The bluestones of Stonehenge

How and why the bluestones arrived at Stonehenge, the UK's most revered ancient monument, has long held people's imagination. The key to understanding these questions relies heavily on the location of their sources. Following early studies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which proposed various places but in particular south-west England, H.H. Thomas, in 1923, suggested that they came from the Mynydd Preseli, in north Pembrokeshire, Wales. Thomas proposed a number of key locations for the geographical origin of the stones. However, recent investigations have called those locations into question, identifying different sources albeit from the same broad area in north Pembrokeshire. Identification of these proposed new sites has led to archaeological excavations and important new discoveries including new suggested routes for the transport of the bluestones from the Preseli Hills to Stonehenge some 230 km away.