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Opinion: The trouble with The Lost King, and it isn’t Richard III
As The Lost King arrives in cinemas, archaeologist Mike Pitts reflects on the difficult art of turning a true story into a movie
I’m an archaeologist, I love drama, and I am spoiled: in less than two years we have been given an unprecedented two movies about real excavations. Both are billed as being “based on a true story”. The Dig, released by Netflix in 2021, is about the uncovering in 1939 of an Anglo-Saxon king’s treasure ship at Sutton Hoo. The Lost King, appearing now in cinemas, features the extraordinary discovery of Richard III’s grave ten years ago. Kings, lost and found. Yet I find myself in a curious position. I loved The Dig for its cinematography and direction, and its evocative portrayal of archaeologists entering a past as the imminence of war shocked a country with an unknown future. I enjoyed The Lost King too. It has some strong performances and comic turns, and at its heart is the inspirational journey of a scorned visionary who is proved right. But I also found its storyline misleading, its portrayal of living people contentious, and its treatment of science and academia so off the wall that it could be accused of stoking deep state conspiracy theories about experts. Academics criticised The Dig for misrepresenting distinguished archaeologists, and they are doing the same of The Lost King. So here's my predicament. Already I am being called out by colleagues: how could I defend The Dig, yet complain about The Lost King? Car park king: a timeline of the discovery of Richard III In 2012, researchers and archaeologists found a skeleton under a car park in the city of Leicester. The remains were believed to be Richard III, the Plantagenet king who was killed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 The two stories have much in common, apart from the obvious focus on an excavation. Both digs began with a woman with an instinct about a site. Edith Pretty, who owned the land at Sutton Hoo, had been visiting a spiritualist medium after the death of her husband, and it was said the experience had prompted her to investigate the mounds she could see from her house. Philippa Langley had a “sensation” in a carpark: she knew she was standing on the king’s grave, and at that moment determined to open it. Neither woman was an archaeologist, so they engaged specialists to do the work (Pretty sat in a chair beside the trench to watch the archaeologists, and Langley kept a close eye on the Leicester team. The results of both projects were unexpectedly dramatic, and news of the discoveries went around the world. Today there are site museums dedicated to the two digs’ stories. They also have in common an individual who felt wronged in the buzz that exploded over the sensational finds. Both films highlight the narrative gift of a lone amateur pushed aside by institutions, who wins through in the end. In The Dig, this is Basil Brown (played by Ralph Fiennes), a local self-taught archaeologist employed by Pretty (Carey Mulligan). He identifies the Anglo-Saxon ship through skilled excavation, but when news gets out, archaeologists from the University of Cambridge and London institutions take over. Read more | The Dig: the real history of the remarkable Sutton Hoo excavation Snubbing is The Lost King’s key trope. In the 2022 film, Langley (played by Sally Hawkins) is portrayed as being unfairly treated by her employer in Edinburgh. She is cautioned against her quest to find the king’s grave by her ex-husband, and even by some of the Ricardian enthusiasts she befriends – indeed, at one point Richard III himself (played as a companionable apparition by Harry Lloyd) wonders if she’s going too far. We see Leicester University laugh at her as “an amateur”. When the dig begins, we see her clash with lead archaeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy), first insisting he excavates where he doesn’t want to, and then, when a grave is found, countering his wishes to leave it alone on the grounds that it can’t be the king’s. Of course, it is that of Richard III, and the university proceeds to boast of its success, holding a press conference to show the world how it found the king, and then a gala dinner at which Buckley is the guest of honour. The film’s plot sees Langley invited to neither event. None of that happened, and this is where my views on the two films diverge. Basil Brown did feel unfairly treated, though The Dig exaggerates something that had more to do with confusion as war approached, than a deliberate policy to diminish his contribution. His story, however, is one of several which together bring a greater message, to do with passing time and the fragility of individual lives, and parallels between early Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain and a contemporary Europe in which boundaries were being fought over. The production – conceived during the Brexit debate – went to great trouble to get the setting right, consulting with archaeologists and researching British Museum archives. Personal stories at the dig are imagined. A fictional male photographer is introduced, which led to a charge of sexism, the film airbrushing two female photographers who were actually there – but a prominent male archaeologist on the dig, who also took important photos, does not appear in the film either. In such ways The Dig plays with reality, but achieves a convincing impression of time and place. Rediscovering Richard III: the story of identifying a lost king In 2012, a skeleton in a Leicester car park transformed our understanding of a medieval king, and turned him into a media sensation. Mike Pitts tells the remarkable story of the discovery of Richard III’s remains <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/09/R3Cmyk-2a6d58d.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The skeleton exhumed from beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. The remains contained features matching Tudor descriptions of Richard III, and injuries to the skull and body inflicted at the battle of Bosworth in 1485" title="The skeleton exhumed from beneath a Leicester car park in 2012. The remains contained features matching Tudor descriptions of Richard III, and injuries to the skull and body inflicted at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 (Photo courtesy of the University of Leicester)" /> Not so The Lost King. Here archaeology and science are treated as irrelevances; I understand that Buckley was consulted during the production of The Lost King, but the university’s offer to help was ignored. The film shows a phalanx of male archaeologists and administrators, interested only in furthering their own careers at Langley’s expense. I followed the project at the time and got to know many of those involved, and I can say that this portrayal is nonsense. Everyone worked together – Langley included – as a team, excited by the discoveries and the many ways in which history, genealogy, archaeology and science progressed towards the extraordinary final result. The Lost King entirely excludes the university’s research, much of which was led by women. It is a misleading saga based on a farrago of untruths and omissions, compounded by the insistence at press previews by Steve Coogan, co-writer and on-screen ex-husband to Hawkins’ Langley, that it tells a true story “that needs to be told”. It’s worse than that. The film’s narrative depends on two misunderstandings. The first is a straightforward confusion about how archaeology works – excavation, especially when involving human remains, is a complex, expensive