Stonehenge and women

Stonehenge

Last night, God knows why,  I felt the urge to go and see  Stonehenge after years and years - the first time I went it was still possible to  climb up the stones! (Can't hide my age here! It was Mrs T. who decided the Henge would be out of  bounds because of the 'excesses' of the visitors. There was the danger of people inscribing hearts into the stones, but would they really do so?).
I would have loved to go with a friend but let's face it, even my wonderful friends would be most likely to say no. Imagine calling up and saying 'Let's go to Stonehenge tomorrow morning'. Hmm. It's a weekday and we all lead very busy lives. Not to worry , when I get these urges I just go on my own, I know better (and I know I just cannot plan and postpone, it's  not the same). I booked a tour, a last minute booking - how I relished doing that. It is complicated to go to Stonehenge these days because tickets to visit the site have to be booked from English Heritage 24 hours earlier and then you are given a slot. From London you have to make your way to Salisbury and then to Stonehenge. I reckoned the quickest way was to book a tour, as tour operators have priority and can be given tickets on the day.
I woke up at 6 am as the coach was leaving from Victoria at 8 am. Got ready, got my camera and off I went.

Stonehenge

My travel companions, mostly American and German tourists, were very nice. It was raining, no sign of the sun. And it was cold. On the way to Salisbury we were entertained by a DVD called The Mystery of Stonehenge. I enjoyed it , it was well made and very informative. Then we arrived and it was windy and wet. We had two hours to walk around the Henge, visit the exhibition, go to the cafeteria (optional but in that weather a hot drink was very welcome,) go to the souvenir shop (also optional but then...), then back to London. I had not brought protection for my camera but had an umbrella. I had to negotiate my way around the prescribed route - we were given audioguides, which I positively hate - in order to get a good view of the stones. But alas, it was not possible to go near them.
At some point I stepped back and sat on a bench - there's a few provided for the comfort of the visitors. And I began to reflect, randomly. Last year at about this time I was in Malta, visiting the Goddess' shrines. They began earlier than Stonehenge but at some point, time wise, they overlap.
How come that when we hear about Stonehenge women are hardly mentioned? Meanwhile in Malta...

Malta. Goddess temple

I visited the exhibition. A Stonehenge man had been digitally reconstructed, out of one of the skeletons that had been found. He was 172  cm tall (a bit short, really, but in those days they were on the short side). The reconstructed face was weird, too modern, I thought. He could have been just any fair skinned, twenty something from Salisbury! Maybe that was the point. I looked around for women. None. no girlfriends, no mothers, none whatsoever.
Why are women so conspicuously absent at Stonehenge? You have to go to Malta to see them in their  neolithic glory.
Yet a recent article by Jennifer Viegas claims that powerful women had been found buried at Stonehenge. How do we know they were powerful? Well, anyone buried at Stonehenge had to be a leader, so any woman found there, buried in pomp, would have been one.
It's time to change this construct we have of Stonehenge as being all male. It obviously was not.
It troubles me, this tendency to write women off history (or prehistory). Has there not been something called feminism? Where has it got to? Do we need to reinvent the female wheel every time?

(All photos in this post are my own)