Stonehenge is often reduced to a familiar circle of standing stones, but the monument makes more sense as one chapter in a much larger prehistoric landscape on Salisbury Plain. Its earthworks, burial features, avenues and nearby monuments record activity across many centuries. The stones are the most visible part of the story, not a complete explanation of it. A visit becomes richer when you allow time for the visitor centre, the walk or shuttle across the fields, and the archaeological setting beyond the circle itself.
English Heritage describes Stonehenge as the outcome of repeated construction and rearrangement rather than a single building project. The earliest major enclosure, a circular ditch with banks and entrances, dates to about 3000 BC. Inside it were 56 pits now called the Aubrey Holes; cremated human remains were placed in and around this area. The standing stones came later. Around 2500 BC, builders raised the larger sarsens in a horseshoe and outer circle and arranged smaller stones, commonly called bluestones, within them. Some bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, more than 150 miles away.
