For hundreds of years Stonehenge has been both an enigma and an inspiration to archaeologists, tourists, mystics, astronomers, artists, poets and visionaries. The real monument has been often obscured by their imagined and claimed versions of Stonehenge.

This revised and enlarged edition of Christopher Chippindale?s prize-winning classic account brings the story of Stonehenge right up to date. It describes in two new chapters the startling ideas and insights of the latest field research. In a radical reinterpretation, Stonehenge with its cold rocks is seen as the place of the dead, and another site ? over the horizon ? as the place of the living, built in wood, and complete with houses and paved ways. In another theory, Stonehenge is a place of healing. Alongside the quest to understand Stonehenge are the taxing practicalities of caring for a 4,000 years old site that was never designed to cope with a million visitors a year, and how to preserve the monument for millennia to come.