5,000 years of Stonehenge

Leaving the sacred stones of Salisbury, visitors can follow the Map to such additional locations as the King Barrows (Bronze Age and Neolithic burial mounds), and the Durrington Walls (a sacred circle, 500 yards in diameter, which predated Stonehenge). And while the other landmarks may not be covered quite as thoroughly, there is still a rich collection of histories, photo galleries, panoramas, more aerial surveys, and a pair of 'Virtual Walks' - along the Cursus (a long rectangular earthwork that runs for about 2 miles to the North of Stonehenge) and The Avenue, which approaches Stonehenge along the axis of the Summer Solstice sunrise.

Time Travel introduces the chronological context with the tidbit that Stonehenge's development covered an equivalent span of history as that between the fall of the Roman Empire and the modern day. While not as extensive as the Map, Time Travel still offers three features - a "Time Map" which designates the various sites by Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages, a "Timeline," juxtaposing the development of Stonehenge with other monuments in the area, and "Burial Mounds," which describes the prehistoric tombs so common in the area.

In a thoughtful nod to the more practical chronological concerns of dial-up visitors, multi-media components are labelled with file sizes and estimated 56k modem download times. As it turns out, those estimates proved to be optimistic during my visit, but that's probably a result of heavy traffic so soon after the launch of the site.

Occasionally, Cascading Style Sheet instructions don't seem to have loaded in to the browser correctly and text would flow outside its defined borders, but refreshing the page would always put things right. The CSS instructions for the Timeline, on the other hand, revealed wildly different layouts between Netscape and Explorer (in both cases, badly misaligned) - and neither could be corrected despite repeated efforts.

If you're interested in learning more about the area, the future of Stonehenge, or are perhaps thinking of joining the druids during the next summer solstice, English Heritage's main Stonehenge site has more information of interest to the virtual or potential tourist, as well as FAQs and a collection of related links.

In the meantime, while you may not have been among the estimated 19,000 people on the Salisbury Plain for this year's celebrations, a visit to the Interactive Map offers the consolation of lower travel costs, fewer traffic problems, and a more complete knowledge about Stonehenge and its archeological neighbors than if you had visited in person.

The Stonehenge World Heritage Site Interactive Map can be found at http://www.english heritage.org.uk/filestore/stonehengeinteractivemap/index.html

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