Bluestonehenge: A new stone circle near Stonehenge
Led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, archaeologists from several institutions have discovered a lost stone circle a mile from Stonehenge, on the west bank of the River Avon.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), National Geographic, Google, and the Society of Antiquaries, the project team have discovered holes for stones which were removed thousands of years ago. The sizes of the stone holes indicate that this was a circle of bluestones, brought from the Preseli mountains and elsewhere in Wales, over 150 miles away. Excavations in August 2009 by the Stonehenge Riverside Project uncovered nine stone holes, part of a circle of probably 25 standing stones.
The newly discovered circle and henge are thought to be an integral part of Stonehenge, rather than a separate monument. Known as Bluestonehenge, after the Welsh bluestones, the site represents a significant step towards understanding Neolithic funerary rites and ceremonies.
The discovery means that old theories about Stonehenge, which do not explain the evident significance of the nearby Avon river, will have to be re-thought. The new stone circle is 10m (33 ft) in diameter and, after the stones´ removal, was surrounded by a henge – a ditch with an external bank. Standing stones marked the end of the Avenue that leads from the River Avon to Stonehenge, a 2.8km processional route constructed at the end of the Stone Age. The outer henge around the stones was built around 2400 BC but arrowheads found in the stone circle indicate that the stones were put up as much as 500 years earlier – they were dragged from Wales to Wiltshire 5,000 years ago.
Professor Mike Parker Pearson, project director, explains: "The builders of the stone circle used deer antlers as pickaxes. Within the next few months, radiocarbon dating of these antler picks will provide more precise dates. These dates will reveal whether the circle was built at the same time that another 56 Welsh bluestones were erected at Stonehenge itself, in the decades after 3000 BC. When the newly discovered stones were removed by Neolithic people, it is possible that they were dragged along the route of the Avenue to Stonehenge, to be incorporated within its major rebuilding around 2500 BC".
Only the radiocarbon dating programme can clarify the sequence of events. In the meantime, the discovery of this unknown stone circle may well be exciting confirmation of the Stonehenge Riverside Project's theory that the River Avon linked a 'domain of the living' – marked by timber circles and houses upstream at the Neolithic village of Durrington Walls (discovered by the Project in 2005) – with a 'domain of the dead' marked by Stonehenge and this new stone circle.
Mike Parker Pearson again: "It could be that Bluestonehenge was where the dead began their final journey to Stonehenge. Not many people know that Stonehenge was Britain's largest burial ground at that time. Maybe the bluestone circle is where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at Stonehenge itself".
For further information, please contact Professor Mike Parker-Pearson:
Tel: 0114 222 2908
email : M.Parker-Pearson@Sheffield.ac.uk