Petrography, geochemistry and mineralogy of the Stonehenge Sarsens: Digital data collection

Abstract

This collection includes a suite of digital materials that, in combination, characterise the petrography, mineralogy and geochemistry of a sarsen upright (Stone 58) from the central trilithon horseshoe at Stonehenge. The collection arises from work undertaken during the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust project “Geochemical fingerprinting the sarsen stones at Stonehenge” (Small Research Grant SG-170610), led by the University of Brighton. As part of the project, permission was granted by English Heritage to sample a section from one of three cores drilled through the full thickness of Stone 58 during conservation work in 1958. This core had been returned to the UK from Florida in 2018 by Mr Robert Phillips, an employee of Van Moppes (Diamond Tools) Ltd, Basingstoke, who had been at Stonehenge during the drilling work. Mr Phillips was granted permission by the Ministry of Works to retain the core on behalf of the company and was gifted it by Van Moppes on his retirement to the USA. This core – referred to as the Phillips’ Core – is now held in the English Heritage Collections Store at Temple Cloud (Bath, UK). The Phillips’ Core is 108cm long, has a 2.5cm diameter and is broken into six pieces ranging in length from 7 to 29cm. The digital materials within this collection result from the analysis of section 2-3 of the core, from 29 to 36cm along its length. Full details of sampling, analytical approaches and interpretation are provided in Nash et al. (2021) (see Metadata).