and time-consuming process demanding a wide range of specialist skills. It’s not a quick furtle by an individual with a spade. The second, profound, error is about the nature of science. Despite the film, professional academics welcome amateurs: all they care about is the quality of research and reporting. As it happens, University of Leicester archaeologists have long worked with their local community. This summer they ran at least four projects almost entirely staffed by amateur archaeologists. The Lost King, by contrast, asks us to believe in science as a closed network of self-interested people who try to block outsiders from asking questions (“Big institutions don't act in a self-consciously pernicious way,” Coogan told The Daily Mail. “They just behave like that … and if you're not part of them then you’re intuitively marginalised and made a footnote”). The notion of scientists pitched against the public interest is a falsehood that underpins conspiracy theories that affect us all, from anti-vaxxing to climate change denial. Engagement with archaeologists and the University of Leicester could have avoided some of the worst cases of the film’s misinformation. It might also have resulted in a more realistic portrayal of academia, just when it needs it most. Learn more about Richard III Did Richard III really kill the Princes in the Tower? Richard the radical: was Richard III a champion of the people? Like father, like son: Richard Plantagenet and Richard III Blood brothers: Richard III’s battle with his siblings Did fear drive Richard III to the throne? Richard III: A hostage to fortune What Happened After The Battle of Bosworth? What if Richard III had won at Bosworth? Treachery at Bosworth: what really brought down Richard III Have we completely misinterpreted Shakespeare’s Richard III? On the HistoryExtra podcast | Mike Pitts reflects on the astonishing discovery of the “king in the car park”, which made headlines across the globe The Lost King arrives in cinemas from 7 October
As The Lost King arrives in UK cinemas, ten years after the remains of Richard III were unearthed, Mike Pitts reflects on the astonishing discovery of the “king in the car park”
Ten years after the remains of Richard III were unearthed, and as The Lost King arrives in UK cinemas, archaeologist and author Mike Pitts reflects on the astonishing discovery of the “king in the car park”, which made headlines across the globe. Speaking with Rob Attar, he reveals how the dramatic breakthrough was made and what Richard’s remains can tell us about his life and death. More from Mike Pitts | The trouble with The Lost King, and it isn't Richard III Mike Pitts is the author of Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King (Thames & Hudson, 2014) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
Rediscovering Richard III: the story of identifying a lost king
Ten years ago a skeleton in a Leicester car park transformed our understanding of a medieval king, and turned him into a media sensation. Mike Pitts tells the remarkable story of the discovery of Richard III’s remains
Ten years ago – from 4 to 6 September 2012, to be precise – an unmarked grave was excavated beneath a car park in Leicester. All that survived of the person interred there was a skeleton. It might well have belonged to an anonymous medieval friar. After all, it was known that a friary had stood in the area before the Dissolution. Yet the bones bore a number of distinctive features that matched disputed historical details, encouraging researchers to explore another, tantalising possibility: could the remains be those of a more noteworthy and controversial historical figure? Months of intensive scientific study followed, and the world became focused on this unusual excavation. Then, in February 2013, archaeologist Richard Buckley – leader of the University of Leicester’s Grey Friars Project, which aimed to uncover that lost medieval friary – rose from his seat among a panel of historians and scientists, and addressed the overflowing press conference. “It is the academic conclusion of the University of Leicester,” he announced, “that, beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed at Greyfriars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England.” Read more | Who were the Plantagenets? This extraordinary excavation was the culmination of years of effort, and an unlikely dream come true – one that began in a bookshop 15 years earlier. Philippa Langley was a former newspaper sponsorship manager who wrote film scripts in her spare time. As she tells it, the story began for her when she walked into a Waterstones near her home in Edinburgh to pick up some holiday reading. She felt strangely drawn to a particular shelf where, without thinking, she picked up a book, paid, and left. It was an old biography of Richard III, which painted the king as a noble legislator besmirched by history. Here, thought Langley, was the big-screen story she had to tell. Car park king: a timeline of the discovery of Richard III In 2012, researchers and archaeologists found a skeleton under a car park in the city of Leicester. The remains were believed to be Richard III, the Plantagenet king who was killed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 A few years later, in 2004, she visited Leicester as part of her research for the screenplay she planned to write about the king. Her last stop was an old wall in a car park on the mooted site of the friary where Richard III was said to have been buried after the battle of Bosworth in 1485. She found nothing of note there but, as she walked away, she spotted another car park across the road. Slipping in past the barrier, she felt a cold shiver. “I knew then,” she told me. “I absolutely knew I was standing on his grave.” The following year, she returned to the same spot and had the same experience. Curiously, since her previous visit someone had painted a white letter R on the tarmac. Her mission crystallised, Langley determined to disinter the king’s remains, expose the myth of Shakespeare’s deformed monster, and arrange reburial to honour a wronged monarch. She found encouragement in a book by historian John Ashdown-Hill, which dismissed the local legend that Richard’s grave had been despoiled by an angry mob shortly after the king’s death, his body thrown into the nearby river. Ashdown-Hill also claimed to have identified a living relative of Richard III. Read more | Have we completely misinterpreted Shakespeare’s Richard III? Langley believed that, when she found what she knew would be the king’s remains, this discovery of his family member would enable DNA analysis of the bones to prove the fact to everyone else. After years of determined searching, in 2011 she contacted Buckley, who had grown up near Leicester and was then co-director of University of Leicester Archaeological Services. At the time, he thought Langley’s plans were “bonkers”, he told me – but he agreed to get involved on the basis that “we’d get the chance to look for the friary”. None of the many archaeologists I talked to back then were interested in searching for a king’s grave. But Buckley was aware that somewhere in the area of those car parks had once stood an important medieval friary about which almost nothing was known. Because the site was unlikely to be developed, there would be no reason or commercial funding for its excavation. An attempt to find Richard’s remains could provide that reason. Meanwhile, the Richard III Society – founded in 1924 to promote research into the maligned king – had long worked to boost the king’s reputation in the city. Commemorative plaques were installed, and a handsome