A Neolthic Monument
The Neolithic period in Britain saw the introduction of farming, and, as the landscape became more settled, the construction of many ceremonial and burial monuments. Some, such as Stonehenge, have survived, while others, built of wood or in areas later farmed for crops, are recognisable only as cropmarks.
Phases of Construction
Stonehenge is basically a stone circle set within an earlier henge monument (a circular enclosure defined by a bank and ditch).The henge monument, over 100 metres across, was made around 3000 BC and lined within the inner circumference by a series of pits called the Aubrey holes.
A couple of hundred years later timber posts were placed in alignments in the centre and towards the southern entrance.
Around 2500 BC the first stone circle was constructed, made of bluestones transported from the Preseli Hills in south west Wales. Further stones were added around the inside of the henge - the Station Stones - and outside the north east entrance - the Heel Stone.
The circle we see today, made of sarsens from the Marlborough Downs, was the next phase, along with the creation of the Avenue leading to the River Avon. The bluestones were cast aside but then reused inside the sarsen circle in a final development before the site fell into disuse in the Bronze Age, when burial and ceremonial practices changed dramatically.
New Radiocarbon dates
Recent discoveries by the Stonehenge Riverside Project have produced radiocarbon dates from cremations within the area bounded by the henge monument. The earliest, 3030-2880 BC, comes from a cremation of an adult within one of the Aubrey Holes. The most recent dates to between 2570 and 2340 BC. It was the remains of a woman in her mid twenties buried in the northern ditch. In all, around 240 people were buried within the henge.
It is now clear that Stonehenge was used as a burial site from its inception. The small number of burials over such a long period suggest that it was only the ruling elite who were buried within the confines of the henge.
The Ritual Landscape
Stonehenge and the surrounding area has a wealth of upstanding monuments as part of a wider ritual landscape of the Neolithic which is only now being fully appreciated. The Cursus, a 3 kilometre long avenue to the north of Stonehenge defined by banks and ditches, was probably used as some sort of processional way.
Recent excavations produced an antler pick from one of the ditches carbon dated to between 3630 and 3375 BC, predating the construction of Stonehenge.
A Neolithic Village
To the north east, alongside the henge at Durrington Walls, excavations have revealed the site of a large village which may have been used by the people who gathered on Salisbury Plain to celebrate the winter and summer solstices in the middle of the third millennium BC. .
The houses measured around 5 square metres, and produced glimpses of Stone Age life - flint fragments and the imprints of wooden furniture left in the soil.
Sources
Caroline Alexander (2008) Secrets of Stonehenge National Geographic Magazine June 2008
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