Stonehenge can be viewed from a rather odd perspective and we can learn something crucial about archaeology in the process. What if we were ask a question such as: How do people view stones as monuments? The answer does not necessarily lie in southern England. It would be most likely found in a culture where people still view ancestors as important, and who more importantly view them as something sacred. The culture in southern England has changed drastically since the time Stonehenge was constructed and last used. Instead we have to turn to the Island of Madagascar and to a people who may still see the world in the way Neolithic people saw it. Archaeologists often turn to living people to understand the past. This is something known as ethnographic analogy. It is the use of something in the ethnographic world of today that forms a similar setting for what is being observed in the archaeological record. The more direct it might be the better the analogy, however in this case archaeologists can learn something from looking a great distance away from Stonehenge and England itself.

The concept of ethnographic analogy can be seen as something that leads from what can be observed in the archaeological record to a similar record that can be traced to a living culture. From this similar pattern one can draw a parallel - or an analogy - to what was seen in the archaeological record. This allows archaeologists to draw upon the analogy to help explain what is being observed archaeologically.

It is important to remember that while there had been major changes in the way in which Neolithic society was organized, part of their world view may still have been tribal. We can see this in the circular configurations that Stonehenge takes on. The circular worldview may be terribly important as we draw an ethnographic analogy from a tribal society from elsewhere in the world such as Madagascar. We know that people in Madagascar still worship their ancestors just as did people of Neolithic Britain and, more importantly, they continue to see "stones" as a link to their ancestors. So they may provide a better source of information than one might first think. In Madagascar, stone monuments take on significance as individuals, memories, old persons. It is within the stone that the "spirit lives." So if you wished to make a connection with your ancestors, you would go to the stone and could talk to them.

This is a rather strange idea to us today. However, in a tribal mind this makes sense. For tribal people, the world is a living world where spirits and ancestors dwell along with the living. So stones can be a part of this living world.

The analogy can be taken one step further. Not only do the people of Madagascar place significance in stone monuments just as the Neolithic people of England did, but there is something else. In Madgascar, the tombs of the dead are opened and the dead removed. There is a feast and the dead are brought out of their graves to be with the living. They are then returned to their graves.

This begs the question if the collective tombs of the ancestors were not only places to form a link between the living and the dead, but also may have ritually been opened at different times. Archaeologists believe this is the case and that rituals were performed at the collective tombs of the ancestors.

In looking at Stonehenge, archaeologists tend to see the stone as a significant part of the meaning of the monument. Stone tombs and enclosures seem to be linked and that link takes archaeologists back to worship of ancestors and this important connection that tribal people make between the living and dead.