Whats the evidence on which people deduce that they carry astronomical information?
Well, this is the alignments – what you can see across from one stone to another stone, or from the centre of the site past a stone. The famous one of course is the midsummer line from the centre of the site past the heel stone. And that’s what everybody turns up at the summer solstice to watch. (laugh) I did it myself once. About 10 past 4 in the morning (laugh) Some ungodly time. And most unfortunately there was dense cloud and light drizzle, and the whole thing was a total disaster. But the whole site is oriented, beyond any doubt whatsoever, on the summer solstice line. People have also thought there were a lot of other possible sightlines, going right back to the work of Hawking in his famous book Stonehenge Decoded published in 1965, in which he claimed that stonehenge was a computer (yes). Rather outrageous claim, (laugh). But some of that’s still stands and I think there’s general agreement that there are important sightlines at Stonehenge, and at other megalithic sites. But it
