Understanding more about Stonehenge as a Building

As the New Stonehenge interpretation centre  nears completion at a cost of £27 million *, I thought I should go a a little more detail about my understanding of the peculiar circumstances surrounding this unique building.
In a previous series of articles I have explained the disposition of the site’s postholes in terms of the overall layout of other Class Ei buildings [1, 2].
However, the actual construction sequence offers an explanation why the archaeology of this most intensively studied site has proved so confusing.

Stonehenge and the archaeology of the prehistoric roof

Postholes: cult or craft?

Most of the prehistoric archaeological sites of Britain, even Stonehenge, are covered with postholes, and it is my central contention that these posts were primarily the foundations of timber buildings. Further, since building is a rational process, postholes can be understood in terms of how posts were joined together to create roofed space.

Unfortunately, many academics have convinced themselves that some postholes are the product of a mysterious cult, whose rituals involved placing posts in the ground.

Despite considerable and ongoing research in this cult of postholes and their cosmology, the reasons for this strange behaviour are still not entirely clear. However, unlike the anthropomorphic polytheist religions evident elsewhere in Europe, adherents of these rituals, with remarkable prescience, seemed mainly to be acting out key themes from modern anthropology.

39. Interlace Theory; Understanding Woodhenge

In this article I am going to start prising the lid off a box of treasures so extraordinary that it should change your vision of prehistory. The tool I am going to use is Interlace Theory. Due to the large number of drawings and illustrations involved, this article will deal with Interlace Theory and the next will deal with the detailed modelling of Woodhenge as a building.

Interlace Theory explains how large prehistoric buildings like Woodhenge were constructed, and is based on the detailed structural analysis of archaeological plans. It can account for the precise position, function, and three-dimensional relationships of each of the 156 postholes at Woodhenge, with a reasonable degree of accuracy. It resolves the series of problems with simplistic modelling discussed in the first part of this analysis of Woodhenge.

38. Bronze Age Architecture: Woodhenge

In recent articles we have looked at the typical architecture of the Early Neolithic in Northern Europe. This was clearly domestic and agricultural in nature. However, by the Early Bronze Age in Southern Britain, we see the development of much larger and more elaborate buildings. These structures are marked by concentric rings of posts and have been referred to as type Ei buildings.[1] Woodhenge, overlooking the River Avon, two km from Stonehenge, is one of the best fully excavated examples.

I chose Woodhenge because it goes straight to the heart of the matter: We have a complete plan, so there will be no ambiguity.