Where Did Stonehenge's Stones Come From, and Who Raised Them? — The Homes We Found and the Questions Still Open

Three Groups of Stones on Salisbury Plain

In southern Wiltshire, England, lies a wide chalk (soft, chalk-like limestone) hill called Salisbury Plain. Around 3000 BCE, about 5,000 years ago, people here dug a circular ditch and construction on Stonehenge began, with the monument being remodeled several times over the following centuries. These were the Neolithic people of Britain, farmers and herders who did not yet use metal. Farming communities first reached Britain around 4000 BCE (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-66094-z), and this society left behind no written records at all (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-02589-x). Therefore, everything we know about Stonehenge comes from stone, soil, and bone.

The stones of Stonehenge fall broadly into three groups. Sarsen stones are the large stones that make up the outer large circle and the central trilithon (post-and-lintel stone structure) of Stonehenge, formed when quartz filled the spaces between sand grains and hardened firmly. A trilithon is a structure with a single horizontal stone placed on top of two upright pillars. Bluestones are smaller stones than the sarsen stones, a collective name for igneous rocks and some sedimentary rocks that do not exist in the ground of Salisbury Plain. Igneous rocks are stones formed when magma underground or lava flowing from a volcano cools and hardens.

In the middle lies a stone of a different material. The Altar Stone is a 6-tonne block of sandstone lying flat in the exact center of Stonehenge. Though named an altar, it is not known what this stone was used for or when it arrived in this spot (DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8736920).

Where these stones came from has been a subject of debate for over 400 years (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc0133). The questions divide into four. Where did the stones come from, who erected them, how were they moved, and why were they erected? Over the past 100 years, and especially in recent years, geology has provided answers to the first question one by one. Most of the large stones came from about 25 km to the north (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc0133), the smaller stones from Wales about 225 km to the west, and the central stone from northeastern Scotland, more than 700 km away (DOI: 10.14324/ai.27.1.13). This article walks from the outer circle into the very center to follow how those answers emerged, and then looks at what bones and genes tell us about the "who." Finally, at the end, it separates what has been confirmed among the four questions from what is still interpretation.

The Large Stones Came from 25 km to the North — The Sarsen Stones

There are 52 sarsen stones remaining at Stonehenge, and 50 of them share the same chemical composition. In 2020, a research team inferred from this match that all 50 came from a single location. They compared a cylindrical core sample extracted from Stone 58 during conservation work in 1958 with sarsen stones from across southern Britain, and concluded that West Woods in Wiltshire, 25 km north of Stonehenge, is the most likely origin for most of the sarsen stones (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc0133; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254760). Stone 58 is a nearly pure quartz mass with 99.7% silicon dioxide, and its composition is uniformly consistent throughout the stone (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254760). Because the composition must be consistent for a single sample to represent the entire stone, this consistency serves as the premise for comparing source locations.

There is a counterargument to this conclusion. In 2024, another research team reanalyzed the same data and argued that the interpretation of a single origin is doubtful, and that the possibility of three to six source locations cannot be ruled out (DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12999). The original researchers countered this by pointing out three methodological problems: using absolute concentrations on materials like sarsen stones where silica infiltrated later to varying degrees between stones, distinguishing sources using easily mobile elements, and comparing single samples directly against one another (DOI: 10.1111/arcm.13105). The debate rests at this point.

Sarsen stone fragments excavated from the soil at Stonehenge reveal another picture. When the trace elements of 54 fragments were compared with Stone 58, not a single one was a chip that had fallen off while dressing Stone 58 or the other 49 stones of the same composition. Twenty-two of them were clustered into three compositional groups, suggesting that sarsen stones were brought in from at least three locations other than West Woods. Most of the 15 whose sources could be pinpointed came from the Marlborough Downs area, such as Monkton Down 25 to 33 km to the north, while three were from 51 km to the southeast and one was from 123 km to the southeast (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104406). The authors note that for now, we can only guess why there are sarsen stones from such diverse sources. They could not determine various possibilities, such as whether those fragments came from one of about 30 large stones that are now missing, whether they were hammerstones, or whether they were small lumps brought in for use in rituals (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104406).

To sum up, the home of most of the remaining large stones has been most plausibly narrowed down to 25 km to the north, but that is not the home of all the sarsen stones that entered Stonehenge.