bronze statue bearing flattering historic quotations was unveiled by the Duchess of Gloucester in 1980. Langley joined the society, and it became a key early supporter and, later, official lead of what they called the Looking for Richard Project. Academic objectives The University of Leicester’s Grey Friars Project was a separate effort. Buckley’s team drew up a list of objectives. First find the friary, then plot its orientation, work out where the church had stood and, finally, locate the choir where, according to a record made around the time of the king’s death, he had been buried. The team thought they had a reasonable expectation of finding the friary, but only “an outside chance” of locating the choir. If they succeeded, though, they would search for human remains that could be identified as those of the king. This, said the archaeologists, was “not seriously considered possible”. It was, though, all that mattered to Philippa Langley. So while Buckley prepared to excavate – with Mathew Morris, a skilled and experienced field archaeologist, in charge of the dig – she designed a tomb. Buckley, convinced that Richard III would not be found, was amused. “Every phone call I had with her, I said: ‘You realise we are very unlikely to be successful?’,” he told me. When she mentioned that she was planning to order a coffin, he suggested she get some legs made for it – to use as a novelty sideboard. Excavation began on 25 August 2012. There were three car parks of interest, but the owner of the largest – the one encompassing that old wall, the only possible evidence of a friary – was unwilling to allow access. Morris was left with two other options: the council car park, where Langley had found the painted R, and the adjacent yard of a former school. He laid out long, narrow trenches in those two car parks – and on that first day found remains of the friary. By the 12th day the team had ticked off all of the architectural features they’d been hunting. It was an absurd result from such small excavations in a place where everything underground might have been destroyed by building works after Henry VIII had dissolved the friary. By sheer chance, Morris’s first trench had gone straight through the centre of the church. On the first day of the dig, in the same Trench 1, the team also found a burial. This wasn’t entirely unexpected; after all, the friary’s cemetery had to be nearby. They made out two leg bones and named the remains – of still-undetermined sex – Skeleton 1. As they pieced together the friary’s plan, however, they realised that this body had been interred inside the church. Buckley obtained a licence to excavate human remains, and project osteologist Jo Appleby and Turi King, geneticist, donned white hooded overalls and gloves to open up the grave. A well-nourished friar? The next day, with King at a prearranged conference in Austria, Appleby was on her own, watched by Morris. He had put the rest of the team, together with the Channel 4 TV crew brought in by Langley, in Trench 3 – in the school yard, beyond a high wall. By the afternoon, Appleby had exposed all of the bones except the ribs and spine. She recognised the skeleton as that of a youngish male – just “a well-nourished friar”, she told a crestfallen Langley, who had already begun calling it Richard III. Unknown to Appleby, though, on that day visiting friary experts were telling Buckley that the grave was exactly where the king’s would be expected. Appleby continued delicately cleaning away soil with the tip of her wooden knife, following the spine up from the bottom. She removed more soil and found a vertebra, but not where it should have been. Another appeared, then another, forming an arc that veered away from the centre of the body: the spine was severely curved. “I think this is Richard III,” she mused. Morris, observing, had the same thought – the first time either of them considered the possibility. Appleby texted Turi King. King texted her husband: “I think we’ve found him”. “Found who?” he replied. No one had expected the king. Read more | Five places Richard III may have wanted to be buried (and none of them are Leicester) When the university announced that they had excavated the remains of a man with skull wounds and severe scoliosis – a form of spinal curvature – the news exploded around the world. So began one of the most thorough forensic investigations of an ancient skeleton ever conducted. There was public debate, often acrimonious, over how and where the king – if it was him – should be reburied. The Queen did not want a royal burial, reported The Times, and she favoured Leicester Cathedral over York Minster. But the scientists had yet to answer decisively the pivotal question: was this really Richard III? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/09/GettyImages-467317068-1-6f26f71.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The coffin containing the remains of Richard III, covered with a richly embroidered pall and topped with a crown, in Leicester Cathedral" title="The coffin containing the remains of Richard III, covered with a richly embroidered pall and topped with a crown, lies in Leicester Cathedral prior to reinterment on 26 March 2015 (Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)" /> Detailed study showed the remains to be those of a man in his late twenties or thirties (Richard was 32 when he died), with a delicate frame and features. He would have stood a little above average height for the times – were it not for the scoliosis, which made him under 5 feet (1.5 metres) tall, and also raised his right shoulder. These attributes matched contemporary records of Richard III as “small of stature”, “very fine-boned” and with “unequal shoulders, the right higher and the left lower”. The king had been killed in 1485; radiocarbon dating placed the death of the car-park man between 1455 and 1540. High-resolution images obtained from one of the first-known archaeological applications of micro-CT (micro-computed X-ray tomography) enabled 3D scrutiny of scoliosis-affected bones and injuries. Two of the latter – massive cuts to the back of his head – would have caused almost instant death; at least four others were potentially fatal, among them one inflicted by a dagger thrust into his skull from above. Opinion: The trouble with The Lost King, and it isn’t Richard III As The Lost King arrives in cinemas, archaeologist Mike Pitts reflects on the difficult art of turning a true story into a movie The wounds had more to say, too. Earlier study of a mass grave at the site of the 1461 battle of Towton in Yorkshire had identified men with healed wounds from previous conflicts, and others that were unhealed on head, neck, arms and hands – but not one among them had wounds in the chest, back or hips. These wounds suggested face-to-face combat between men whose arms and hands were cut when they tried to parry blows. Skeleton 1, though, had no visible wounds on his arms, legs, hands, shoulders or neck, implying that he wore armour. Conversely, a notch on a rib in his lower back, and another from a dagger thrust into his right buttock, could not have been inflicted through armour. A likely explanation is that his stripped body had been stabbed while it was draped across a horse. Remarkably, the evidence again matches historical accounts stating that Richard’s body was slung naked over a horse, where it was abused on the way to Leicester. Ignominious end There was a further twist – metaphorical and literal. Severe as the man’s scoliosis was, careful choice of clothing could have concealed it from all but his inner circle during his life. Dead and naked, it would have