Scientific American has an article on Stonehenge up this month. My first reaction would be disappointment if I’d bought a copy just to read the Stonehenge article. It’s not bad, but there’s a lot of ideas being generated by archaeologists at the moment. The lack of space means that the three main projects all get skimmed. I can see that it works for someone who hasn’t been following news at the site, but if you’re a henge nut it’ll add nothing new.
On the other hand, I did like the supplementary material that SciAm has added online. This goes into a bit more detail about the work by Birmingham University. Adding this to the original article makes it a lot better. Instead of being standalone, the original article works well as an introduction to the additional material. Without changing a word in the original my opinion has gone from disappointment to thinking it’s actually quite clever. It means the magazine’s website is more than a brochure for the articles, or a copy of them.
It’s also a crafty way of getting their advertising out on other people’s sites, but the wait (if the pre-load advert plays) is worthwhile. The actual video is 5m40s.