Small Stones from Wales — Glacier or Humans?

The debate over the birthplace of the bluestones has lasted for over 100 years. In 1923, British geologist Herbert Henry Thomas pointed to the Preseli Hills (Mynydd Preseli in Welsh) in northern Pembrokeshire, southwestern Wales. Later investigations took issue with the specific rock locations Thomas had pinpointed, but the newly found sites were also in the same northern Pembrokeshire area, including the Preseli Hills (DOI: 10.1111/gto.12198). The broad region has remained the same for a century, while the exact outcrops (places where rock is exposed above ground) within it have shifted.

The real controversy was "who moved them." In 1991, a research team analyzed 15 stone samples and 22 excavated fragments from Stonehenge using X-ray fluorescence. The dolerites (dark igneous rocks) came from three locations in a narrow area of eastern Preseli, and the rhyolite (light volcanic rock) pillar stones came from four locations. Seeing that these source areas were mixed together, the research team judged that they resembled a pile of erratic boulders mixed and carried by a glacier rather than stones hand-picked and quarried by people. They based their argument on the points that rocks chemically identical to the Stonehenge dolerites exist as erratics (rocks carried by glaciers) in southern Wales, and that erratics have also been found near Cardiff and Bristol, meaning glaciers reached at least the area of the River Avon. The gap where almost no erratics are visible further to the east was explained by records of fields being cleared of rocks on a large scale in the 18th century. They also considered that the absence of fine glacial material in the river gravels near the plain might be because large boulders were carried while resting on top of a glacier without leaving a trace. The research team's conclusion was that it was a glacier that moved the bluestones from Wales to Salisbury Plain, and that the builders used erratics already scattered across the plain (DOI: 10.1017/s0079497x00004527).

Later, evidence pointing to human hands emerged in northern Pembrokeshire. Part of the rhyolite debris traced back to a quarry site at Craig Rhos-y-felin near the Pembrokeshire coast, and the rock area of Carn Menyn yielded evidence from the late 3rd millennium BCE of dolerite having been quarried and pillar-like blocks similar in shape and size to the Stonehenge bluestones having been made (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00115340). Stone extraction at Carn Menyn had already begun much earlier in the 7th millennium BCE, and the authors suggest that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers first used these rocks (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00115340). In 2026, an analysis came out showing that the age of mineral grains in the stream sediments of Salisbury Plain matches rocks from southern Britain toward the London Basin with no trace of glacial transport, and the paper asserted in its title that this result casts doubt on the glacial transport of the Stonehenge megaliths (DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-03105-3). What this paper confirmed is a one-sentence summary, and the point that glacial traces might not have been left on the plain is something the 1991 study had already anticipated.

That the bluestones' home is northern Pembrokeshire, including the Preseli Hills, is close to a confirmed fact, while who moved them is still under debate. Quarry traces point to human hands. However, the extraction at Carn Menyn dates to the late 3rd millennium BCE, later than the early 3rd millennium BCE when the first bluestones were erected, and regarding the pillar-like blocks there, the abstract only goes as far as stating that they resemble the Stonehenge bluestones (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00115340; DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00098069). Interpretations regarding "what was moved" still diverge. British archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson's research team interpreted Waun Mawn near Preseli as a dismantled stone circle, and argued that some of those stones were erected in the initial circle of pits (the Aubrey Holes) at Stonehenge. British archaeologist Timothy Darvill countered that Waun Mawn could be one of several small stone arrangements common to the region, and that while a Welsh "original circle" cannot be ruled out, it is not supported by current evidence (DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2022.82). Parker Pearson's side reasserted their original interpretation, citing a hearth site at the center of the circle and new traces around the perimeter (DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2022.132). A 2024 paper criticized that even the existence of a single small stone circle at Waun Mawn was not proven, and that a desire in western Wales to show a connection to Stonehenge has produced "inflation of interpretation" (DOI: 10.1177/09596836241236318).

The 1991 study that proposed the glacial hypothesis also viewed Wales as the home of the stones. Both sides agree up to the point that the stones came from Wales, and whether a circle that already stood in Wales was moved entirely is also under debate.