been another matter – and being slung ignominiously over a horse would surely have revealed it. When a typical person with scoliosis reaches to touch their toes, ribs rise up on one side of the back to create a bulge known as a “rib hump”, a characteristic used in medical diagnosis. If this man was Richard III, his “crookback” (as it was described in 1491) might have first become public knowledge as his body was carried from the battlefield. Caroline Wilkinson, then professor of craniofacial identification at the University of Dundee, used digital 3D imagery to reconstruct the man’s face. The result, painted and dressed for the times, looked so uncannily like portraits of Richard III that, astonished, she twice checked her procedures. There remained one line of evidence that could yet prove or demolish the argument: DNA analysis. If ancient DNA (aDNA) could be retrieved from the man’s remains, it could be compared with the genetic material of someone known to be descended from Richard III’s close family, the king himself having had no grandchildren. Such a living relative had been identified by Ashdown-Hill: a descendant of one of Richard III’s sisters. Kevin Schürer, the Grey Friars Project’s genealogy expert, checked the largely undocumented family tree to confirm this link. He also found a second maternal line, and was even more successful with a continuous male line, tracing nearly 20 living descendants of Richard’s great-great-grandfather, Edward III. After a lot more research (and expense), Turi King was able to prove that Skeleton 1 was, indeed, Richard III. Combined with the archaeology and history, any last doubts about the identification were swept away. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/09/GettyImages-467233574-415536e-e1664467154896.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Philippa Langley places a white rose on the coffin of Richard III" title="Philippa Langley, the writer whose determination to find and rehabilitate the last Plantagenet king was vital to the project’s success, places a rose on Richard’s coffin (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)" /> Philippa Langley had hoped that excavation would show that the king had been an honourable man wrongly censured by posterity. It was an unrealistic goal: material remains provide little evidence to inform moral judgments. But the grave’s discovery inspired global interest and introduced Richard III to a new audience. The reburial ceremony, in a restyled Leicester Cathedral, was watched live by millions. The excavation, which revealed much about Leicester Grey Friars as well as other burials, showed that Richard’s disabilities had been exaggerated, and a truer picture now informs productions of Shakespeare’s play. The king has new life. At the end of the project, Buckley’s team made him a cake shaped like a yellow safety helmet. At the start of the excavation, he’d promised that if they found Richard III, he’d eat his hat. He was as good as his word. Five facts the excavation revealed about Richard III The king had a curved spine William Shakespeare gave us a “deformed” Richard III “not shaped for sportive tricks”, with a hunched back, a withered arm and a limp. Archaeology gave us instead a curved spine: a rare form of scoliosis that developed in Richard’s adolescence, resulting in a squat torso and uneven shoulders. He had no other skeletal conditions, however, and could have been as physically active as others around him, though he was not particularly strong. Osteologist Jo Appleby briefly wondered whether the skeleton was female before concluding that it was that of a man with a delicate frame. He enjoyed a life of luxury Studies of the remains showed that Richard ate well, consuming a high-protein diet including plenty of seafood. Towards the end of his life he ate more luxury items such as game birds, freshwater ﬁsh and, possibly, wine. Shortly before his death, he was infected with roundworms. He was born in the east Midlands, moving west by the age of seven or eight. Such scientific confirmation of historical details is extremely helpful; for archaeologists, these were significant results from a battery of studies more usually applied to prehistoric remains with no alternative historical evidence to test them against. Richard suffered a violent death The king’s bones exhibit signs of at least 11 wounds, all received around the time of his death on or near Bosworth Field. A dagger was driven down into the top of his skull, and three slivers were shaved off the side by what was probably a single sword, but he was finished off by two blows at the back of his head just above his neck. A halberd (a combined axe and pike on a long pole) or heavy sword almost entirely removed the bottom of his skull on the right side, and a blade penetrated 10.5cm into his brain before the skull’s inner wall stopped it short. Either blow would have caused almost instant death. His burial was simple but respectful The excavation cleared up much confusion about Richard III’s burial, arguably influencing how we might view the politics of the occasion. The grave was simple and probably hastily dug, being too short for the body. There was no shroud, coffin or evidence for a grand tomb, and his hands may have been tied. Though lacking public ceremony – a contemporary wrote that there was no “pompe or solemne funeral” – interment was not disrespectful. That much is proved by the location of the burial: a friary church’s choir, which was both inaccessible to the public and appropriate for a prestigious figure. Despite being forgotten, the grave was never disturbed. Portraits of Richard were largely accurate Modern concern with improving the king’s image dates from Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel The Daughter of Time. In it a policeman, inspired by a portrait of the king, exposes as myth the long-dead monarch’s alleged crimes and crippled appearance. More than 20 portraits of Richard survive today, most showing a raised right shoulder. X-ray images of two such paintings suggested they had been altered later to depict uneven shoulders, bolstering the view that Tudor historians invented Richard’s deformities. The skeleton, however, has a raised shoulder, and facial reconstruction based on the skull closely matches the portraits. The paintings show a true likeness – a rare confirmation of historic representation. Learn more about Richard III Did Richard III really kill the Princes in the Tower? Richard the radical: was Richard III a champion of the people? Like father, like son: Richard Plantagenet and Richard III Blood brothers: Richard III’s battle with his siblings Did fear drive Richard III to the throne? Richard III: A hostage to fortune What Happened After The Battle of Bosworth? What if Richard III had won at Bosworth? Treachery at Bosworth: what really brought down Richard III Have we completely misinterpreted Shakespeare’s Richard III? Mike Pitts is an archaeologist and author of Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King (Thames & Hudson, 2nd edition 2015) This content first appeared in the October 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
Stonehenge: a historian’s guide to visiting the stones
Heading to the world’s most famous henge this spring and want to get the most from your visit? Archaeologist Mike Pitts offers a closer look at the site, with a handy guide that will have you scoping out the stones like an expert…
