ABSTRACT
When the Stonehenge people built their sarsen monument they had first to destroy the half-completed Double Bluestone Circle that was already taking shape on the site. The bluestones that had been put in position were taken out, including the Altar Stone. They nevertheless found their way back into the final monument as a circle of between forty and sixty stones set within the Great Sarsen Circle and a horseshoe of nineteen stones set within the horseshoe of trilithons. It is tempting to take a simple view of the building sequence: that the builders moved the bluestones offsite just long enough for them to raise the sarsens, and then immediately afterwards arranged them in their present settings. Most archaeologists believe that the bronze age reality was far more complicated, with at least one intermediate stage.
