For some 400 years beginning about 2950 BCE the site was little more than a simple circular earthwork, inside of which was a space about 85 metres or some 90 yards in diameter but at the centre of which there appears to have been a simple wooden structure or timber circle. A ring of 56 pits lies close to the circumference of this open space, and according to the argument presented by Cleal, Walker and Montague (1995) every pit formerly held a timber post, thus forming a large-diameter timber circle. The holes left after the decay of the ring of posts are called Aubrey Holes. The Neolithic people later filled these pits with chalk and re-used them for ritual deposits.

The first choice of stones, called bluestones, came from South-West Wales, 200 km to the west. Between 60 and 80 bluestones arrived, each weighing 3-4 tons, and there was one exceptional stone at 8 tons which was placed near the centre, on the summer solsticial axis, at the focus of the monument. The later sarsen stones, weighing between 6 and 60 tons each, were dragged about 32 km (20 miles) southwards from near Avebury. Sarsens are the fractured remnants of ancient sandstone beds dating from the Eocene some 26 million years ago. The photograph, taken in the direction of midsummer sunrise, indicates the immensity of the sarsens of the outer ring. The overhead lintel, which weighs about 6 tons, is supported by 25-ton megaliths. The bluestones came about 2550 BCE, possibly at a rate of just a few (3 to 6, say) annually. At some point, delivery of the bluestones stopped. This happened before the ring of bluestones had been completed. Fairly soon afterwards, sarsen stones started arriving, and their delivery is presumed to have taken one or two centuries commencing about 2500 BCE.