Theories about Stonehenge for solstitial alignments in stonehenge and the timber circles at Durrington Walls and Woodhenge as well. Mike Parker Pearson also believes that the stonehenge was a monument of unification, bringing together different groups with different ancestries. He surmises that the five trilithons in the center of stonehenge could have symbolized five tribal lineages charting their descent from five original ancestors. The Preseli Hills might have had some ancestral significance for the stonehenge builders as well (perhaps this was their place of origin), this may have been the motive behind dragging the bluestones all the way from Preseli Hills to Wiltshire.
Stonehenge Cursus was excavated by John Thurnam in 1868, recovering an ox skull and some secondary inhumations. The barrow has since been levelled and is now underneath a bridleway running along King Barrow Ridge. The 2m deep eastern ditch of the barrow was excavated once in the 1980s by Julian Richards and his team for the Stonehenge Environs Project, although they failed to find any dateable material. The Stonehenge Riverside Project excavated the ditch once more in 2008. As long ago as 1979, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments recommended that the barrow should be better protected, by diverting the bridleway around