Stonehenge Complete

Since its first and prize-winning edition of 1983, “Stonehenge Complete has established itself as the classic account of this most famous of ancient places. For this new edition, Christopher Chippindale has revised and updated the story to include the latest theories and discoveries. People have puzzled over Stonehenge for centuries, speculating and dreaming about it, drawing and painting it, trying to make sense of it. Here is the story of the one real Stonehenge, as well as the many unreal Stonehenges that archaeologists, tourists, mystics, astronomers, artists, poets, and visionaries have made out of it. New studies in the last decade have revolutionized our knowledge of the complex sequence of structures that make its celebrated profile; remarkably, these new discoveries have been made without new excavations. Stonehenge today is as lively as it ever was. After a period of dissent and confrontation, visitors are once again welcome to see the sun rise over the Heel stone on midsummer solstice day, and some 20,000 people are expected to gather at midsummer dawn this year. As the new edition explains, they are in error: although Stonehenge is indeed astronomically oriented, it is not aligned on the midsummer sunrise at all.