Was Stonehenge Originally A Burial Ground?

Simply one of the most fascinating archaeological mysteries of human history is that surrounding Stonehenge. No one is really quite sure why it exists, who built it, where it came from, what it did, or any other question you might try to pose. Was it a moon temple, an observatory? No one knows, although the latter may possibly be discounted on the grounds of believability.

However a group of archaeologists, led by Mike Parker-Pearson of the University of Sheffield, UK, believe they have come a step closer to understanding what Stonehenge’s original purpose was.

For some time we have known that at least a portion of the history of Stonehenge saw it act as a burial site. But those burials could very well have been only part of the historical sites latter years, with bodies buried by those who believed the site to have been of some past import.

However for the first time, human remains dug from the site in the 1920’s have been radiocarbon dated back to around 3000 BC, suggesting that for 500 years following this time, Stonehenge was used as a cemetery. It had previously been assumed that Stonehenge was used as a cemetery between 2800 and 2700 BC.

"It is clear that the burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages," says Parker-Pearson. "This was a cemetery which grew over many centuries."

The oldest of the remains to be dated were found in one of the 56 pits that circle Stonehenge, known as Aubrey Holes, and which date to the earliest variations of Stonehenge. (Stonehenge has undergone several reconstructions, starting with wooden posts to the giant monoliths that currently reside there.) The remains date to between 3030 and 2880 BC. The second and third burials were recovered from within and near the dith that surrounds Stonehenge, and date from between 2930 to 2870 BC, and 2570 to 2340 BC respectively.

However Parker-Pearson’s team has a wide field of study, including a massive dig 2 miles north of Stonehenge, at a place called Durrington Walls. Within Durrington Walls are the remains of a giant wooden henge, an area enclosed by brick and ditch, which is known as the Southern Circle. Close to that Southern Circle, Parker-Pearson and his team discovered in 2005 the remains of several houses. Since then they have uncovered even more houses which line a broad avenue that links Durrington Walls with the nearby River Avon.

Parker-Pearson now believes that Durrington Wells was the largest village in Northern Europe at its time, housing 300 dwellings. "This was part of an enormous settlement, at least 17 hectares in extent, and its central focus appears to have been this great timber circle – a comparison in wood to the great circle at Stonehenge."

The wooden henge at Durrington Walls is linked to Stonehenge by both observational similarities and the River Avon. And according to Parker-Pearson, the River Avon was “a prehistoric version of the River Stix, a river that takes people from the world of life into death itself.” Thus, Parker-Pearson believes that the two places were linked. "Stonehenge wasn't set in isolation, but was actually one half of this monument complex," he says. "We are looking at a pairing – one in timber to represent the transience of life, the other in stone marking the eternity of the ancestral dead."

Christopher Chippindale, curator at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and author of Stonehenge Complete, believes that this discovery "strengthens the idea that Stonehenge was a place for the dead, while Durrington Walls was a place for the living,” but that it does not necessarily prove that Stonehenge was a cemetery. "Ceremonial places have all sorts of meanings," he says. "It is another part of the puzzle, but it's not the final answer."

Posted by Josh Hill.

Source link:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn14012-was-stonehenge-originally-a-place-for-the-dead.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

Comments

[Barrie O'Leary]

Fascinating, but in my own personal opinion Stonehenge
is simply a perpetual 39 year calendar. If so, it sur-passes any other calendar created until the current one. And that must be amazing!

[jOHN Thomas]

Well, based on what they are finding there, I would have to agree that it was in fact a burial ground of some type. Seems pretty obvious.

JT
http://www.Fireme.to/udi

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