stonehenge is built right at the cusp of that change
and we think the stones are put up just right at the end of the late Neolithic
but we know that the some of the very earliest Beaker burials in the British Isles
are from very close to Stonehenge. So it may be that the first people that were coming over here
perhaps were attracted to visit Stonehenge and we also know that the Bluestones were rearranged
just at the time when Beaker using people would have been here
and perhaps taking part in construction activities here.
So there's a really interesting overlap right at the end of the Stone Age in effect just at the start of the Bronze Age.
Yeah I like to think that Stonehenge is kind of one of those things that gets built just on the horizon
when they can see that change is coming, it's almost like knuckle down and do what we do even bigger
and more impressive and somehow it's a reaction to the change that's about to come.
And that's great because you know we see that in the artefactual evidence as well,
we see in the in the objects in museums so bringing those two elements together
really I think tells a much bigger story.
Around 2,00o BC people at Stonehenge start to carve the motif of axes onto the stones
and they carve them in a very distinctive form, a form that by studying other axes we can identify
as a type very similar to the replica that I'm holding in my hand and this moment in the history of the monument
already ancient by now, tells us a lot about the way that the world is changing
that the age of stone and of big monuments is fading and a new world of metal
of axes and weapons and tools and ornaments made from bronze is just beginning.
So when Stonehenge was finished we know that it stood here for several hundred years
and not a lot happened in terms of construction activity but we know that about six or seven hundred years
after the stones were put up some carvings were made
there's an upright dagger shape and then next to it here we've got a sort of mushroom shape
and this is actually an axe and these are the clearest carvings but there are actually about
40 or so carvings of axes spread across this stone and they represent some axes and daggers
that we know were being used in around 1800 1700 BC
so these are being carved at the same time that people are burying their dead
in the round barrows in the landscape around here and it seems to have been
that the people here were particularly wealthy perhaps they're involved in metal exchanges,
metal trade we don't know why they carved these particular images onto the stones here at Stonehenge
but it's almost like saying bronze or metal is so important
we're going to add it to the old stone monument.
What I love about these carvings is that you have them here at Stonehenge
and in the Museum in London we have examples of these very types of objects
and I think it's so wonderful that we can bring those objects now here to the new visitor center
and allow people to see both the portrayal
both the portraits of those objects and the actual objects themselves.
Both the British Museum and Stonehenge are places that people have come
and will continue to come to understand their place in the world, their role and their identity.
English heritage have made a video about the making of this carved stone ball and you can see it here.
If you want to find out more about the connections between Stonehenge, objects and the world around it
visit the exhibition at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre the details of which are in description bar.