Following on from our excavation of a possible henge site on the Quantock Hills in September, we decided to hold an entire session dedicated to prehistoric henges.\u00a0 We started out with a PowerPoint presentation about different types of henges, talking about how some contained stone circles like Stonehenge but others did not.\u00a0 Some but not all were aligned to the mid-Winter sunset.\u00a0 A few had had later structures built inside them like the famous village at Avebury.<\/p>\n
We looked into how henges were discovered and recorded by the early Antiquarians and how they were recorded today in earthwork surveys.\u00a0 We then looked at how and why they were built by Neolithic people.\u00a0 Afterwards we had a quiz where we had to identify photos of lots of different henges from a brief description.<\/p>\n
After a quick break, Sean Kosikowsky the Museum Manager came in to talk to us about Neolithic axes which dated from the time when henges were being built.\u00a0 Sean brought a collection of various types of prehistoric axes with him for us to look at and handle which was great!<\/p>\n
We finished the session by drawing designs for our own henge monuments, thinking about things like whether it contained standing stones, how it was aligned, what was in the centre and what activities might have taken place there.<\/p>\n
This was a fun and interesting session and really brought to life the site where we had been excavating a couple of months before.<\/p>\n\n\t\t