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The Symbols carved on Stonehenge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

O. G. S. Crawford
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Extract

Last summer an archaeologist, Mr R. J. C. Atkinson, taking photographs at Stonehenge, made a most remarkable discovery. He was preparing to photograph a name carved on the inward-facing (northwest) face of Stone 53, one of the Great Horseshoe Trilithons; for this purpose he had remained there after 5 o’clock on July 10th, waiting for the sun to move round and shine on it. Looking not directly at the stone itself but at the image on the glass of his reflex camera, he suddenly saw the dark outline of what appeared to be a dagger, and beside it that of an axe. The carvings were deeply cut and the edges smoothened by the erosive action of more than thirty centuries of British weather (PLATE I). Closer inspection revealed several more axes and some other markings, all probably artificial but now too much weathered for decipherment. Two days later a ten-year-old schoolboy, David Booth, found an axe on the outer face of Stone 4, one of the stones of the Outer Circle, and subsequent search revealed ten more axes on the same face (PLATES II, VI A). Later still, while engaged in making casts of the axes already discovered, Mr R. S. Newall has found many more, bringing the total for Stone 53 up to 12 and for Stone 4 to 25, including on the latter one exceptionally large axe measuring 14 inches in length and 10½ inches across the splayed cutting edge. He has also verified three axes like the others near the bottom left-hand corner of the outer face of Stone 3 (PLATE III B).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 28 , Issue 109 , March 1954 , pp. 25 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1954

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References

1 IOH: LVD: DEFERRE, i.e. John Louis Deferre, of whom nothing is known. Mr Atkinson quite properly included some of these recent but not wholly uninteresting carvings in his photographic survey, which is part of the general survey of the monument being carried out by Professor Stuart Piggott, Dr J. F. S. Stone and himself. Mr Atkinson was using a Kine Exacta (35 mm. reflex).

2 Atkinson in Proc. Preh. Soc., N.S. XVIII, 1952 (Dec. 1953), 236. The discoveries were first reported in the Times, July 16, 1953, and then in Nature, No. 307. They were described at a meeting of the Prehistoric Society at Salisbury on Sept. 11th, of the Arch. Institute in London on Jan. 27th, 1954, and of the Soc. of Antiquaries of London on Feb. 4th. The photographs here reproduced were taken by the author except where otherwise stated.

3 Ant. Journ. XXXII, 1952, 65-7 , Plate 21.

4 Atkinson in P.P.S. XVIII, where other quotations will be found.

5 Ant. Journ. XIX, 1939, 294, Plate 59.

6 MacWhite, Estudios, etc., 1951, Plate 24; one of the slabs also has a herzsprung shield and is of course much later in date (8th century ?).

7 Numbered 33/53, described on pp. 12-13 of the Annual report of the Museum for 1952-3. I have to thank Mr. H. de S. Shortt for the loan of the block, Plate III A, and permission to reproduce it. The axe was found ‘just below the topsoil about 500 yards ESE. of Stonehenge and 400 yards N. of the round barrow, Amesbury 16’. See also Wilts. Arch. Mag. LV, 1953, 30.

8 Illustrated in ANTIQUITY XXVII, 140, fig. 2, no. 31 (Farisoa, Portugal).

9 On Leisner’s Reguengos, Plate 62, compare the waisted figurine no. 3 with the plaque no. 18. For the rock-carving of a stylized human head on a sort of peg, associated with carvings of metal knives, see MacWhite, Estudios, etc., 1951, Plate 33 (near Santiago de Compostela).