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Was Stonehenge the Ultimate Rock Gig?

Researchers suggest the stones in the prehistoric monument may have been selected for their sonic qualities.
Image via Flickr/mari

There’s always been mystery around Stonehenge, the impressive prehistoric stone circle in Wiltshire, England that archaeologists believe could have been built as early as 3000 BC. Who built it? How did they move the 25-ton stones into place? And most importantly, what was it for?

The carefully placed stone circle was clearly designed with a specific purpose in mind. Suggestions range from a temple for sun worship or a healing centre, to some sort of calendar. But now researchers from the Royal College of Art have suggested that Stonehenge’s importance might not just lie in its awe-inspiring visuals, but also in its sonic qualities (insert joke about “rock music” here).

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They investigated the soundscape of a site called Carn Menyn in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which is believed by many archaeologists to have been the source of the bluestones that make up Stonehenge. This site is nearly 200 miles away from the monument, which adds to its mystery: Why were stones selected from so far away, at a time when moving them must have been near impossible?

Bluestones at Carn Menyn. Image via Wikimedia Commons/ceridwen

This new research follows on from the researchers' earlier Landscape & Perception project, and was published in the journal Time and Mind. “What has emerged as a key question of the Landscape & Perception project relates to how the sonic properties of the Carn Menyn bluestones might have been a factor in their selection for the building of Stonehenge,” the authors explained in their introduction.

“Concurrent is our intention to promote a wider appreciation of the power of acoustics and auditory perception in prehistory, by focusing on a study of the 'materia prima,' the rock outcrops sited across Preseli, rather than contemporary digital simulations of Stonehenge or performance-based assessments of acoustic behavior there or at other Neolithic monuments.”

Earlier studies have looked at Stonehenge’s potential as an ancient rave venue by using computer model experiments, but they wanted to take their experiments directly to the source. They went around the craggy outcrop and tapped on over a thousand rocks with hammerstones—the kind of small, hard cobbles that were used as tools by prehistoric man. They found that the rocks had a five to ten percent chance of being “ringing rocks,” a number that rose to around 20 percent in certain areas. These rocks make an unexpected metallic sound when struck, like a gong. It’s really quite an eery effect.

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This is what a ringing rock sounds like. Video via Vimeo/Landscape Perception

Some, they found, made such a clear sound they could be heard 300m away. “It made us realize that ringing rocks could have been used as signaling devices, perhaps even in the service of religious purposes, much like church bells in the Christian era,” they wrote.

After this discovery, they took to Stonehenge itself, and were granted permission to test the stones in the monument. “We were not expecting to discover clear ringing tones of the bluestones at Stonehenge as is the case at Carn Menyn, because ringing rocks require air space around them in order to be able to resonate and so produce pure sounds,” they explained. Many of the stones in the circle are set in the ground, which would dampen any sound.

Nevertheless, the team found that quite a few made distinctive, if muted, sounds, and posited that they would be “ringing rocks” if they had more space to resonate.They also noted that markings on the stone circle suggested it was struck in the past—though that could have been from people enacting some other ritual, or simply taking home souvenirs.

In the end, we’ll never know if the unique sonic qualities of these rocks inspired the building of Stonehenge. But we do know that Stonehenge inspired some pretty unique rock.