Stonehenge up close: digital laser scan reveals secrets of the past

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/oct/09/stonehenge-digital-laser-3d-survey?INTCMP=SRCH
By Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, Tuesday 9 October 2012

This article is about an analysis carried out for English-Heritage through a complete exploration of Stonehenge, utilizing a digital laser 3D scan. This work, realized the present year in the shire of Wiltshire, England, has shown manufacture's traces or marks in each one of the big rocks. This marks could have been made 4500 years ago. Nevertheless, that marks aren't the uniques, because in this slabs has been found evidences of rock art, manufacture and restoration, also, posterior interventions, and specially "graffitis" made from Georgian and Victorians visitants.

On one hand, for this work has been necessary to scan each segment of the slabs and after applying weathering and texturing models, to show how was originally each slab. This has permitted support the idea that the prehistoric monument was completely finalized, and that it would had have an alignment  regard to the winter and sunset solstices, creating too mobility or circulation routes with a sense North-East, and giving the idea of the procession's ways. The carving process would had left exposed the internal layer of the rock, that would had shined with the sun's blaze which would have pass exactly on the interior of the monument.

On the other hand, has been also possible discard certain "lines" and "cracks" that were interpreted like figures or designs, but now is possible to identify them as natural marks. Also, the analysis suggests that the work would have been carried out by many hands with different skills, trying, through hundreds hours work, to generate straight and regular surfaces.