ABSTRACT
Stonehenge's massive blocks can be seen for several miles across the rolling terrain of Salisbury Plain, about 129 km west of London. Inigo Jones, in the 17th century, conducted one of the first detailed surveys of Stonehenge. His model of architecture was derived from the Romans, and his map of Stonehenge matches his ideas. Gerald Hawkins was an astronomer with a long-standing interest in the ways in which ancient people arranged monumental constructions, such as Stonehenge, to track and predict the movements of celestial bodies. Stonehenge's great size could thus be seen as a tangible statement of social unity and the political structure that made that unity possible. Archaeologists' claims to Stonehenge are, in turn, founded in part on their ability to clarify the original builders' purposes through the application of specialized knowledge, including an array of investigative techniques. Colin Renfrew is, and has been since at least the late 1970s, a major figure in the archaeology of Europe.
