Stonehenge Trilithon

The Stonehenge trilithon has become an iconic image of prehistory, but architecturally it is something of an aberration. Trilithons are only found at Stonehenge, and so are not representative of the architectural repertoire of Europe’s other megalithic monuments. A composite, jointed structure manufactured from shaped sarsens (and bluestones), in fact they mimic the form of wooden settings – a trilithon is a skeuomorphic assemblage – and tell of an architectural lineage that goes back to the house. While many have been fascinated with the engineering required to move and erect these stones, the really important questions relate to why people should attempt to build in stone an object/structure normally created out of wood, and why just at Stonehenge during the mid-3rd millennium BC? Issues of mimesis and materiality come to the fore.

Reading

Cleal, R., Walker, K. & Montague, R. 1995, Stonehenge in its landscape: twentieth-century excavations. London: English Heritage

Parker Pearson, M. & Ramilisonina, 1998, Stonehenge for the ancestors: the stones pass on the message, Antiquity 72, 308-26

Pollard, J. 2009, The materialization of religious structures in the time of Stonehenge, Material Religion 5.3, 332-53