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[Administration]

New archaeological evidence that Stonehenge was the place for a party in Neothilic Britain.

Archaeologists excavating a site next to Stonehenge say they have found evidence of a large settlement where it's thought the monument's builders lived.

The henge, or walled and moated settlement, is at Durrington Walls, on the River Avon about a mile from Stonehenge. The two sites are joined by a route which it's believed was used for funeral ceremonies.

The dig has uncovered hundreds of houses, each about sixteen feet square - inside evidence remains of box beds and wooden cupboards - although the furniture has long since rotted.

Debris left behind, including tons of animal bones, gives the best clues to what was happening at Stonehenge around 2500 BCE.

[Administration]

Stonehenge Riverside Project: New Approaches to Durrington Walls
Mike Parker Pearson



There were many significant breakthroughs this year. The enormous ditch and bank of Durrington Walls were found to be at the end of the sequence of mid-3rd millennium BC activity in this small valley northeast of Stonehenge. The construction of the henge was preceded by the building of a substantial avenue, 30m wide, leading from the River Avon and aligned on the midsummer solstice sunset. The flint and gravel surface of this avenue led into the Southern Circle, a 40m-diameter monument of six concentric rings of timber posts. Whilst the partial plan of this impressive timber circle was recovered during excavations in 1967 in advance of the new A345, further excavations and geophysical survey in 2006 have allowed its full plan to be reconstructed.

The Durrington Avenue ran from the riverside to the Southern Circle, a distance of just over 170m. Its width is comparable to the Stonehenge Avenue although it is much shorter. This avenue met the river at approximately the same point as today, culminating in a steep drop down the chalk river cliff to the water.

The Durrington Avenue and Southern Circle were the main components of a ceremonial complex which was at the centre of a very large settlement whose house floors are well preserved. No other Neolithic villages have been found in southern Britain and the discovery of eight houses within the relatively tiny area excavated at Durrington Walls in 2004-2006 (about 0.3% of the total extent) demonstrates that this valley was probably filled with hundreds of small dwellings. They are square or sub-rectangular and vary in size from 5m x 5m to just 2.5m x 3m with a roughly central hearth set within a chalk plaster floor surrounded by slots which held footings for wooden beds and furniture. In two cases within the east entrance, the micro-debris left on the floor by their occupants could be examined to show that activities took place in different parts of the house. For example, cooking debris was concentrated on the south side whilst flint tools such as scrapers, arrowheads and retouched flakes were mostly found in the northeast. The house plans are reminiscent of Skara Brae and other Orcadian houses of the 3rd millennium BC.

Two houses within the western half of Durrington Walls were encircled by ditched enclosures of different sizes. The smaller enclosure was about 12m in diameter and had an external bank and an entrance to the west. The interior edge of the ditch was surrounded by a timber palisade. The larger enclosure, about 40m in diameter, had an internal bank and an entrance on its east side. Between this entrance and the house there was a pair of enormous postholes and a substantial timber palisade whose entrance was later blocked by stakes. The house was set centrally within the enclosure, suggesting a relationship of some sort between it and the surrounding monumental architecture. The positioning of these houses on a terrace with dramatic views down to the Southern Circle and the river suggests that they were highly significant structures. Were they the dwellings of special people? Were they shrines? Unfortunately their floor surfaces were eroded, leaving only their hearths.

Of the five houses in the east entrance, two sat adjacent to each other on the low banks astride the Avenue. They were separated from the other three to the north by a zone of pits. These three houses were sited within a large midden full of pig and cattle bones. The largest house was 5m x 5m with a south-facing entrance and was terraced into the hillside. Although part of it lay outside the excavated area, the edges of its chalk plaster floor contained slots for timber beds and furniture. Its wall was formed by a line of stakeholes in a rectangular plan with rounded corners. There was evidence of an earlier house beneath its plaster floor. Northeast of this large house was an ancillary building � a 2.5m x 3m structure with a central hearth � and the two houses formed a household compound separated from the others by a curving palisade of small posts. To the south of them was the house found in 2005. This was about 5m x 5m and had slots for holding timber furniture only on its north side. To its east was a hollow with a hearth which may be the entrance to a sixth house.

The discovery of houses within and outside Durrington Walls suggests that a large area of the valley in which the henge lies was probably covered in dwellings. The considerable quantities of pig and cattle bones, pottery, flint arrowheads and lithic debris indicate that occupation and consumption were intense. The many articulated and unfragmented animal bones are likely to be debris of the wasteful consumption resulting from feasting. The small quantities of stone tools other than arrowheads, the absence of grinding querns and the lack of carbonised grain indicate that this was a `consumer� site. The midsummer and midwinter solstice alignments of the Durrington and Stonehenge architecture suggest seasonal occupation. It is likely that these dwellings were lived in by the builders of the Southern Circle and Stonehenge.

Re-excavation of Maud Cunnington�s 1926 trenches at Woodhenge revealed that the timber circle�s posts were replaced by a smaller, rectilinear arrangement of standing stones. Under Woodhenge�s bank, a tree-throw hole contained pottery dating to the beginning of the Neolithic c. 4000-3800 BC.

[Administration]

Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls is a prehistoric henge enclosure monument situated close to Woodhenge on Salisbury Plain. It is a Class II henge and measures around 500m in diameter. Along with the other giant examples at Avebury, Marden and Mount Pleasant in Dorset it is one of the 'super-henge' group of monuments, defined as those with a diameter greater than 300 metres.