The Center Stone Is from Scotland — Until the Altar Stone's Homeland Changed

The Altar Stone had long been classified as one of the bluestones, and its homeland was also thought to be Wales. A 1991 study also viewed the Altar Stone as coming from the Paleozoic rocks of southwest Wales (DOI: 10.1017/s0079497x00004527). This view collapsed step by step over several years starting in 2020.

A 2020 study compared fragments of the Altar Stone with the Mill Bay sandstone of Milford Haven, Wales, in mineral composition and zircon grains, confirming that Mill Bay was not the source. However, this study moved the source area eastward toward the border of Wales and England (DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2020.105188). In 2022, portable X-ray fluorescence analysis revealed that the Altar Stone and its debris were unusually rich in barium, which differed greatly from the small number of Welsh sandstone samples analyzed together (DOI: 10.1180/mgm.2022.22). A 2023 study analyzed 58 sandstones from the English-Welsh Basin and excluded four with over 1000 ppm of barium from the source because their mineral compositions were different. The authors suggested that it became more likely the Altar Stone did not come from this basin, proposed expanding the search as far as northern Britain, and argued for removing the Altar Stone from the bluestone classification; their judgment was that regarding the Altar Stone as a bluestone had influenced the long-held idea of a Welsh origin (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104215). In 2024, the mainland of the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland, which are rich in Neolithic sites, was investigated, but the sandstone there did not match the Altar Stone (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104738).

The answer came in the same year from a different method. Zircon dating is a method that measures when each hard mineral grain called zircon, mixed among the sand grains in sandstone, first crystallized, and the age distribution of the grains acts as a fingerprint of the land where that sand was eroded from. Because zircon traps uranium when it forms, and that uranium turns into lead at a constant rate, the age of each individual grain can be counted. In 2024, researchers measured the ages and chemical compositions of zircons inside an Altar Stone fragment, as well as apatite and rutile grains whose ages could be measured in the same way. When comparing this age composition with sedimentary rocks across Britain and Ireland, it strikingly resembled the "Old Red Sandstone" of the Orcadian Basin in northeastern Scotland. The researchers concluded that the Altar Stone came from a place at least 750km away from its current location (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07652-1). The Orcadian Basin is a wide area extending from the Orkney and Shetland Islands in the north through Inverness to the east, and because its chemical composition does not match the rocks of the northern islands, it narrows down toward the Scottish mainland (DOI: 10.14324/ai.27.1.13). A 19th-century thin section of the Altar Stone revisited in 2021 also yielded the same grain ages from northeastern Scotland (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105619).

The northeastern Scottish origin of the Altar Stone is the most likely answer, pinned down by the ages of the sand grains after crossing off the Welsh candidates one by one over several years. There are still blanks in that answer. The exact spot within the wide basin has not been determined. A 2026 study reported that the place where the zircon age composition matches best is Caithness at the northeastern tip of the Scottish mainland, whereas southern candidates in the basin, which glaciers would have found easier to move south, have weaker matches (DOI: 10.1002/jqs.70080). One research team writes as follows about why narrowing down the exact source is important: an unknown source is better than a wrong source (DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8736920).

What Bones Tell of People and Animals from Far Away

If stones came from afar, what about the people? The tools used here are chemistry in teeth and bone. Strontium isotopes are strontium variants with different weights; their mixed ratios differ slightly from land to land, and that ratio becomes locked right into the teeth of a person who grew up eating things produced on that land. If the ratio left in the body differs from the land where it was buried, that person lived and ate on different land.

Stonehenge may have started in the early 3rd millennium BCE as a cremation cemetery within the bluestone circle. Based on 20th-century excavation records and new radiocarbon dates, a research team proposed this in 2009, adding that this might have been the cemetery of a powerful family and that family may have originated in Wales (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00098069). Cremation blocked ordinary methods. This was because standard methods of measuring tooth enamel could not be used on cremated human remains. In 2018, researchers analyzed Stonehenge’s cremated remains using a new method to measure strontium in cremated bone. Out of the 25 cremated individuals analyzed, at least 10 did not live on the chalk land of Wessex where this monument stands. Combining this with archaeological evidence, the authors proposed that their most plausible origin was western Wales, the home of the bluestone (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-28969-8). These 25 individuals were a "chosen few" buried at this monument, and do not represent all the people who lent a hand in its construction (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-28969-8).

