Enjoyably daft new theory about Stonehenge from Julian Spalding, which has prompted a classic archaeologist putdown from Sir Barry Cunliffe, emeritus professor of European archaeology at Oxford, “He could be right, but I know of no evidence to support it.”
The idea that Stonehenge might have been built as the base for a higher structure is initially attractive, but doesn’t bear much thinking about.
If you want to construct a high building, everyone from Egypt to Mesoamerica did so by creating a wide and stable mass – like a pyramid – so that you could erect upper storries.
Having a thin wide circle as the base for a higher walkway or superstructure seems deeply illogical, as the late Leonard Nimoy would say.
That there was an element of procession, both to and around Stonehenge, seems very probable, not least because of the evidence provided by the nearby oval Cursus, the Avenue to Stonehenge, and from what we know of prehistoric man’s instincts around the world. But the idea that they walked around on top of the stones may be seductive, but is highly unlikely.
More consistent is the idea of a concealed place, like Bronze Age mortuary circles: that the outer ring delineated a private space within, which may have been only accessible to the privileged or theocratic, as discussed in The Green Road into the Trees when talking about Seahenge.