Archaeology and Social Change
Brian Fagan shared these ideas: "All archaeologists are united by their common interest in studying humanity in the past. Whether they focus on the earliest humans or on those of recent times, they all agree that archaeology has three main goals:

• To study archaeological sites and their contents in a context of time and space, to describe long sequences of human culture,

• To reconstruct past lifeways, to deduce how humans made their livings, and

• To explain why human cultures changed, or why they remained the same, over long periods of time.

Many people think that archaeology is an expensive luxury in a world where grinding poverty and hunger are commonplace. Why, they ask, is it important to dig up and study the past? Archaeology is unique among all the sciences, as it is the only reliable way of studying and explaining how human societies have changed-or remained the same-over very long periods of time. Quite apart from studying our origins among the nonhuman primates, the long time frame of archaeology allows us to trace the origins of modern humanity. " This is an important concept to understand about archaeological research. What archaeologists possess is TIME and with that there is a natural ability to question how society or societies changed. Are their commonalities or differences in how this change takes place in one area of the world versus another.

Archaeologists explore the past in ways that involve discovery of human cultural remains. This may begin with an excavation of a single site, but often it is the accumulation of knowledge not only from this site but elsewhere that helps to build an understanding of the past. Ultimately, archaeology is anthropology and as such there is a goal of understanding humanity at large. To look at a single site such as Stonehenge means to look deeply into what can be learned at this one site, and at the same time, what can be learned about the human experience in a broader sense. The story of Stonehenge is one that unfolds over time. It was not constructed as one building event but as a series of them. The story cannot be told without understanding what came before and after Stonehenge was in use. This is the story of one site and how to understand it you need to step back and view it from this larger perspective. Stonehenge does serve as a wonderful example of how archaeologist examine the past and build an understanding of time and space in an effort to understand human cultures and how they operate.

Archaeologists often talk in terms of social change processes or transformations.  They want to understand how changes occur and most importantly why those changes will occur.  In a sense, they can study one culture to understand the nature of social change, but the real importance lies in making cross-cultural comparisons to find out if those same processes occur and for the same reasons.

Archaeologists can look at a site such as Stonehenge, for example, and see that it was built by a group of people with a certain purpose. They can even know that the purpose may have changed over time so served several purposes. They can hypothesize it was a monument that tied people together into a larger whole.  It was built by a powerful individual who was capable of mobilizing a large work force and constructing something that we marvel at today. Archaeologists can assume this simply because large work efforts everywhere require organization such as this.

Archaeologists understand that Stonehenge itself was built over several hundred years. Dating techniques can help shape our impressions of how to date stages. At one point when it was begun, construction stopped and Stonehenge was abandoned.  They know that some of the stones that are called the Blue Stones were erected once, taken down, and then rearranged in the pattern we see today.  So Stonehenge was part of a process in and of itself.  Yet we must go back in time to really appreciate the social processes that were unfolding and leading up to Stonehenge.

Archaeology relies on the exploration of sites that provide the most insights since they have been preserved in some way. This enables archaeologists to explore these sites and use their insights to help construct analogies that can be applied elsewhere. The early phases of cultural history in the Stonehenge area have not been preserved. Plowing and development have destroyed them. So archaeologists have to turn elsewhere for understanding of these early stages of development.

The first step in our exploration takes us to a site far away from Stonehenge called Skara Brae.  This site is in the Orkney Islands north of England.  It is a place where archaeologists are able to see how people began to use stone for burial chambers.  The preservation in this area is extremely good so we can see the sites better than we can in other areas. Skara Brae was covered in sand so archaeologists have a "time-capsule" of sorts that opens up wonderful insights to life there. This is the early Neolithic period.  People are just adopting a way of life centered around agriculture.  The story of Skara Brae helps us understand the purpose of the first megaliths in England and at the same time the nature of early Neolithic society in another.

GO TO SKARA BRAE

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The story of Stonehenge is one where we begin to see that early agricultural people who lived in the Stonehenge region were probably like those at Skara Brae. They worshipped their ancestors and created chambered tombs as central unifying places for communities. The society was egalitarian in nature and some craft work and trade was emerging. The chambered tombs of the Orkney Islands are found in southern England where they are known as Long Barrows. Long Barrows are places where people collected the bones of their ancestors just as in the Orkneys. They also began to build places where the deceased was taken and the body allowed to rot before the bones were collected and then placed within the chambers of Long Barrows. These large circular features are called Causewayed Enclosures.

What is clear from this segment of the story is that the amount of labor to construct Long Barrows and what are called Causewayed Enclosures is extensive. A process of change was occurring. Driven by population growth and other changes in the nature of society, archaeologists are able to see that the megalithic tombs began a process of change that were to lead to henges such as Stonehenge. Ultimately Stonehenge was only one stage in a larger processual change within southern England that began before it was constructed and continued well after it was abandoned.

The megalithic world emerged throughout the Mediterranean and was clearly part of what we have observed already in the Orkney chambered tombs and the Long Barrows of southern England. Archaeologists have to look at the Long Barrows for some answers.

