Excavations at Stonehenge
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The first recorded excavations at Stonehenge were carried out by William Cunnington and Richard Colt Hoare. In 1798, Cunnington investigated the pit beneath a recently fallen trilithon and in 1810, both men dug beneath the fallen Slaughter Stone and concluded that it had once stood up. They may have also excavated one of the Aubrey Holes beneath it. In 1839, one Captain Beamish dug around the Altar Stone and a little later Charles Darwin was granted permission by the Antrobus family who owned Stonehenge to hold a small excavation to test his theories about earthworm activity burying ancient structures. On New Year's Eve 1900, another trilithon fell over and Sir Edmund Antrobus undertook to right it and set it in concrete. Following public pressure and a letter to The Times by William Flinders Petrie, he agreed to re-erect the stones under archaeological supervision so that records could be made of the below ground archaeology. Antrobus appointed a mining engineer William Gowland to manage the job who despite having no previous archaeological experience produced some of the finest, most detailed excavation records ever made at the monument. Gowland established that antler picks were used to dig the stone holes and that the stones themselves were worked to shape on site.
The largest excavation at Stonehenge was undertaken by Colonel William Hawley and his assistant Robert Newall after the site came into state hands. Stonehenge and 30 acres of land was purchased by Mr. Cecil Chubb for £6,600 on September 21, 1915 for his wife — she donated the purchase to the British state three years later. Their work began in 1919 following the transfer of land, funded by the Office of Works, and continued until 1926. The two men excavated portions of most of the features at Stonehenge and were the first to establish that it was a multi-phase site.
In 1950 the Society of Antiquaries commissioned Richard J. C. Atkinson, Stuart Piggott and John FS Stone to carry out further excavations. They recovered many cremations and developed the phrasing that still dominates much of what is written about Stonehenge.
As part of service trenching in 1979 and 1980, Mike Pitts led two smaller investigations close by the Heelstone, finding the evidence for its neighbour. More recent excavations have been held to mitigate the effects of electrical cables, sewage pipes, and a footpath through the site.
Since 2003, Mike Parker Pearson has led investigations in the stones area as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project in an attempt to better relate Stonehenge to its surrounding environs. National Geographic Channel will show a two hour documentary exploring Parker Pearson's theories and the work of the Riverside Project in depth in May 2008.