There’s a lot to do at Stonehenge, but I’ll start with the obvious: stones. There are many, and they’re not all the same. The path up to the site takes you to a close vantage point (and a good place for photos) from which you look south east across to the monument. Many are fallen on this side, so as you move to right and left you can see into the centre of the henge. The first thing to notice is that there are two sizes and shapes of stone. Most are large and slab-like, and include horizontal lintels: these are made from sarsen, a hard sandstone sourced from within 20 miles. The smaller more rounded pillars, with no lintels, are the bluestones. Most of these are igneous rocks brought from south-west Wales (behind you), a journey of more than 200 miles. The completed Stonehenge had a ring of 30 standing sarsens supporting a ring of 30 lintels. These surrounded five groups, each of two taller sarsens independently supporting a lintel, known as trilithons. The trilithons stood on a horseshoe plan open to the rising midsummer sun to the north-east (roughly to your left). Bluestones (many more than there are now) were arranged in a ring inside the sarsen circle, and more stood inside the horseshoe, again mirroring the plan. A closer look The more you look, the more you see. Every stone is different. Sarsens were heavily dressed with stone hammers, and when the light is right you can sometimes pick out effects of such work, shallow parallel grooves and smoothed surfaces. You can see many irregular hollows left from the original boulders. At the base of one large standing sarsen is a curious flat block: this is concrete, put there in the 1960s to fill a large natural hole that the authorities worried was unsafe. Look closely at the top of that stone and toward the right edge you can see a lump like an upturned bowl. This is a tenon, carefully carved, that would have fitted into a hollow or mortise in the lintel that it and its partner supported, to form a trilithon. The two missing stones are beyond in the grass, each broken into three pieces. Continuing to the right is another stone with a tenon on top, smooth, thin and the tallest of them all, restored to a perfect vertical in 1901. This is part of the Great Trilithon, which once framed the setting midwinter sun to the right. Its partner stone and battered lintel lie on the ground behind. Just in front is a small, leaning, rounded megalith with a groove the length of one side. It’s thought that this uniquely shaped bluestone once fitted a partner with a ridged side, of which only a stump survives. Behind rise two complete trilithons, one of them with a particularly finely carved lintel. Want to sort your lintels from your trilithons? Mike Pitts explores the secrets of Stonehenge and how it was built Upon arrival The Stonehenge visitor centre is more than a ticket office. Make sure to spend an hour there, either before you set out for the Stones or after you return. Stonehenge today is surrounded by fields, mostly grassland. You will park your car or leave your bus on the edge of the World Heritage Site. The visitor centre, designed by Australian architects Denton Corker Marshall to have a light touch on the landscape and to avoid referencing the stones in its shapes or materials, opened in 2013. As you enter a roofed passage from the car park, you face the direction of Stonehenge, which is 1.5 miles away over the horizon. This is where you buy your ticket (free for English Heritage and National Trust members). As well as a café, shop and toilets, the centre contains a museum-quality display about the monument and its times, with a striking CGI video, and original artefacts and human remains from excavations in the area, loaned by museums in Devizes and Salisbury (which both have their own Stonehenge displays). There is also a small gallery for changing special displays. Outside stand three reconstructed Neolithic houses, based on excavated evidence from a village at Durrington Walls, two miles beyond Stonehenge to the north-east, and two small megaliths you can handle. These were quarried recently from Stonehenge stone – sarsen and a common type of bluestone. Listen | Mike Pitts answers listener questions on Britain’s most famous prehistoric monument, Stonehenge Setting out for the stones You may have good reasons for taking the special bus from the visitor centre to the stones (postponing the moment you must step out into the rain among the possibilities) but if you can walk, I recommend doing so. Allow half an hour. A signed path will start you off, soon leading to a pedestrian gate onto National Trust land where you can roam freely. From here you can see a bank of trees on the horizon – Fargo Wood. Head for the gap where the plantation has been removed to protect a great Neolithic earthwork known as the Cursus (named by William Stukeley in the 18th century, he thought it was a Roman racetrack). It’s difficult to make out now, but when you reach the next gate, you will find an information panel on the other side which will help you understand this earliest monumental effort by people marking the landscape. Continue walking and you will find another gate, which opens into the woodland and a round burial mound, an unusually large Bronze Age barrow known as the Monarch of the Plain. Turn left, pass another barrow and a superb view opens up which includes Stonehenge, before you reach another information panel. From here you can wander across the grass to the stones, or turn towards the road (pedestrians and Stonehenge buses only) where there is a stone cross raised in memory of Major Hewetson, killed in a flying accident in 1913 – Salisbury Plain was a scene of aerial pioneers. Stonehenge is just up the road. Exploring the site If by now you’ve developed a taste for the landscape, keep going! As you do so, appreciate good views of Stonehenge. Walking out from Fargo Wood you will soon reach a fine group of burial mounds known as the Cursus Barrows. Continue to the fence and follow the Cursus (turning left at the gate) or head towards Stonehenge and the Avenue earthwork (turning right). Ahead of you in the distance is King Barrow Ridge, with more trees and more barrows. There are more good views from this ridge, and from here you can walk north and east, away from Stonehenge, to reach Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, two important parts of the Stonehenge ceremonial world. There are two excellent aids to finding your way around this countryside. English Heritage publishes a large-scale annotated walking map, and you can downland a variety of guided walks from the National Trust’s Stonehenge Landscape website. Read more | 8 little-known prehistoric sites in Britain A final bit of Stonehenge magic There remains just one more trick. For one of the world’s great heritage experiences, you can walk among the stones with no more than 30 people outside normal opening hours, in early morning or late afternoon. Book well ahead with English Heritage (look online for Stone Circle Experience), or join a commercial tour.
Stonehenge: everything you wanted to know (part two)
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
In the second episode of a two-part special, Mike Pitts answers listener questions on Britain’s most famous prehistoric site
In the second episode of this two-part special on Stonehenge, archaeologist and author Mike Pitts answers more listener questions on the most famous prehistoric monument in Britain. Speaking to David Musgrove, he discusses Stonehenge’s relationship with other prehistoric sites, its long legacy, and why we call it “Stonehenge”. Missed part one? Find it here Mike Pitts is the author of How to Build Stonehenge (Thames & Hudson, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones How to download the HistoryExtra podcast Download as MP3
The secrets of Stonehenge: how was it built?
