Stonehenge Visitor Centre seen from a distance.
Reconstructed Neolithic dwellings at Stonehenge Visitor Centre.
Wessex Archaeology has released the full results of nearly 20 years of excavations conducted as part of the effort to find a suitable location for the Stonehenge visitor centre.
The fieldwork — carried out between 1990 and 2008 on behalf of English Heritage, Historic England, and the National Trust — aimed to identify a placement for the new facility that would not disturb archaeologically sensitive areas.
As archaeologists surveyed the wider Stonehenge landscape, they eliminated several proposed sites and recorded numerous features that offered fresh insight into millennia of human activity around the monument.
Among the newly published findings are Neolithic pits and the remains of a previously unidentified medieval structure. Although these discoveries were made years earlier, they have now been fully analysed, written up, and made publicly available for the first time.
The complete report, The Archaeology of the Stonehenge Visitor Centre, is accessible for free through Wessex Archaeology’s Open Library.
The organisation has also released project photographs, provided by English Heritage, and can supply captions and credits upon request. A statement from co-author Matt Leivers is available as well.
The book can be viewed through the Open Library here: https://wessexarchaeologylibrary.org/plugins/books/96/