Places sparse in human bone were filled by animals. Near Stonehenge lies Durrington Walls, a large settlement site from the same period. Unburned human remains are rare there and in surrounding sites, and the analyses possible with cremated remains are limited, so animals raised by humans serve as clues telling us the origins of people (DOI: 10.1007/s12520-019-00849-w). When 131 feast pigs from the Stonehenge area and four Late Neolithic sites in Wessex dating around 2800–2400 BCE were analyzed, their origins were spread across Britain, and few pigs were raised on the spot. Assuming from archaeological evidence that there was no contact with the continent, this analysis restricted the candidates to within Britain from the start (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau6078). Most of the 49 cattle from Durrington Walls came from southern and western Britain (DOI: 10.1007/s12520-019-00849-w).

The same method was used for people of a slightly later period. Among seven skeletons from the early Bronze Age (around 2500–2000 BCE) in a grave at Boscombe Down near Stonehenge, three adult males, the so-called "Boscombe Bowmen," lived on different lands in childhood and early adolescence before coming to the Stonehenge area. The closest land that could yield such ratios is Wales, but Scotland or parts of Europe cannot be ruled out. Two adult males from a nearby grave at Normanton Down and the Stonehenge ditch grew up in the Stonehenge area (DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2006.00258.x).

Let us put these facts together in one place. Among those cremated and buried in the early days of Stonehenge, at least 10 out of the 25 analyzed lived outside the chalk land. Centuries later, around the time the large stones were erected, pigs raised across Britain gathered at feast sites near Stonehenge and four Wessex sites, and most of the cattle came from the south and west. An early Bronze Age grave buried three men who grew up far away, while another nearby burial site buried locals. Bones show that the Stonehenge area was a place that drew people and animals from afar, but those samples are a small number of cremated people and animals served at feasts, and not a roster of the people who hauled the stones.

Population Changes as Told by Genes

Now we look at the other side of "who": bloodlines. Ancient DNA is genetic material extracted and read from bones and teeth thousands of years old, surviving in fragments. A 2018 preprint comparing the genomes of 67 Neolithic people from Britain and 6 her hunter-gatherer predecessors reported overwhelming evidence that farming arrived together with farming migrants who crossed over from the continent (DOI: 10.1101/267443, preprint). As an alternative to this interpretation, a two-stage model has been proposed in which Neolithic objects and customs arrived first, and large-scale human migration followed later (DOI: 10.1017/s0959774321000639). People living in southwestern England before around 3100 BCE were also genetically similar to European Neolithic farmers (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-66094-z). The people living in Britain around the time construction began on Stonehenge were descendants of these Neolithic farmers.

The next change came with pottery. The Beaker phenomenon refers to the widespread dispersal across Western and Central Europe of bell-shaped Beaker pottery and its associated customs. Beaker pottery began to spread from around 2750 BCE, and whether this spread was driven by human migration or the transmission of ideas has been a long-standing debate (DOI: 10.1101/135962, preprint). A 2017 preprint analyzing the ancient DNA of 170 Europeans suggested that migration was not the primary mode between Iberia and Central Europe. In contrast, it reported that migration from the continent spread Beaker culture in Britain, replacing over 90% of the genetic ancestry inherited from British Neolithic people within several centuries. This conclusion relies most heavily on newly reported data from 80 individuals in Britain (DOI: 10.1101/135962, preprint). A 2026 study using the genomes of 112 individuals from present-day the Netherlands, Belgium, and western Germany reported that the Beaker people who crossed into Britain were a population formed in the lower Rhine and Meuse River regions by the mixing of local populations with outsiders, and that they were the primary source for the 90-100% replacement of British Neolithic ancestry (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10111-8).

A 2026 study that read 30 individuals from 12 archaeological sites in southwestern England narrowed down the timing of that change. Everyone before around 3100 BCE was genetically similar to European Neolithic farmers, while everyone after around 2550 BCE was similar to British Beaker people. The rapid change took place between 3000 and 2500 BCE (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-66094-z). At three sites, Bronze Age people were buried in tombs built by genetically distinct Neolithic communities more than a thousand years earlier. The authors interpret this as a possible attempt by the newly arrived group to connect themselves to an already established landscape and borrow the authority of ancient tombs (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-66094-z). This interpretation is drawn from the burial sites in the southwest.