Society was larger in this part of England than in than in the Orkneys, and therefore, could afford larger monuments and some of these Long Barrows were very large in deed. Yet there was something else that the people of southern England were constructing and that was called a Causeway Enclosure. These required far more effort and seemed to take on a greater significance in drawing people together collectively. These seem to be central places for people to come to and were clearly important for remembering ancestors. Enclosures were places where the body of the dead were left to decompose. Offerings were placed within the ditch surrounding the enclosures and perhaps even within the confines of the large "cemetery". Once the bones were defleshed, however, they were collected and put into the Long Barrows within separate chambers.

This was a period when tribal ways of life were clearly evident. Trade and commerce were present and people lived in relatively small villages. There is evidence in southern England that some items were obtained from relatively long distance trade and interaction. The evidence tends to point to a society, however, that was still largely egalitarian in nature. The collective tombs seem to still indicate that equality was important within the social fabric at this time. Still, Stonehenge is yet to be built. Yet it is about to be started. Stonehenge starts as an enclosure and then construction and use stop for a while. The ditch is not typical of other enclosures and is on the outside of the ditch. Why this is the case and why Stonehenge was started but never completed are mysteries. But there appear to be changes occurring in society that may have led people to stop construction and ultimately begin to rebuild it with a new design.

Some time after 3000 B.C., people began to construct henges. Some of these were constructed out of wood and others were formed around large stones. We can look at the site of Avebury near Stonehenge to see what henges looked like. Yet, the most important part of what archaeologists know about this period of time is that society was undergoing a major change. The scale of construction and the logistics of organizing the manpower necessary to build henges required a more formal leadership. Society required what was a strong central leadership and a form of society anthropologists call a chiefdom emerged in southern England. This is what is thought of as a segmentary society - one which is differentiated in terms of rank and status. It was what anthropologists call a chiefdom with a single high status ruler.

When people began to build Stonehenge again, it was designed to serve another purpose than an enclosure. Archaeologists look at the context of what was happening around Stonehenge to begin to explore the purpose it probably served for society at the time. Surrounding Stonehenge on ridges around a valley are graves of important people. They are buried in single graves rather than in the collective manner they had been before. People at this point where buried in cemeteries or in what are called Round Barrows. Some of the people buried around Stonehenge were very important in deed. Yet, stonehenge was constructed in a sequent that was going to take several hundred years.

The story of Stonehenge is more than just when and what was constructed. While there is a sequence and process by which Stonehenge was actually built, there were fundamental issues that we can see in terms of how society was not organized. It was very different than before and clearly what we found at Avebury provide clues to those changes. Society was not longer egalitarian but ranked and structured. This is an important shift within societies that are more complex than tribal societies. It means that some mechanism was causing society to structure and to become unequal. The driving force for that is something like trade and access to wealth. Society was unequal in terms of access to some resources and therefore some people began to accumulate wealth at the expense of others. This shift to unequal access and then unequal possession is significant in terms of how society organized itself. Some people were wealthier and more powerful than others. No longer could you bury your dead in a collective tomb as if society was equal. Now the Round Barrows were necessary because they marked important people in society who were buried in special places like surrounding Stonehenge.

With the inequality comes a need by people with rank to show their power. This means they possess items of prestige that mark their place in society. It means that they manifest their position in material ways. This includes buildings such as Stonehenge where society measures that power and influence.

So what did Stonehenge represent? Archaeologists believe that it clearly represents a central place - perhaps unifying the society. It is clear from the labor and geography involved to bring the Blue Stones to Stonehenge that there was a political system that controlled a large area and could mobilize a large work force. Archaeologists know this is true because of what we see at Avebury and places like Silbury Hill and Maze Howe, both of which are large construction projects that required huge amounts of labor. The Blue Stones came from a long distance away. To access these stones, the people who built Stonehenge had to control a vast amount of territory to bring these stones from so far away.

Archaeologists also know that Stonehenge is ringed by burials that seem to be very important. One burial in particular can illustrate the respect that people at the time gave to one individuals.

What is less clear is how Stonehenge may have been used. Archaeologists now recognize that ancestors were important in the Neolithic. This is a fundamental beginning point. What is known is that Megalithic tombs and Causeway Enclosures were monuments to the ancestors. There are two issues that seem to be very important. The first of these is that Stonehenge does have some alignments that seem to have significance to the Sun and Moon. Clearly, elsewhere during the Megalithic time, both of these were important. The second issue is that of the ancestors - a recurrent theme and one that should not be left out as we become intrigued by alignments and astrological phenomena.

The Sun and Moon
The Worship of Ancestors
The Story of Another Monument

Stonehenge is by far a monument and legacy to human acheivement. Yet we today continue to search for meaning to why it exists and what it meant some 2600 years ago. Some of what we know is supported by the evidence that archaeologists can gather, but there is always a bit of our imagination that makes us wonder what else we may discover in the future. Archaeology is science and new discoveries and new insights come from our own creative ways of seeing the world. Some of what we attempt to learn proves to be fantasy, but every once in a while there is something new that is added to our understanding. People who first studies Stonehenge surmised it was constructed by Romans. That was clearly not the case, but it is with ideas such as this that archaeologists continue to test what is known. In this way, we continually improve our understanding of the past. Just as with the case of Stonehenge and its construction and use, archaeological investigation is a process as well.