Stonehenge Avenue is an ancient avenue on Salisbury plain, Wiltshire, England. It is part of the

Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in Wiltshire, England. The WHS covers two large areas of land separated by about , rather than a specific monument or building. The sites were inscribed as co-listi ...

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...

World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...

. Discovered in the 18th century, it measures nearly 3 kilometers, connecting

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connec ...

with the River Avon. It was built during the Stonehenge 3 period of 2600 to 1700 BCE. Along some of its length The Avenue is aligned with the sunrise of the

summer solstice The summer solstice, also called the estival solstice or midsummer, occurs when one of Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the summer ...

, suggesting a time of most frequent use. In 2013 a section of A344 road was closed, which had cut through the Avenue close to Stonehenge. After the road surface was removed, it was shown that although the Avenue's banks had been sliced off, the filled in ditches were still in evidence, confirming that the Avenue continued through to the stone circle. At the end of the Avenue, a ring of pits, referred to as Bluestonehenge, was discovered in 2009. No monoliths were found, and stone chips which were assumed to be of bluestone were later found to bear no relation to the bluestones at Stonehenge. Natural

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

grooves called periglacial stripes are present in the ground underneath the Avenue.

Mike Parker Pearson Michael Parker Pearson, (born 26 June 1957) is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Neolithic British Isles, Madagascar and the archaeology of death and burial. A professor at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, he previousl ...

of the

Stonehenge Riverside Project The Stonehenge Riverside Project was a major Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded archaeological research study of the development of the Stonehenge landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain. In particular, the project examined the rela ...

believes that the Avenue was inspired by, and built over the top of this existing natural formation of parallel rills which had a significant astronomical alignment. The presence of ridges and gullies that happened to line up with the solstice directions may have been venerated, leading the Neolithic people to later build Stonehenge at this particular site. The Avenue, along with Stonehenge itself, is a

Scheduled Monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and ...

, first designated in the 1882 act which was the earliest legislation to protect British archaeological sites.

References

{{World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom Sites associated with Stonehenge Buildings and structures in Wiltshire