The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project

Abstract

Over the centuries many archaeologists have investigated the site of Stonehenge and we now know a great deal about the phasing and nature of the site. However, the area around the henge, while containing many symbolic and ritual elements, is curiously ‘blank’. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project aims to place the site and its development through time within a landscape context using fast and accurate ground-based geophysical techniques. The project has developed a rapid strategy to map, visualize and interpret landscape-scale data and is applying the strategy to the area known as the Stonehenge ‘envelope’. The data are interpreted within a data rich three-dimensional data cube that has provided new insights regarding the apparent blank areas surrounding Stonehenge. It is an aim of the project to discover more about Stonehenge by looking out from the site rather than looking at it.