Regarding whether this change constituted a replacement of the builders of Stonehenge, the evidence extends only as far as aligning the dates. The date for the central trilithon arrangement has been established at 2600–2400 BCE, which predates the earliest Beaker burials in Britain. However, Beaker pottery may already have been arriving by that time (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00095624). Construction continued even after that. A 2008 excavation provisionally dated the erection of the double bluestone circle to around 2300 BCE (DOI: 10.1017/s000358150900002x). The sarsens were set up before the Beaker people were buried, and the bluestones were rearranged even later. While genes tell us that the ancestry of the people of Britain, including the southwest, shifted over the course of several centuries alongside the Beaker phenomenon, the genomes of the people buried at Stonehenge are not included in this evidence. Most of the early burials at Stonehenge were cremations, and uncremated human remains are rare in this area (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00098069; DOI: 10.1007/s12520-019-00849-w). While remains that underwent isotopic analysis do exist, such as an uncremated adult male found in the Stonehenge ditch (DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2006.00258.x), such remains do not appear in the abstracts of the genetic studies used as evidence in this article.

These abstracts also do not tell us how the replacement took place. When genetic studies of the Beaker phenomenon across Europe came to light, the press ran headlines like "Did Dutch hordes wipe out the people who built Stonehenge?", but a commentary article noted that the study's conclusions were more complex than the headlines (DOI: 10.1042/bio04201030). The extent of replacement also varied by location. A study that read the genomes of 22 Bronze Age and 3 Iron Age individuals from northwestern Orkney showed clear traces of external migration, but most of the male lineages traced back to the local Neolithic people (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108001119).

Still an Interpretation — How They Were Moved and Why They Were Built

We return to the first four questions. "Where" has been answered to a large extent. Most of the large stones are 25 km to the north, the bluestones are about 225 km to the west in northern Pembrokeshire (the Preseli Hills area), and the altar stone is from more than 700 km away in northeastern Scotland. "How they were moved" is still an inference. The altar stone researchers consider that the terrain barriers were too great to move it by land from Scotland, so they conclude it was moved by sea, and that this route demonstrates the high organizational capacity of Neolithic society (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07652-1). The possibility that a glacier handled part of the journey was also examined. If a glacier had moved the altar stone toward Dogger Bank in the North Sea, the distance humans had to pull it would decrease from 700 km to 400 km, but Dogger Bank was submerged by the sea before the altar stone arrived at Stonehenge. The authors conclude that even if glaciers helped, humans still had to move it a considerable distance (DOI: 10.1002/jqs.70080).

"Why they were built" is more open. A 2025 paper points out that the layout where the altar stone lies flat in front of the largest trilithon resembles the "recumbent stone circles" of northeastern Scotland, and that the floor layouts of Late Neolithic houses in Orkney and Durrington Walls are unusually similar. The authors interpret that it may be best to explain these connections as the result of building Stonehenge as a monument binding the entire island together (DOI: 10.14324/ai.27.1.13). The proposal we saw earlier, that it started as the grave of a family who may have been of Welsh origin, is another interpretation regarding the nature of this monument (DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00098069). A 2024 debate paper suggested that in addition to Stonehenge and Waun Mawn, other monument groups in Britain and Ireland should also be asked the same question about connections between distant societies (DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2024.3).

That the home of the stones has been pinpointed and that the mystery of Stonehenge has been solved are different sentences. Geology has become able to tell where the stones came from within an increasingly narrow range, and bones and DNA show that people and animals from afar gathered in this area, and that the ancestral makeup of the British population changed significantly alongside the Beaker phenomenon. Whether the stones were moved by sea or dragged by land, and whether the goal was to unite the entire island or honor a single family, are interpretations built upon those pieces of evidence. The frontiers we will look at next are two. One is exactly where in northeastern Scotland the altar stone broke off from, and the other is whether more uncremated bones of construction-era people will turn up.

The tools used in this article were covered one by one in the "How Do We Know the Past?" series. You can continue reading about how to read a society without writing in "Reading Historical Records — Grandmother's Diary and That Day's Newspaper", strontium in teeth and bones in "What Bones Tell — One Person's Diary, Split Between Teeth and Bone", how dates like 2600–2400 BCE are derived in "Dating with Carbon — Radiocarbon Dates, Read with an Hourglass and Tree Rings", and the replacement of ancestral proportions in "What Genes Can Tell Us — An Old Book Copied Down the Generations".