Where did Stonehenge’s megaliths come from? Were they transported to Wiltshire by glacier or human hand? And how long did this Neolithic building project take? As a major exhibition on Stonehenge opens at the British Museum, Mike Pitts uses the latest research to answer the big questions about the construction of this ancient wonder
Listen to this article: Where on Earth did the stones come from? New technology is pinpointing the sources of the huge monoliths Stonehenge shouldn’t be there. Its great standing stones – their total weight originally equivalent to that of 13 blue whales – loom starkly from a landscape without rock outcrops. So where were they quarried? The 12th-century historian Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that giants had carried the megaliths from Africa to Ireland, and that Merlin then took them on to Salisbury Plain. Others such as the 16th-century lawyer John Rastell thought the stones had been moulded on the spot out of cement. The 18th-century antiquary William Stukeley observed that not all of the stones were of the same type. He agreed with an earlier suggestion that the largest – sandstone blocks known as sarsens – hailed from near Marlborough, about 20 miles north of Stonehenge. But what of the other, smaller monoliths known as bluestones? Africa and Ireland continued to be suggested as possible sources. One theory posited that they had arrived with ancient Greek tin traders, used as ballast in their ships. Perhaps they came from Brittany or Finland; British sources mooted included Dartmoor and Edinburgh. Then, in 1921, geologist Herbert Thomas established that Stonehenge’s bluestones had been quarried from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire. But how did they get to Stonehenge? Were they transported by Neolithic people, or could they have been carried east by glaciers? Thomas had no doubt that humans were responsible, and most experts since have agreed. However, the glacier theory lingers, supported less by solid geological evidence than by disbelief that anyone would have travelled so far – 150 miles in a straight line – to source these megaliths some 5,000 years ago when they were quarried. Over the past few years, new lab technologies have enabled geologists Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer to confirm that Pembrokeshire was indeed the main source of the bluestones. They have identified two outcrops in the Preseli Hills – Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedog – that were the sites of megalithic quarries for two specific types of bluestone known at Stonehenge. Yet not all of Stonehenge’s bluestones were sourced from Pembrokeshire. Bevins and Ixer believe that the Altar Stone, a unique greenish sandstone megalith lying flat near the centre of Stonehenge, came from elsewhere. Their research suggests that it’s probably from eastern Wales or the Marches, though they haven’t ruled out another, more distant source. Stonehenge glossary Sarsens | Stonehenge’s largest stones They weighed between 4 and 40 tonnes and were quarried on the Marlborough Downs, 15–20 miles north of the site Bluestones These smaller stones weighed between 1 and 4 tonnes and are believed to have been transported to Stonehenge from the Preseli Hills in west Wales Megalith A large standing stone Trilithon A free-standing structure consisting of two upright stones and a third across the top (which is known as the Lintel) Dressing The act of sculpting the individual stones into a desired shape using smaller boulders of hard sarsen Stone cold certainty But what of Stonehenge’s sarsens? These were, it seems, collected around 2,500 BC – five centuries later than the bluestones. Sarsen is almost pure silica, making examples from one location all but identical to another – so defeating traditional geological attempts to use variations within the stones to help identify sources. Now, though, science has again come to the rescue, thanks to the work of David Nash of Brighton University and a technology called portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF). Nash’s team analysed the surfaces of the sarsens at Stonehenge, firing radiation from a gadget the size of a hair dryer. By studying X-rays reflected back, they created a geological “fingerprint” that showed all the stones to be very similar to each other. A further breakthrough arrived when a metre-long rod, or core, of sarsen unexpectedly turned up in Florida. This core was originally drilled from a Stonehenge trilithon during conservation work back in 1958; Robert Phillips, who’d been on the job, had taken it with him when he moved to the United States. In 2018, Phillips offered it back to English Heritage – and Nash and his team stepped in. Now they could compare a Stonehenge megalith with sarsen boulders they had sampled across southern England, crushing up the rock and applying sophisticated geochemical analyses. The only match for the megalith was in West Woods, on the edge of the Marlborough Downs. So this is the source of the Florida core – and, by implication, all the other Stonehenge sarsens, which pXRF had shown to be so alike. How were the stones transported to their current site? Sea and river voyages have been proposed – but human-powered overland treks seem most likely Moving stones weighing up to 4 tonnes from the hills of west Wales to the plains of southern England would be a mighty undertaking even in the 21st century. That our Neolithic ancestors achieved the feat seems mind-blowing. Yet achieve it they did. Herbert Thomas suggested that the bluestones had been hauled along an overland route of 170–180 miles, passing north of Gloucester to avoid the Severn estuary – the crossing, he thought, would have been too dangerous. However, many archaeologists disagreed, favouring the theory that the stones had been transported by water. They argued that the Altar Stone had been quarried at Milford Haven, a natural harbour a day’s walk south of the Preseli Hills, and that this would have been the departure point for transport by sea. The voyage might have hugged the coast to the Bristol Channel, then taken one of two routes: following English rivers to Stonehenge, sledging the short land sections; or continuing south-west along the coast, around Land’s End, east to Christchurch harbour and then up the river Avon. On the face of it, transporting the sarsens would have been far easier. They had to travel only 15–20 miles south overland from the Marlborough Downs. But sarsens are far bigger than bluestones, weighing in at between 4 and 40 tonnes compared with the 1–4-tonne bluestones. What’s more, the sarsens were artificially shaped, and some of that carving would have been carried out on site, so they would have been heavier when they were transported. Many archaeologists have envisioned men with ropes pulling stones across rolling logs. This idea has featured in TV programmes and numerous experiments, and is enshrined today in a full-scale model at Stonehenge. Yet research carried out by Barney Harris, an archaeologist at University College London, has cast doubt on this theory. Experiments, along with observations of people moving megaliths in Indonesia, demonstrate that rollers are uncontrollable; stationary sleepers or fixed tracks would be required. Due to the stones’ vast size and irregular shapes, a sledge would have been essential. The biggest loads would have weighed more than 45 tonnes, which could be pulled only along