Trivia questions about Stone Hinge
What is Stonehenge?
A: Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire,
England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury.
It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen
standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide,
and weighing how much?
A: Around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones.
Inside is a ring of what?
A: Smaller bluestones.
The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards
what?
A: The sunrise on the summer solstice.
The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of
what?
A: The densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England,
including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds).
When do archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was
constructed?
A: 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 when?
A: About 3100 BC.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones
were raised when?
A: Between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as
early as 3000 BC.
One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom,
Stonehenge is regarded as what?
A: A British cultural icon.
It has been a legally protected scheduled monument
since when?
A: 1882, when legislation to protect historic monuments was first
successfully introduced in Britain.
When was the site and its surroundings added to
UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites?
A: In 1986.
Stonehenge is owned by whom?
A: The Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned
by the National Trust.
Stonehenge could have been a “what” from its earliest
beginnings?
A: Burial ground.
Deposits containing human bone date from as early as
when?
A: 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at
least another 500 years.
How do archaeologists define henges?
A: As earthworks consisting of a circular banked enclosure with an internal
ditch.
There is evidence of large-scale construction on and
around the monument that perhaps extends the landscape's time frame to what?
A: 6500 years.
Dating and understanding the various phases of activity
are complicated by disturbance of the natural chalk by what?
A: Periglacial effects and
animal burrowing, poor quality early excavation
records, and a lack of accurate, scientifically verified dates.
Archaeologists have found four, or possibly five, large
Mesolithic postholes (one may have been a natural tree throw), which date to
when?
A: Around 8000 BC, beneath the nearby old tourist car-park in use until
2013.
These held what?
A: Pine posts around two feet six inches (0.75 m) in diameter, which were
erected and eventually rotted in situ.
Three of the posts (and possibly four) were in what?
A: An east–west alignment which may have had ritual significance.
The first monument consisted of what?
A: A circular bank and ditch enclosure made of Late Cretaceous (Santonian
Age) Seaford chalk, measuring about 360 feet (110 m) in diameter, with a
large entrance to the north east and a smaller one to the south.
The builders placed what in the bottom of the ditch?
A: The bones of deer and oxen, as well as some worked flint tools.
The bones were considerably older than what?
A: The antler picks used to dig the ditch, and the people who buried them
had looked after them for some time prior to burial.
The ditch was continuous but had been dug in what?
A: Sections, like the ditches of the earlier causewayed enclosures in the
area.
The chalk dug from the ditch was piled up to form what?
A: The bank. This first stage is dated to around 3100 BC, after which the
ditch began to silt up naturally.
Within the outer edge of the enclosed area is a circle
of what?
A: 56 pits, each about 3.3 feet (1 m) in diameter, known as the Aubrey holes
after John Aubrey, the seventeenth-century antiquarian who was thought to
have first identified them.
These pits and the bank and ditch together are known as
what?
A: The Palisade or Gate Ditch.