Source Papers

• "Stonehenge's central rock probably came from Scotland" (2024) — DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-02589-x — In a Neolithic society without written records, the mineral grain fingerprints of the altar stone point to the Orcadian Basin.
• "Searching for the origin of the Stonehenge Altar Stone: new sedimentological, petrographical, mineralogical, geochemical and isotopic constraints" (2026) — DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.8736920 — Bluestones were transported roughly 225 km, while the altar stone's purpose and arrival time remain unknown; "an unknown source is better than a wrong one."
• "Origins of the sarsen megaliths at Stonehenge" (2020) — DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc0133 — 50 out of 52 sarsen stones share the same composition, with West Woods, 25 km to the north, being the most plausible source for most of them, following 400 years of debate over their origin.
• "Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources" (2025) — DOI: 10.14324/ai.27.1.13 — Sarsen stones traveled 24 km, bluestones 225 km, and the altar stone over 700 km, from mainland Scotland, interpreted as a monument of island-wide integration.
• "Petrological and geochemical characterisation of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge" (2021) — DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254760 — Stone 58 is groundwater silcrete with 99.7% silicon dioxide, and its composition is uniform throughout the stone.
• "Stonehenge revisited: A geochemical approach to interpreting the geographical source of sarsen stone #58" (2024) — DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12999 — Doubting the single-source interpretation, 3 to 6 locations cannot be ruled out.
• "Comment on: 'Stonehenge revisited…'" (2025) — DOI: 10.1111/arcm.13105 — Rebutted on the grounds of issues with three methods: absolute concentrations, mobile elements, and single-sample comparisons.
• "Local and exotic sources of sarsen debitage at Stonehenge revealed by geochemical provenancing" (2024) — DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104406 — 54 pieces of debitage point to at least three additional sources—25–33 km, 51 km, and 123 km away—with reasons remaining a matter of guesswork.
• "The bluestones of Stonehenge" (2017) — DOI: 10.1111/gto.12198 — Thomas pointed to the Preseli Hills in 1923; the specific locations have been re-examined, but they remain in the same general area.
• "The Geological Sources and Transport of the Bluestones of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK" (1991) — DOI: 10.1017/s0079497x00004527 — 15 samples plus 22 fragments indicate multiple sources mixed together, leading to the conclusion of glacial transport (with the expectation that river gravels might leave no traces), while the altar stone originated in southwest Wales.
• "Beyond Stonehenge: Carn Menyn Quarry and the origin and date of bluestone extraction in the Preseli Hills of south-west Wales" (2014) — DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00115340 — Craig Rhos-y-felin quarry (Pembrokeshire coast) and Carn Menyn show dolerite extraction and pillar-like monoliths in the later 3rd millennium BC, with quarrying beginning in the 7th millennium BC.
• "Detrital zircon–apatite fingerprinting challenges glacial transport of Stonehenge's megaliths" (2026) — DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-03105-3 — Plain stream sediments show no glacial traces, and the title "challenges" glacial transport; a one-sentence summary abstract.
• "Mythical rings? Waun Mawn and Stonehenge Stage 1" (2022) — DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2022.82 — Waun Mawn may have consisted of multiple small stone arrangements, and the claim of a Welsh prototype circle is not supported by current evidence.
• "How Waun Mawn stone circle was designed and built, and when the Bluestones arrived at Stonehenge: a response to Darvill" (2022) — DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2022.132 — Reasserts the original interpretation based on new evidence such as a hearth at the circle's center.
• "The Stonehenge bluestones did not come from Waun Mawn in West Wales" (2024) — DOI: 10.1177/09596836241236318 — Even the existence of a large circle is unproven, amounting to an "inflation of interpretation."
• "Constraining the provenance of the Stonehenge 'Altar Stone': Evidence from automated mineralogy and U–Pb zircon age dating" (2020) — DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2020.105188 — Mill Bay is not the source; a location near the Welsh-English border is suggested.
• "Linking derived debitage to the Stonehenge Altar Stone using portable X-ray fluorescence analysis" (2022) — DOI: 10.1180/mgm.2022.22 — The high barium content of the altar stone contrasts with Welsh sandstones.
