A review by shanaqui
Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape by Francis Pryor

informative medium-paced

4.0

Francis Pryor's Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape is a good summary of the current consensus around Stonehenge, inasfar as I understand it. It's not really much of a step forward from Mike Parker Pearson's book on Stonehenge from ~2012, which is probably a good place to go if you want something in-depth.

Still, it's presented beautifully here, with photos, art, coloured maps and plans, etc, and it does a good job of condensing down what we know and how we know it, and theorising from what we do know about the reasons for Stonehenge's building, the phases of activity there, the traces of those who built there, etc. It discusses Mike Parker Pearson's theory that the people who built Stonehenge built in wood for the living and stone for the dead, and makes that pretty clear (though I think there's supporting evidence he chooses not to discuss that would firm up that point).

However, I do keep in mind with Francis Pryor that he does deliberately cherry-pick sources that agree with him (he's said as much, explicitly, in Britain AD), so it's important to read him sceptically.