Prehistoric and contemporary: constructing Stonehenge by historiography (1880-2020)

• Grant number: 20/08445-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2021
• End date: November 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Pedro Paulo Abreu Funari
• Grantee: Sofia Helena Cardoso Rodrigues
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In addition to being a British megalithic monument created and used during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (3000 BC - 1520 BC), Stonehenge is today an important part of the constitution of an observation of the past. Taken as a historical source by several bibliographies, it can be a case study for efforts to understand its context, but also, the direction of the academic research that analyzes it. Given the existence of a variety of conflicting stands to the meaning in its Prehistoric time, our effort will be directed to contemporary primary sources. Based on a chronological division offered in three parts(1880-1960; 1960-1980; 1980-2020), we aim at a careful investigation, for later synthesis, of the different approaches through which the academy has developed studies on the conjuncture of the megalithic. Stonehenge: Plans, Descriptions, and Theories, by Flinders Petrie, Stonehenge, by Richard Atkinson, as well as Gerald Hawkins' Decoded Stonehenge, will be our exponents. Such works, supported by auxiliary primary sources and by relevant secondary sources, will indicate not only the unfolding of meanings attributed to the monument through field research but, in the same way, insertion of the case study in the ways of History and historiography over time. (AU)