Durrington Walls was first occupied during the middle Neolithic. At least two rings of concentric timber circles are known to have originally stood within the henge; the southern circle of four rings of timbers which was replaced by a five circle layout later in the Neolithic, and the northern circle consisting of two timber rings with an avenue of posts leading into it.


A Neolithic grooved ware pot from Durrington Walls

It has been suggested that the timbers supported roofs and that the two circles represent large buildings that stood within the henge around 2500 BC. It is also possible that the structure was unroofed. Only post holes remain so we are unlikely to discover the structure of the monument above ground level. Recent excavations have suggested that these timber circles predate the construction of the henge banks, which have themselves have been found to overlie abundant evidence of earlier Neolithic occupation. This evidence includes what are believed to be the oldest house floors in England.

Since the Summer of 2004 archaeologists from the Universities of Bournemouth, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield and UCL working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project, have located a number of hearthsites in sub-circular and rectangular wattle and daub huts and palisade postholes, identifying what may be an ancient village at Durrington Walls. Distinct differences have been noted between the occupation floors at the centre of Durrington Walls and those around periphery of the site. Those towards the centre are suspected by some researchers to have had a more ritualistic function than the more domestic-looking structures near the edge of the henge.

Carbon dating suggests occupation somewhere around 2600 BC, making it essentially the same age as the earliest Stonehenge formation,[1] which is about two miles away. Early interpretations suggest that it was the settlement of the workers who erected Stonehenge.[1] A circle of ditches and earthen banks at Durrington Walls enclosed concentric rings of huge timber posts. The archaeologist in charge of the excavation, Mike Parker Pearson said that the evidence �shows us these two monuments were complementary� and that �Stonehenge was just one-half of a larger complex.�[2]

The interpretations of Professor Parker-Pearson's team are contested however, and alternative interpretations of Stonehenge have recently been proposed by Professor Timothy Darvill and Professor Geoffrey Wainwright (the origianl excavator of Durrington Walls).

The majority of Durrington Walls is now owned by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, forming part of its Stonehenge Historic Landscape estate, and access to the monument is therefore free and open.

Both Stonehenge and Durrington Walls have pathways to the Avon River, making movement between the two very possible and likely.

Notes
   1. More precise radiocarbon tests now date the first constructions at Stonehenge to 2600 to 2400 BC, which is more than 600 years earlier than previous estimates.
   2. The New York times, "Traces of Ancient Village Found Near Stonehenge" 30 January 2007

[Administration]

[Baja Bush Pilot]

Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have uncovered what they believe is the largest Neolithic settlement ever discovered in Northern Europe.
Remains of an estimated 300 houses are thought to survive under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the famous stone rings, and 10 have been excavated so far.

But there could have been double that total according to the archaeologist leading the work.

"What is really exciting is realising just how big the village for the Stonehenge builders was," says Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University.

Allowing four per house, he estimates there could have been room for more than 2,000 people.

Join the party

Analysis of the houses has also showed that some were higher status than others. This is the first evidence for social difference and hierarchy at the time of Stonehenge, indicating that the organisation of labour for moving and raising the stones was not egalitarian.

The settlement is buried beneath the bank of Durrington Walls, a great circular ditched enclosure.

Durrington Walls holds clues to the Stonehenge story

survey and excavation work have revealed that the ditch and bank had been constructed in large sections, probably by separate work gangs.

A find of dozens of antler picks in one section of ditch gives some idea of the size of these work parties.

"From the number of antler picks left in the bottom of one section - 57 - if you allow two people with one pick plus a team of basketeers carrying the rubble away and you've got to have the sandwich makers as well.

"This suggests a minimum team size of 200. If the 22 sections of Durrington's ditch were all dug at the same time, that's a work force of thousands."

Animal incomers

The settlement beneath Durrington Walls dates from around the time of the construction of Stonehenge's sarsen stones, about 2600 to 2500 BC.

For Mike Parker Pearson, the new evidence throws an important light on how Neolithic society worked - how people organised themselves to build mega-structures.
Apply this to Stonehenge, and he believes there were groups of about 200-400 people working under a clan head, responsible for completing individual sections of the overall monument.

"It's possible that most of Southern Britain may have been involved at one stage or another," Parker Pearson says.

Other evidence from cow and pig bones found on the site suggests that people were coming into the area on a seasonal basis.


Bone and other artefacts are being dug up

"This was a temporary settlement," he says. "They were not doing basic daily chores, not grinding corn, not raising animals. There were no baby pigs and cows. It looks like the livestock had been brought in."

Copper clue

And there is also evidence of feasting at Durrington Neolithic village such as bones still connected together.

"This is the sort of thing you are expecting at feasting occasions - discarded but still-edible joints of meat - when everyone has got enough to eat."

The team has also found a tantalising artefact: a piece of chalk with cut marks that Parker Pearson believes was made by a copper axe.

He is not surprised at the evidence - as copper working in neighbouring parts of mainland Europe dates back to 3000 BC - but it would be the first evidence from Britain before 2400 BC.

The theory is also supported by the almost total absence of evidence of stone or flint axes in the village.


So far, only a fraction of the area has been excavated


The current excavations at Stonehenge began four years ago and are part of a 10-year project.

[Administration]

I am hoping that much will be revealed to us in the 10 years.