• "The Stonehenge Altar Stone was probably not sourced from the Old Red Sandstone of the Anglo-Welsh Basin" (2023) — DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104215 — Four high-barium samples are excluded from a set of 58, suggesting we expand the search northward and remove it from the bluestone category.
• "Was the Stonehenge Altar Stone from Orkney?" (2024) — DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104738 — Mainland Orkney is not the source.
• "A Scottish provenance for the Altar Stone of Stonehenge" (2024) — DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07652-1 — Zircon, apatite, and rutile ages match the Orcadian Basin, pointing to a distance of at least 750 km, sea transport, and a high level of social organization.
• "Altar to Attic to Analysis: Geochemical Authentication of a Rediscovered Victorian Thin Section of Stonehenge's Altar stone" (2026) — DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105619 — A thin section rediscovered in 2021 also shows grain ages from northeastern Scotland.
• "From Highlands to Henge: Refining the Provenance and Transport Pathways of Stonehenge's Altar Stone" (2026) — DOI: 10.1002/jqs.70080 — Caithness is the best match; if transported by glaciers to Dogger Bank the distance drops from 700 to 400 km, but Dogger Bank was submerged, meaning human transport was still necessary.
• "Who was buried at Stonehenge?" (2009) — DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00098069 — Began as a cremation cemetery within the bluestone circle, potentially the graves of a prominent family that may have originated in Wales.
• "Strontium isotope analysis on cremated human remains from Stonehenge support links with west Wales" (2018) — DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-28969-8 — At least 10 out of 25 cremated individuals did not live on the Wessex chalklands, with western Wales being the most plausible origin.
• "Strontium and oxygen isotope evidence for the origin and movement of cattle at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls, UK" (2019) — DOI: 10.1007/s12520-019-00849-w — Most of the 49 cattle came from the south or west, and since unburned human remains are rare, the animals serve as proxy indicators.
• "Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain" (2019) — DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau6078 — 131 pigs came from all over Britain, with continental Europe ruled out as a candidate.
• "Bronze Age childhood migration of individuals near Stonehenge, revealed by strontium and oxygen isotope tooth enamel analysis" (2006) — DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2006.00258.x — Movement of the three Amesbury Archer individuals; Wales is the closest possibility, though Scotland and Europe cannot be ruled out, while the other two are locals.
• "Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain" (2018) — DOI: 10.1101/267443 — Preprint. Overwhelming evidence that continental farmers brought agriculture.
• "Neolithization and Population Replacement in Britain: An Alternative View" (2022) — DOI: 10.1017/s0959774321000639 — A two-stage model where goods and customs arrived first, followed later by large-scale migration.
• "The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe" (2017) — DOI: 10.1101/135962 — Preprint. Out of 170 individuals (80 from Britain), over 90% of the Neolithic gene pool was replaced within a few centuries.
• "Lasting Lower Rhine–Meuse forager ancestry shaped Bell Beaker expansion" (2026) — DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10111-8 — 112 individuals show that the formation of the Lower Rhine-Meuse Bell Beaker group was the primary source of the 90–100% replacement in Britain.
• "Diachronic reuse of Neolithic burial monuments by Bronze Age newcomers in Southwestern Britain" (2026) — DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-66094-z — 30 individuals from 12 sites show rapid changes between 3000 and 2500 BC, interpreted as the reuse of older tombs.
• "The age of Stonehenge" (2007) — DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00095624 — The arrangement of the large stones dates to 2600–2400 BC, predating the earliest Beaker burials in Britain, though Beaker pottery may have already arrived.
• "Stonehenge excavations 2008" (2009) — DOI: 10.1017/s000358150900002x — The double circle of bluestones provisionally dates to around 2300 BC.
• "Haunted by the ghost of the Beaker folk?" (2020) — DOI: 10.1042/bio04201030 — Commentary article. The study's conclusions were more complex than media headlines suggested.
• "Ancient DNA at the edge of the world: Continental immigration and the persistence of Neolithic male lineages in Bronze Age Orkney" (2022) — DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108001119 — Continental ancestry flowed into Bronze Age Orkney, while most male lineages continued from local Neolithic populations.
• "Beyond the bluestones: links between distant monuments in Late Neolithic Britain and Ireland" (2024) — DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2024.3 — Debate paper. Asking the same connection questions of other monument groups.