ARCHAEOLOGY ARTICLE
Stonehenge village found
Entered by MIKE BALDWIN
03.25.2007 -- The excavation of a 4600-year-old village in
southern England is changing the way archaeologists think
about Stonehenge. Researchers from the University of Sheffield
suspect that the same people who built Stonehedge also built
and lived in the recently discovered village. Many
investigators have viewed Stonehendge as a site used for
religious or astronomical purposes, but the team from the
Sheffield suggest an entirely different purpose for
Stonehenge. Michael Parker Pearson, leader of the research
team looks at it this way. He feels that both the village and
Stonehenge were part of a religious complex devoted to the
dead. After huge feasts in the village, Pearson suggests that
the villagers transported the bodies about 2 miles up the
River Avon to Stonehenge, where some of them were interred
after cremation. The massive stones memorialized the
villagers' deceased relatives.
Before the University of Sheffield began in 2003, researchers
in 1967 had detected magnetic traces of dozens of hearths
(typical of dwellings) in an area called Durrington Walls.
Durrington Walls is a large henge, an enclosure surrounded by
an earthen ditch and banks. In September 2006, Shefield's team
uncovered eight houses at the site. Each house measured about
16 square feet and each had a central fireplace set in a clay
floor. Postholes and slots in the floor once anchored wooden
furniture. Huge numbers of animal bones and cooking implements
strewn across the floors indicated that large feasts had taken
place there in ancient days. Julian Thomas of the University
of Manchester in England excavated two Durrington Walls
structures on a terrace within the henge. These structures
were once surrounded by wooden fences and ditches. Thomas
suggests that these houses and several others nearby may have
served as community leaders' homes or as shrines.
Radiocarbon dating of the houses coincide with previoius age
estimates for cremated remains discovered at Stonehenge. The
Durrington Walls community bordered a stone road 90 feet wide
and 560 feet long, which ran from a large ceremonial circle of
timbers to the river. Two miles upstream a similar road ran
from the river to Stonehenge. The dicovery of the Durrington
Walls road enhances the relationship believed to have existed
between the community and Stonehenge. The Stonehenge road,
discovered in the 18th century, aligns with the
midsummer-solstice sunrise, while the Durrington Walls road
aligns with the midsummer-solstice sunset. Consequently, a set
of three enormous stones at Stonehenge frame the
midwinter-solstice sunset, while the Durrington Walls timber
circle align with midwinter-solstice sunrise.
Pearson ascertains that Durrington Walls may have been used as
a place of periodic celebration of life, before transporting
their dead up the River Avon to be cremated at Stonehenge and
sent into their afterlife. More research is now underway and
will continue until 2010, with hopes of finding more evidence
of graves and funeral activites in the Durrington Walls area.
Suburb of Stonehenge: Ritual village found near famed rock
site. Science News This Week.Science News. Vol 171, No 5,
February 3, 2007. Science Service. Washington, DC. pg 67.
Information gathered for educational purposes under the
"fair use" provision of the U.S. Copyright Act of
1976.
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