A few years after the events described in the previous article, Dr. Walter Charlton, the personal physician of King Charles II, offered a completely different dating for Stonehenge after searching for similar structures in continental Europe. Charleston's correspondence with Danish antiquities expert Olaf Worm convinced him that Stonehenge was erected in the 9th century A.D., when the Scandinavians conquered much of England. According to him, Stonehenge was the coronation site of the Danish kings, and its layout matched the shape of the crown. This was an actual interpretation, given that Charles II had only recently returned to the throne, but it was not supported by real evidence. The lack of any mention of Stonehenge in the early medieval texts makes this theory less convincing, while the familiarity with Scandinavian megalithic buildings shows that they are significantly smaller than Stonehenge.
The first to suggest that Stonehenge was built by ancient Britons was John Aubrey in 1666. Aubrey personally planned the site and drew attention to the ring of depressions located on the inside of the rampart and now known as the "Aubrey Holes". His approach was very different from previous commentators - he did not seek evidence of Stonehenge's foreign origins, but pointed to his connection to many other stone circles in Britain. Finding that neither Romans, nor Saxons, nor Danes had built such monuments, Aubrey concluded that they were "of domestic origin". According to Aubrey, Stonehenge was created by Druids, known from Roman sources (see Druids appendix).
William Stukeley popularized the theory of prehistoric origin of Stonehenge in 1740, when his book "Stonehenge: The Temple of British Druids" was published. Unfortunately, his excavations in the center of the horseshoe structure did not confirm this assumption. The first discovery of chronologically identifiable objects in the area of the monument - a few Roman coins thrown away by rabbits digging holes in the vicinity - caused him some concern, but he decided that the coins were left by visitors to Stonehenge. Stukeley also opened an alley from the northeast entrance.
At the time of Stukeley, visiting Stonehenge became fashionable, and many visitors not only burned fires inside the stone circle, but also tried to take some souvenirs with them. Stukli protested against the "outrageous custom of chipping pieces of stone with heavy hammers". This vandalism mainly affected sarsens, as the "blue stones" were much stronger. The continued looting of the monument had predictable consequences: in January 1797, one of the trilithons collapsed to the ground.
This disaster gave rise to further research. They were headed by William Cunnington, who dug up about two hundred burial mounds around Stonehenge in the Salisbury Valley. In 1802, he studied the central area, but did not achieve much success, except for the scattered finds of prehistoric ceramics.
"This summer, I carried out excavations in several places, both in the Area and in the vicinity of Stonehenge, trying not to get too close to the stones. In particular, in front of the Altar (fallen sarsen) I dug to a depth of five feet or more and found charcoal, animal bones and clay shards. Among the latter were several pieces similar to roughly processed urns, which are sometimes found in burial mounds, as well as fragments of pottery from the Roman period.
The results of Cunnington's excavations were published by his wealthy patron, Sir Richard Colt Chorus, who left a detailed discussion of the ancient people who left the grave mounds on the Salisbury plain. However, when it came to Stonehenge, he limited himself to an expression of delight and reverence:
"How sublime! How wonderful! How incomprehensible!
In the spring of 1810, Cunnington again excavated Stonehenge and established that the "Plough Stone" (a grim name that appeared because of an incorrect interpretation of the red stain formed by iron oxides on the surface of the stone as a result of weathering) originally occupied an upright position. It was Cunnington's swan song, as he died at the end of 1810. The fieldwork in the Stonehenge area has almost stopped.