Posted: June 11th, 2022

Compare and contrast the monuments at Giza Pyramids and Stonehenge. Who built them?

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1. Compare and contrast the monuments at Giza Pyramids and Stonehenge. Who built them? How are the builders alike and different? Remember, Stonehenge was not built by Druids and the Pyramids were not built by slaves.
2. Who was buried there? What kinds of mortuary practices can be reconstructed from the archaeological record? How are those interred in the Pyramids, interred nearby, and those at Stonehenge alike and different?
3. What motivated people to commit labor to these monuments? Were they the same motivations for Giza and Stonehenge?
4. Do big monuments indicate a complex society? Cities? Why or why not? Hint: remember Göbekli Tepe from Week 5? What about Maya pyramids? What about Jericho’s wall?
Please answer the four questions above with formal language and no plagiarism. Feel free to do additional research online but no citation is needed, just use your own language. Each question’s answer should have at least 100 words. Then please read the following fellow student’s answer and write a 100 words comment for him. No copying from this classmate please.
Fellow Student A
1. In contrast to people’s general impression of a complex hierarchical society, the Pyramids of Giza were indeed built by free Egyptians instead of slaves; these workers were well-treated, and it was likely that most of them participated in the pyramid-building project voluntarily. The monument of Stonehenge began with a pastoral Neolithic people, but once in place, Stonehenge became a touchstone for newer narratives of belongings to a social collective. Although both were purely voluntary, the pyramid-building project was more like a state-sponsored project; workers got paid by constant beef and wine supplies and had a “dormitory” that was not so far away from the pyramids.
2. The Giza Pyramids were built for three generations of Egyptian kings: Khufu, his son Khafre, and his grandson Menkaure. As for Stonehenge, Neolithic pastoralists did bury the cremated remains of their dead in the left-over “Aubrey holes,” which were the ditches within which they erected a succession of standing timbers and/or stones. These are two types of mortuary practices. Both had unique meaning to the people, whereas the pyramids were the resting place for the soul of Pharaoh and a display of status, and Stonehenge was a communal place that had a whole lot of functions.
3. Given the ultimate purposes of the Giza Pyramids and Stonehenge, people’s motivations to commit labor were slightly different. Although both were voluntary, the motivation of pyramid builders might be the beef and wine that were provided there, or the honor of building the kings’ tombs might count as well; the Stonehenge builders, on the other side, were participating in that project for mostly the interest of themselves and people who were closely related to them. Once completed, both people who helped build Stonehenge and the later generations could enjoy the benefits. The structures of societies seemed to be another reference factor as well.
4. The existence of a monument could be seen as a reference, but it is not always associated with complex societies. Using Gobekli Tepe as an example, which was built by mobile hunter-gatherers; society did not have to be sedentary to build a monument, nor did they have to have a complex hierarchal system. However, due to the heavy workload of building large monuments, sedentary people with relatively complex societies could better afford it, and monuments might be worth more to them. The functions of Maya pyramids were very much similar to that of Egyptian pyramids, and the purposes of Jericho’s wall were closely associated with the village per se (although there are still some arguments).

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