a fixed trackway. The scale of this operation, particularly the volume of timber required, must have been unmatched in Eu- rope at the time. It’s easier to envisage the transport of the smaller bluestones, dragged on sledges over sleepers or perhaps even carried with poles or wooden frames; such methods have been recorded in north-east India. Listen | Mike Pitts answers listener questions on Britain’s most famous prehistoric monument, Stonehenge, on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast The road to ruins This is what I propose as a possible route taken by the bluestones. Following river valleys and avoiding frequent crossings and steep slopes, we traverse Wales beside the rivers Taf and Tywi, rise to near the source of the Usk north of the Brecon Beacons, and follow that river to the sea. We then paddle across the Severn estuary – a quite feasible crossing that saves us from having to climb the Cotswolds (which a more northerly crossing would necessitate). We continue along the Bristol Avon, perhaps still by boat, and reach Stonehenge via rivers and land, with a total journey of 220 miles. By the same principles – track river valleys, avoid steep climbs – there is only one option for the sarsens: head south to the edge of the Marlborough Downs, drop into the Vale of Pewsey and follow the Avon Valley (which avoids Salisbury Plain’s forbidding escarpment), reaching Stonehenge in 17 miles. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/STONEHENGE-MAP_v4webready-a059e3c.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Mike Pitts proposes a route used to transport the sarsens of Stonehenge. (Map illustration by Paul Hewitt–Battlefield Design for BBC History Magazine)" title="Mike Pitts proposes a route used to transport the sarsens of Stonehenge. (Map illustration by Paul Hewitt–Battlefield Design for BBC History Magazine)" /> How did the sarsens get their distinctive shape? Incredibly hard stones were shaped without the use of metal tools Get close to Stonehenge and you’ll see that the stones are carved. Other megaliths across north-west Europe have artificially smoothed faces, but at Stonehenge the builders went further, removing quantities of rock to shape the stones to a more or less standard pattern. Not only that, but several of the sarsens are connected one to another with mortice-and-tenon or tongue-and-groove joints – techniques we can only assume were borrowed from timber construction. Squared lintels and, in one case, stone joints are prominent in medieval illustrations of Stonehenge, but it wasn’t until 1901 that anyone seriously addressed how they were carved. In that year, the first scientific excavation at the site determined that the stones had been raised before iron tools were available; it also found stone tools that had been used in the work. Archaeologists then looked at how sarsens on the Marlborough Downs had been shaped in more recent times: with fire and water in the 17th and 18th centuries, and with steel tools in the 19th and early 20th. They assumed that natural sarsen slabs of more or less megalithic shape would have been available to our Neolithic predecessors on site, and thus that the main tasks they would have been confronted with were edge-trimming followed by selective smoothing. The former might have been achieved by pouring cold water onto lines of burning wood on the stone; the sudden change in temperature would crack the stone. (There is no evidence that this process was used, though.) The stones would have been shaped by hammering with mauls – small boulders of very hard sarsen, up to the size of a football. Finishing and jointing, said the archaeologists, would be done by laboriously pounding to remove stone dust. High-tech revelations Our understanding of Neolithic techniques has improved with the development of our own technology, which has enabled the first comprehensive examination of the megaliths. By bouncing laser light off the stones and converting the data into precise distance measurements, scientists have built 3D digital models of the megaliths – and these have revealed that the sarsens were almost totally dressed. Archaeologists Marcus Abbott and Hugo Anderson-Whymark distinguished between four stages in the dressing process, employing progressively smaller hammers: first, heavy shaping at source, then coarse preparation, finishing and jointing on site. (These stages must have created large amounts of silica dust in the air, making silicosis a health hazard for those working on the stones.) Though most of the bluestones were undressed, those now in the central horse- shoe arrangement (see aerial view opposite), plus a few in an outer ring, were finely carved. This was probably done using similar techniques to those used in the dressing of the sarsens. Another aspect revealed by the laser study is just how much damage was inflicted on the stones by 18th and 19th-century souvenir hunters. When first carved, most megaliths would have had sharper corners than they do today. Read more | Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/GettyImages-web_ready1053520170-c174d0f.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Victorians picnic among fallen stones at Stonehenge in 1875" title="Victorians picnic among fallen stones at Stonehenge in 1875. Souvenir hunters wrought significant damage to the site in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> How did Neolithic engineers erect these huge stones? Logs and levers were probably used to raise sarsen stones So you’ve accomplished the unimaginably arduous task of transporting the stones to their new home in what’s now southern Wiltshire. Now you need to get them in place and upright. Most modern theories on how this was achieved were shaped by a 1924 book by the aptly named Herbert Stone. A retired engineer, Stone described in detail the creation of the sarsen circle, demonstrating his ideas with working models. Stone’s workmen tipped a fully carved megalith down a ramp into a pit. They then tied its top to a set of sheerlegs (a timber A-frame) and hauled it upright using ropes attached to the top of the frame. This process is depicted in English Heritage’s Stonehenge guidebook, and has been used in several experiments, notably for a 1990s BBC/PBS film involving two full-scale concrete megaliths. Yet it would have been impossible. Let’s start at the beginning. We know that Neolithic people built large oak structures, some comparable to Stonehenge, so would have applied lessons learned from working with timber. In the stone monument, the sides of 30 lintels in a perfect circle curve to fit the ring. Such carving could only have been done when the lintels were still on the ground, and the ring must have been made first, assembled and then moved out of the way before pits were dug. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/GettyImages-122224199web_ready-12a709e.