A star-filled night sky has long inspired wonder and connection, yet in just one generation, much of this natural nighttime environment has been lost due to the widespread use of artificial lighting, particularly blue-rich light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
This second booklet in the Marking Time Beneath Different Skies series explores Stonehenge within its broader Neolithic context, focusing on people, landscape, and long-term social change rather than celestial cycles alone. Drawing on current archaeological research into Neolithic Britain and the Stonehenge landscape, including major landscape studies and excavation programmes by researchers such as Mike Parker Pearson, Julian Thomas, Alasdair Whittle, and David Jacques, it examines how Stonehenge emerged from earlier Mesolithic use of the landscape, developed through successive Neolithic phases, and functioned within a connected ritual world on Salisbury Plain. By situating Stonehenge within these wider patterns of continuity, movement, and memory, the booklet offers a deeper understanding of how monuments were shaped by, and in turn shaped, Neolithic life in Britain.
Stonehenge is more than a prehistoric monument; it reflects how ancient societies observed the sky to understand time, season, and change. This booklet draws on modern archaeological and astronomical research, reinterpreted for general readers, and considers how these principles are expressed today at Stonehenge Aotearoa in the Southern Hemisphere.
Using research from the original Stonehenge and observations from Stonehenge Aotearoa, it explains how stone, space and design can shape the way sound is heard and felt. It also shows how Stonehenge Aotearoa was created for a different purpose, as a place to teach the movements of the Sun, Moon and stars in the Southern Hemisphere.
