New Stonehenge book charts "ever-changing" story of ancient site
The new book reveals more about the Stone Circle's history
A new book charting the story of Stonehenge has been published - but the author says there is still much to learn about the ancient site.
Dr Susan Greaney, who spent 12 years working at the Stone Circle, has penned Stonehenge: The Story of an Icon, to establish a renewed guide to the monument, drawing on the latest learnings about its history.
Dr Greaney was asked to write the book by English Heritage, who look after the site, and says it's more or less everything she knows about Stonehenge in one place.
"They wanted a new guide that would be gloss and picture heavy with lots of photographs," she said. "Because I had spent such a long time working on Stonehenge, researching and writing and talking to the public about Stonehenge, they asked me to write it.
"So in some ways, it's a kind of culmination of those years of working on Stonehenge."
Author left "in awe" again
Dr Greaney began writing the book in 2022 and we've learnt plenty during that time about the site, including where the stones themselves originated from.
"It's an ever-changing story," she said. "It's actually quite a hard task to write a book and get it all there on paper before it changes again."
She added that one of her great pleasures about the book the new photography of the site.
"It's just such a visually appealing place, it's such a unique landscape. And I think the photographs really capture that," she told Greatest Hits Radio. "For me, it was just kind of being a bit more in awe again about how lovely that area is and how amazing the monument is."
Dr Greaney reveals in the book that Stonehenge's historical use wasn't that dissimilar to how it's used today.
She said that the site was used as a location for feasts and celebrations by people from all over southern Britain, describing it as a "shift" in our understanding of the monument.
"It's somewhere that people travel to like they do today from across quite long distances, so it was a real hub for quite a large area of Britain.
"They were bringing materials, they were bringing pigs and cows for feasting, so it's really interesting to think about what that meant for people in the past and the kind of pilgrimage almost that people were taking to take part in the monument."
The site remains a site for people to gather, with the Solstice and Equinox events among the most important, while English Heritage offers the opportunity for people to visit the site on a daily basis.
However, Dr Greaney says the solstice gatherings are much more of a modern event, telling us that only really started in the 1860s, after the alignment of the stones was rediscovered.
There's still more to unearth
Having already described Stonehenge as "an ever-changing" story, Dr Greaney said there are still many stories to tell about the monuments history, one of which is about its early time as a burial ground.
She said: "Our information about those burials and the pits that they were put into is really quite small because they were excavated in the 1930s and the records that were kept were not very good.
"It would be really good to go back and re-excavate one of those with our modern techniques a bit more about those burials and also what stood in those in those pits."
There's believed to be 56 pits at the site, with some people suggesting stones stood in them, while others think it was for timber posts.
The book is available now and can be bought from the English Heritage shop at Stonehenge.