Anglo-Saxon Stonehenge

Abstract Latin and vernacular histories of England and Britain from the early twelfth century onwards testify to various names for the exceptional prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain. A British tradition prioritized by Geoffrey of Monmouth shows a split, attributable to the unfamiliarity of an archaic term, between names translatable as ‘Giants’ Dance’ and ‘Giants’ Ring’. The Old English name which gives us ‘Stonehenge’, meanwhile, identifies the megalithic structure with a place of judicial incarceration or punishment. While imaginative, that is significantly embedded in a phase of later Anglo-Saxon history when displays of authority were determinedly imposed on the landscape. Archaeological evidence shows that Stonehenge itself served as the site of one execution, possibly more, in the late eighth or ninth century. Recognition of this stage in the long sequence of societal engagement with the monument sheds light both on the site itself and its context, before and through the transition to Norman England.