Stonehenge: Wiltshire

24+iii pages with plates and folding map. Octavo (8 1/2" x 5 1/4") bound in original publisher's stapled wrappers. The earliest structures known in the immediate area are four or five pits, three of which appear to have held large pine 'totem-pole like' posts erected in the Mesolithic period, between 8500 and 7000 BC. It is not known how these posts relate to the later monument of Stonehenge. At this time, when much of the rest of southern England was largely covered by woodland, the chalk downland in the area of Stonehenge may have been an unusually open landscape. It is possible that this is why it became the site of an early Neolithic monument complex. This complex included the causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood's Ball, two cursus monuments or rectangular earthworks (the Greater, or Stonehenge, and Lesser Cursus), and several long barrows, all dating from the centuries around 3500 BC. The presence of these monuments probably influenced the later location of Stonehenge. Condition: Edge wear, previous owner's name to front wrapper verso, some tape to inner joint, soiled else better than good.