Henge Monuments: Reappraisal or Reductionism?

Abstract

Classification has been a fundamental tool in archaeology since the birth of the discipline, particularly in artefactual analysis. All artefacts, including field monuments, have a limitless variety of characteristics and their reduction into a system of classification necessitates the selection, summarization and simplification of those characteristics regarded as diagnostic in order to clarify groupings of related monuments which might otherwise be obscured by concentration on detail. While some doubt has been cast on the value of the classification of henge monuments as an internally coherent group (and the discovery of many more sites has certainly done little to consolidate that coherence) it can still be argued that a strictly defined class of henge is a useful contribution to our understanding (Harding 1987). Other classes of monument of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC which seem to have ceremonial/funerary functions have also been defined, such as enclosed cremation cemeteries, recumbent stone circles, postcircles, ring cairns, ring ditches and so on. It is widely agreed that there are complex relationships between these various types and their myriad hybrids, or at least that comparisons can be made between various constructional elements.