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Village May Have Housed Builders of Stonehenge
New excavations near
Stonehenge have uncovered hearths, timbers and other remains of
what archaeologists say was probably the village of workers who
erected the monoliths on Salisbury Plain in England.
The archaeologists announced yesterday that the 4,600-year-old
ruins appear to form the largest Neolithic village ever found in
Britain. The houses at the site known as Durrington Walls were
constructed in the same period that Stonehenge, less than two
miles away, was built as a religious center, presumably for
worshipers of the sun and for their ancestors.
Mike Parker Pearson, a leader of the excavations from the
University of Sheffield, said the discoveries last summer
supported the emerging recognition that the ring of standing
stones and earthworks at Stonehenge was part of a much larger
religious complex.
In a telephone conference conducted by the National Geographic
Society, Dr. Parker Pearson said a circle of ditches and earthen
banks at Durrington Walls enclosed concentric rings of huge
timber posts, “basically a wooden version of Stonehenge.”
The excavations exposed not only the timber circle but also a
roadway paved with stone leading to the Avon River, about 500
feet away, which was similar to a river road from Stonehenge.
The evidence, Dr. Parker Pearson said, “shows us these two
monuments were complementary” and that “Stonehenge was just
one-half of a larger complex.”
The project, begun in 2003, is exploring the wider landscape of
the Stonehenge World Heritage site, about 100 miles southwest of
London. The research is directed by six British universities and
financed in part by National Geographic.
Over the years, Stonehenge has inspired a wide range of
conjecture, though it is now assumed that this was a place of
worship that seemed to be related to solar cults. A decade ago,
improved radiocarbon tests dated the first constructions at
Stonehenge to between 2600 B.C. and 2400 B.C., more than 600
years earlier than previous estimates. The houses at Durrington
have been dated to between 2600 B.C. and 2500 B.C.
Eight houses were discovered last September in part of the site,
and a broad survey detected traces of many more buried over a
wide area, the archaeologists said. Each house, made from sticks
woven together and crushed chalk, was no bigger than 14 to 16
feet square and had a hard clay floor and a central fireplace.
Indentations in the floor were interpreted as postholes and
slots that once anchored wooden furniture.
The occupants were a messy lot, the excavators concluded. Debris
of broken pots and jars and animal bones was everywhere. Some of
the people may have been builders of Stonehenge, the
archaeologists surmised, and others may have been pilgrims to
the sacred complex whose worship included lively feasting.
By contrast, Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester found
neater house remains in a western part of the Durrington site.
The two excavated so far were small, neat structures, each
surrounded by its own ditch and wood palisade and set apart from
others in the vicinity. At least three other such structures are
probably buried nearby.
Dr. Thomas offered two possible interpretations in the telephone
news conference. Those dwellings may have been the homes of
special people, chiefs or priests. Or their cleanliness may mark
them as not living quarters at all, but places set aside as
shrines and cult centers.
Scholars and other archaeologists not involved with the project
reserved judgment on the ramifications of the findings. But Drs.
Parker Pearson and Thomas emphasized the importance of the
Durrington roadway in understanding the two sites’ intimate
connection.
They said the road was paved with flint and led straight from
the Durrington enclosure to the Avon. A similar road at
Stonehenge, discovered in the 18th century, is aligned with the
summer solstice sunrise, the archaeologists noted, while the one
at Durrington lines up with the summer solstice sunset.
Similarly, the Durrington timber circle was aligned with winter
solstice sunrise, while a giant stone monument at Stonehenge
frames the winter solstice sunset.
Venturing into the bumpy field of Stonehenge interpretation, Dr.
Parker Pearson suggested that the durable stones of the
better-known site were a memorial and final resting place for
the dead, and the wood architecture at Durrington Walls
symbolized the transience of life. People from all over the
region, he said, probably went there to celebrate life and
deposit the dead in the river for transport to the afterlife.
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