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An illustration indicates how a Stonehenge sarsen may have been levered into place" title="An illustration indicates how a sarsen may have been levered into place, gradually building a wood pile beneath one end to slowly tip the stone into the pit before pulling it upright with ropes. (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> All erection experiments, from Stone’s models to the concrete giants that appeared in the TV documentaries, have been carried out in a field. But Stonehenge was a building site. The largest stones – the horseshoe of five trilithons (10 huge megaliths and five lintels) at the centre of the site – had to go up first; the stones were too big to pass through gaps in the outer circle. When it came to raising that circle, there was no space on the inside for sheer legs and gangs of pullers, nor to lie megaliths on the ground inside the circle to lift using sheerlegs on the outside. There had to be another way. Polynesian precedent I found a clue in a demonstration conducted on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in 1986 for Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl. A horizontal stone moai (monolithic human figure) was rocked with levers, and then rubble was packed in space created beneath the head end. This growing mound raised the moai to a near-vertical position, from where a light pull on ropes finished the job. William Gowland, the archaeologist who directed the 1901 excavation at Stonehenge, proposed something similar here: a process using long wooden levers to lift the sarsens, piling up logs until each megalith slipped upright into its pit. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/IC095_078web_ready-540ff7e.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="One theory proposed in 1924 posits that a set of sheer legs – a wooden A-frame – was used to help haul each sarsen stone upright. (Image by Heritage England)" title="One theory proposed in 1924 posits that a set of sheer legs – a wooden A-frame – was used to help haul each sarsen stone upright. (Image by Heritage England)" /> Herbert Stone thought that the lintels had been dragged up mounds heaped against the megaliths, but there are signs of neither mounds nor the necessary quarry pits. So Gowland’s method also appears more plausible for the installation of the lintels. One end of a lintel is raised with levers, and logs placed underneath. The same is done to the other end, then again at the first, repeat- ing until the lintel is level with the top of standing megaliths, when it is slid across. The tops of the megaliths needed to be perfectly level to support the lintels. Stone argued that the correct heights would have been achieved by digging pits at different depths according to the size of each stone – but, with each stone typically weighing 20 tonnes, it would have been impossible to do this with any level of precision. Instead, the megaliths could have been erected to a slightly greater height than needed, and the tops then cut level with one other. How long did Stonehenge take to build? Construction of the monument may have been surprisingly rapid The site we now call Stonehenge evolved over several hundred years. The first ditch-and- bank earthwork henge, together with a large ring of bluestones, was created around 3000 BC. These stones were later arranged nearer the centre. Around 2500 BC they were removed, the sarsens were installed, and the bluestones were replaced among them. But how long did each period of construction actually take? Is it possible to calculate how many hours this massive Neolithic construction project swallowed? Such intangibles are hard to pin down. No one has carved a megalith, nor moved a bluestone to Wiltshire, since Neolithic times. Even so, thinking on the time and effort that went into creating the world-famous monument has evolved over the past few decades. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/02/W9KA74-2smlweb_ready-3c26911.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An aerial view of Stonehenge. It’s believed that the bluestones were quarried 5,000 years ago, while the larger sarsens were erected around 500 years later. (Image by Alamy)" title="An aerial view of Stonehenge. It’s believed that the bluestones were quarried 5,000 years ago, while the larger sarsens were erected around 500 years later. (Image by Alamy)" /> Archaeologist Richard Atkinson, who directed excavations at Stonehenge in the 1950s and 60s, estimated that it would have taken 1,500 men 10 years to fetch the sarsens from the Marlborough Downs. Fifty masons must then have worked 10-hour days non- stop for two years and nine months just to shape them, he believed. In 1961, Canadian geologist Patrick Arthur Hill was less daunted by the logisti- cal challenges. He calculated that 25 men could have pulled a 50-tonne sarsen to Stonehenge in less than a week – if they dragged it over snow. Hill’s idea remains popular, but it’s worth noting that he was inspired by Inuit sledges crossing Arctic sea ice, not a frosty crust in an English winter. Read more | Your guide to Britain’s prehistoric stone circles More recently, engineers interested in efficiency have taken up the case: you can watch YouTube videos showing people competing to move, erect and lift stones with as few hands as possible. But was efficiency even a consideration in the construction of Stonehenge – a monument that, let’s not forget, defies all economic sense? Recently, archaeologists have been looking at practices in places such Madagascar, north-east India and the Indonesian island of Sumba, where people have been raising stones for genera- tions. In those areas the goal – or, at least, the effect – seems to be to have as many people on the job as possible. A good crowd brings status for organisers and sponsors, and participants share in the fun, accumulating credits for their work. It's Stonehenge Week on HistoryExtra! Find out more about this ancient wonder, and Britain's other prehistoric sites: Your guide to Stonehenge, plus 12 fascinating facts you might not know Prehistoric religion: a pagan riddle we will never solve? 8 little-known prehistoric sites in Britain Ancient efficiency The difficulties of creating Stonehenge are sometimes exaggerated. Megaliths weighed less than Atkinson thought, and excavations reveal that Neolithic people were skilled engineers, carpenters and stoneworkers. On the other hand, we suspect they liked to party, as people do today when moving a stone on Sumba. Bluestones would have passed through villages to be seen and celebrated. There is evidence for feasting at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge, where it is thought as many as 4,000 people gathered for the great build. Taking all that into account, here’s a plausible scenario for the timescale of construction. Setting out with a bluestone from the Preseli Hills in late summer, a team of 25–30 (picking up others en route) could have reached the Bristol Channel in 45 days – 30 if using a boat down the lower river Usk. Crossing the sea, paddling upriver and moving to a sledge as necessary, they’d arrive on site by mid-October, two months after departure. Moving a sarsen demanded more effort: perhaps 200–300 people would take a few weeks to haul one to Stonehenge (assuming a track was in place). So a thousand workers could have moved all of the sarsens in 6–18 months – or perhaps twice that long, depending on rituals and extraneous events. Dressing-time is almost impossible to estimate. The required shape of one megalith depended on that of another, and the project had to maintain momentum. Erecting trilithons and fitting lintels could be done in one season; with 1,000 people working in 15 teams of 60–70, the circle could be constructed the next season. The whole thing might, then, have been completed in five spectacular, never-to-be-forgotten years. This article first appeared in the March 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine