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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
The article on Stonehenge that appeared in the January number of the Nineteenth Century demands consideration. The writer, Mr. E. Herbert Stone, after re-stating and defending Sir Norman Lockyer's views, which I shall presently explain, notices ‘some criticisms’, including those of Mr. Arthur Hinks and my own. ‘Rice Holmes’, he says, ‘sets forth the old arguments in favour of the Bronze Age theory, many of which are fallacious … the deservedly high position occupied by Mr. Rice Holmes in the literary world has led some archaeologists, who have not understood the technicalities of the subject, to accept his opinions without question’.
page 344 note 1 ‘Many’ of four (Ancient Britain, pp. 215, 468, 470-1, 476-7)! Mr. Stone (Nature, 29th April 1922, p. 563) attempts to demonstrate the fallacy of one. Quoting the following sentence from Ancient Britain (p. 476)—‘The stones were certainly not standing when round barrows were first erected on Salisbury Plain; for one is contained within the vallum, which, moreover, encroaches upon another’—he says, ‘this argument is based on the assumption that mound No. 94 is really a Bronze Age barrow. The mere fact that in it was found a cremated interment is, however, inconclusive, as we know that the Round Barrow people had a cuckoo-like habit of depositing a cremation in an existing hole or position originally intended for some other purpose.’ Now round barrows were erected towards the end of the Neolithic Age in Scotland, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire; but Mr. Stone is, I believe, the first to suggest that a round barrow of that period exists at Stonehenge.
page 344 note 2 Nature, lxv, 1901, p. 56Google Scholar.
page 345 note 1 Ancient Britain, p. 127. Cf. Guide to the Bronze Age (British Museum), 1910, p. iiGoogle Scholar.
page 345 note 2 i, 1921. PP. 19-41; ii, 1922, PP. 36-52.
page 345 note 3 Ancient Britain, p. 471.
page 346 note 1 On the 22nd of June, 1903, a correspondent of The Times wrote from Salisbury, ‘For the first time for nearly ten years visitors at Stonehenge yesterday morning saw the sun rise’.
page 346 note 2 Ancient Britain, p. 474.
page 346 note 3 Mr. Stone asserts that, ‘an examination of a diagram [not included in his paper] showing the position of the sun's disc at different stages of sunrise and at different dates of possible Stonehenge lifetime will convince any one that for the present inquiry only (a)’—the moment of the ‘first gleam’, ‘when about one-sixteenth of the sun's diameter’ was above the horizon—‘is reasonably possible’. Mr. Hinks was apparently not convinced; for, like Mr. Webb, he pointed out that ‘lastly there is the grave difficulty that everything depends upon guessing right what is the critical phase of the sunrise’.
page 347 note 1 Only the trees on the top of the hill can be descried.
page 348 note 1 Ancient History of Wiltshire, i, 1812, pp. 157-8Google Scholar.
page 348 note 2 Nineteenth Century, 06 1903, p. 1009Google Scholar.