Stonehenge Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of a ring of standing stones, with each standing stone around high, wide and weighing around 25 tons. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds. Archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were
Stonehenge atop mounds. The mounds are known as "barrows" although they do not contain burials. Stonehenge Avenue, a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading to the River Avon, was also added. Two ditches similar to Heelstone Ditch circling the Heelstone (which was by then reduced to a single monolith) were later dug around the Station Stones. During the next major phase of activity, 30 enormous Oligocene-Miocene sarsen stones "(shown grey on the plan)" were brought to the site. They may have come from a quarry around north of Stonehenge on the Marlborough Downs, or they may have been collected from