Stupendous: The World of Stonehenge at the British Museum reviewed

As these beautiful objects show, the people of the neolithic age were not the barbarians in skins of past caricature

From magazine issue: 19 February 2022

From left: The Schifferstadt gold hat, c.1600 BC, Bronze horse-snake hybrid from a hoard, 1200–1000 BC and the Nebra sky disc, c.1600 BC [Image: Lda Sachsen-Anhalt, Juraj Lipták]

issue 19 February 2022

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Christopher Howse

Stupendous: The World of Stonehenge at the British Museum reviewed
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This exhibition is Hamlet without the Prince, and all the better for it. Stonehenge is not there; it remains in Wiltshire. But 430 astonishing artefacts from the neolithic and bronze ages fill a hairpin course like a Roman chariot-racing circuit in a vast room. It is blessedly free from videos of prehistoric Britons tugging on ropes to move monoliths.