Munich exhibition reveals Stonehenge honoured the dead

An exhibition at Munich’s Archaeological State Collection reveals new findings about Stonehenge, the massive stone circle in southern England. BR reports that the monument was built to honour the dead rather than as a temple for a cult of the gods.

Stonehenge is an extraordinary feat of engineering. The circle consists of monoliths weighing up to 40 tonnes and standing up to five metres tall, linked by lintels up to seven metres long. It was built around 5,000 years ago, during the Stone Age, without iron or steel tools, cranes, wheels or other machines.

Archaeologist Heiner Schwarzberg of the Archaeological State Collection said the monument was also remarkable from an organisational perspective. Hundreds of people must have moved the stones, requiring a plan and people to coordinate the construction. Groups from different parts of Britain would also have had to gather and be supplied over a long period.

For around 1,000 years, scholars and amateur researchers have debated how and why Stonehenge was built. At various points, the stone circle was even cited as evidence for giants, magicians or extraterrestrials.

New excavations launched in 2003 followed an insight from British archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson. After studying burial rituals in Madagascar with a colleague, he concluded that stone represented ancestors while wood represented the living: stone was eternal, while wood was perishable.

A similar wooden circle called Woodhenge lies three kilometres from Stonehenge. The findings from the excavations suggest that Stonehenge was a monument honouring the dead. Its alignment with the sunrise and sunset at the winter and summer solstices does not change that conclusion.

Geologists also established that all the stones came from elsewhere. Some originated in Wales, about 220 kilometres away, while others came from the southern coast. The altar stone at the centre came from northern Scotland, around 900 kilometres away.

The exhibition presents these findings through models, reconstructions, large dioramas and videos, alongside more than 600 original Stone Age artefacts. They include antler picks used to dig the holes for the monoliths, stones used to shape them and bone needles found in waste from the settlement beside Stonehenge.

According to Parker Pearson, the artefacts show that people transported the stones to Stonehenge rather than glaciers carrying them there during the Ice Age. He said the monument was both a place for ancestors and a gathering place for the people of Britain, with the stones symbolising their identity and connection to the land.

The exhibition Stonehenge: Ancient secrets, new discoveries is open at the Archaeological State Collection in Munich until August 29, 2027.