If this etymology is combined with the tradition reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth stating that Ambrosius Aurelianus ordered the building of Stonehenge – which is located within the parish of Amesbury ( and where Ambrosius was supposedly buried ) – and with the presence of an Iron Age hill fort also in that parish, then it may be tempting to connect Ambrosius with Amesbury.

In the 1960s the work of the engineer Alexander Thom and that of the astronomer Gerald Hawkins, who proposed that Stonehenge was a Neolithic computer, inspired new interest in the astronomical features of ancient sites.

In approximately 3500 BC, a Stonehenge Cursus was built north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the trees and develop the area.

Stonehenge Avenue, ( 10 ), a parallel pair of ditches and banks leading to the River Avon, was also added.

The timber circle was orientated towards the rising sun on the midwinter solstice, opposing the solar alignments at Stonehenge, whilst the avenue was aligned with the setting sun on the summer solstice and led from the river to the timber circle.

Although this would seem the most impressive phase of work, Stonehenge 3 IV was rather shabbily built compared to its immediate predecessors, as the newly re-installed bluestones were not well-founded and began to fall over.

The last known construction at Stonehenge was about 1600 BC ( see ' Y and Z Holes '), and the last usage of it was probably during the Iron Age.

A decapitated 7th century Saxon man was excavated from Stonehenge in 1923.

Professor Geoffrey Wainwright OBE, FSA, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and Professor Timothy Darvill, OBE of Bournemouth University have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing – the primeval equivalent of Lourdes.

On the other hand, Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University has suggested that Stonehenge was part of a ritual landscape and was joined to Durrington Walls by their corresponding avenues and the River Avon.

He suggests that the area around Durrington Walls Henge was a place of the living, whilst Stonehenge was a domain of the dead.

A journey along the Avon to reach Stonehenge was part of a ritual passage from life to death, to celebrate past ancestors and the recently deceased.

It should be pointed out that both explanations were mooted in the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth ( below ), who extolled the curative properties of the stones and was also the first to advance the idea that Stonehenge was constructed as a funerary monument.

Then Merlin, using " gear " and skill, easily dismantled the stones and sent them over to Britain, where Stonehenge was dedicated.

In the late 1920s a nation-wide appeal was launched to save Stonehenge from the encroachment of the modern buildings that had begun to appear around it.

Throughout the twentieth century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids: the historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that " it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it.

Between 1972 and 1984, Stonehenge was the site of a Stonehenge Free Festival.

These form part of the Europe-wide Megalithic culture which also produced Stonehenge in Wiltshire, and which pre-historians now interpret as showing sophisticated use of astronomical observations.

He also produced a theory on the creation of Stonehenge.

As with the standing stones at Callanish on Lewis and other standing stones across Scotland, these monuments form part of the Europe wide Megalithic culture which also produced Stonehenge in Wiltshire and the stone rows at Carnac in Brittany.

* A visiting astronomer-priest from the culture that later produced the Stonehenge trilithons

The oldest surviving British art includes Stonehenge from around 2600 BC, and tin and gold works of art produced by the Beaker people from around 2150 BC.

Conal Cochran ( Dan O ' Herlihy ) has produced a line of Silver Shamrock masks, each containing pieces of the Blue Stone, which he has stolen from Stonehenge in the UK.

The hotly debated plan for the capital's Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, a circle of huge tablets engraved with his speeches ( and promptly dubbed by one of its critics, `` Instant Stonehenge '' ), is another of Udall's headaches, since as supervisor of the National Parks Commission he will share in the responsibility for building it.

It has been suggested that megaliths found at Nabta Playa are examples of the world's first known archaeoastronomical devices, predating Stonehenge by some 1, 000 years.

The complex including Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness, Skara Brae, as well as other tombs and standing stones represents a concentration of Neolithic sites that is rivalled in Britain only by the complexes associated with Stonehenge and Avebury.

Stonehenge and other ancient sites are revered by many who practice New Age spirituality.

Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.

Archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 indicates that Stonehenge could possibly have served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings.

There is little or no direct evidence for the construction techniques used by the Stonehenge builders.

The 1905 mass initiation ritual held by the Ancient Order of Druids at Stonehenge.

The most accurate early plan of Stonehenge was that made by Bath architect John Wood in 1740.

Excavations were once again carried out in 1978 by Atkinson and John Evans during which they discovered the remains of the Stonehenge Archer in the outer ditch, and in 1979 rescue archaeology was needed alongside the Heel Stone after a cable-laying ditch was mistakenly dug on the roadside, revealing a new stone hole next to the Heel Stone.

In 1993 the way that Stonehenge was presented to the public was called ' a national disgrace ' by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.

More recent excavations include a series of digs held between 2003 and 2008 known as the Stonehenge Riverside Project, led by Mike Parker Pearson.

A licence for the removal of human remains at Stonehenge had been granted by the Ministry of Justice in May 2008, in accordance with the Statement on burial law and archaeology issued in May 2008.

* Stonehenge 20th Century Excavations Databases An English Heritage commissioned report by Wessex Archaeology on the 20th century excavations.

The Ridgeway passes near many Neolithic, Iron Age, and Bronze Age sites including Avebury Circle, a stone circle similar to Stonehenge ; Barbury Castle, Liddington Castle, Uffington Castle, Segsbury Castle, Pulpit Hill and Ivinghoe Beacon Hill, all Iron Age and Bronze Age hill forts ; Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic chieftain burial tomb ; the Uffington White Horse, an ancient chalk horse carved into the hillside near Uffington Castle ; and Grim's Ditch, a section of earthwork near Mongewell created by Iron Age peoples as a possible demarcation line.

The stone is referred to in the comedy play by Derek Webb called Bringing Back the Bluestones in which a Welsh group decide to emulate the return of the Stone of Scone to Scotland by demanding the return of the Bluestones from Stonehenge to Pembrokeshire.

According to carbon-14 dates, it is more than five hundred years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and predates Stonehenge by about a thousand years, as well as predating the Mycenaean culture of ancient Greece.

* Circa 2500 BC: Constructions in Brittany ( Le Menec, Kermario and elsewhere ), Italy ( Otranto ), Sardinia, and Scotland ( northeast ), plus the climax of the megalithic Bell-beaker culture in Iberia, Germany, and the British Isles ( stone circle at Stonehenge ).

Sites such as Stonehenge also provide evidence of activity from the later Bronze Age Wessex culture.

* Circa 2800 BC: Climax of the megalithic Funnel-beaker culture in Denmark, and the construction of the henge at Stonehenge.

The Windmill Hill culture was a name given to a people inhabiting southern Britain, in particular in the Salisbury Plain area close to Stonehenge, around approximately 3000BC.

In the 1960s underground culture the multiple name Emmett Grogan was adopted by San Francisco Diggers and in the 1970s the multiple name Wally was adopted by a group of squatters in and around Stonehenge.

Following the 17th-century first flowering of Anglo-Saxon studies, there was a similar wave of enthusiasm for Northern culture in Britain, identifying as Viking remains Iron Age hill forts and even Stonehenge and exemplified by the antiquarian interests of George Hickes, who published a Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus in 1703 – 05.

Rich Wessex culture burials emerged during the period such as that at Bush Barrow near Stonehenge.