Stonehenge builders' houses found
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6311939.stm

Stonehenge builders' houses found

A huge ancient settlement used by the people who built Stonehenge has
been found, archaeologists have said.
Excavations at Durrington Walls, near the legendary Salisbury Plain
monument, uncovered remains of ancient houses.
People seem to have occupied the sites seasonally, using them for ritual
feasting and funeral ceremonies.

In ancient times, this settlement would have housed hundreds of people,
making it the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain.
The dwellings date back to 2,600-2,500 BC - according to the
researchers, the same period that Stonehenge was built.

This is where they went to party - you could say it was the first free
festival
Mike Parker Pearson, Sheffield University
But some archaeologists point out that there are problems dating
Stonehenge itself because the stone circle has been rebuilt many times.
Consequently, archaeological material has been dug up and reburied on
numerous occasions, making it difficult to assign a date to the original
construction.

But Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues are confident of a link.
"In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of
box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards," he explained.

The Sheffield University researcher said this was based on the fact that
these abodes had exactly the same layout as Neolithic houses at Skara
Brae, Orkney, which have survived intact because - unlike these
dwellings - they were made of stone.

The researchers have excavated eight houses in total at Durrington. But
they have identified many other probable dwellings using geophysical
surveying equipment.
In fact, they think there could have been at least one hundred houses.

Each one measured about 5m (16ft) square,
was made of timber, with a clay floor and central hearth. The
archaeologists found 4,600-year-old rubbish covering the floors of the
houses.

"It is the richest - by that I mean the filthiest - site of this period
known in Britain," Professor Parker Pearson told BBC News.
"We've never seen such quantities of pottery and animal bone and flint."

The Sheffield University researcher thinks the settlement was probably
not lived in all year round. Instead, he believes, Stonehenge and
Durrington formed a religious complex used for funerary rituals.

I see Stonehenge more as a living monument
Julian Richards, archaeologist and broadcaster
He believes it drew Neolithic people from all over the region, who came
for massive feasts in the midwinter, where prodigious quantities of food
were consumed. The bones were then tossed on the floors of the houses.

"The rubbish isn't your average domestic debris. There's a lack of
craft-working equipment for cleaning animal hides and no evidence for
crop-processing," he said.
"The animal bones are being thrown away half-eaten. It's what we call a
feasting assemblage. This is where they went to party - you could say it
was the first free festival."

Pigging out
Durrington has its own henge made of wood, which is strikingly similar
in layout to Stonehenge. It was discovered in 1967 - long before any
houses.

Both henges line up with events in the astronomical calendar - but not
the same ones.
Stonehenge is aligned with the midwinter solstice sunset, while
Durrington's timber circle is aligned with the midwinter solstice
sunrise - they were complementary.
This seems to fit with the idea of a midwinter festival, in turn
supported by analysis of pig teeth found at the site.

"One of the things we can tell from the pig teeth we've looked at is
that most of them have been slaughtered at nine months. And we think
they are farrowing in Spring," he said.

"It's likely there's a midwinter cull and that ties in with our
midwinter solstice alignments at Durrington and Stonehenge."

Sacred monument
Professor Parker Pearson believes Durrington's purpose was to celebrate
life and deposit the dead in the river for transport to the afterlife.
Stonehenge was a memorial and final resting place for some of the dead.
After feasting, he speculated, people travelled down the timber circle's
"avenue" to deposit their dead in the River Avon flowing towards
Stonehenge. They then moved along Stonehenge's avenue to the circle,
where they cremated and buried a select few of their dead.

The Sheffield University archaeologist said Stonehenge was a place for
these people, who worshipped their ancestors, to commune with the
spirits of the departed.
But not all archaeologists agree: "I see Stonehenge more as a living
monument," archaeologist and broadcaster Julian Richards told BBC News
24.

"So in terms of broad understanding of the landscape I'm not in total
agreement."
Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, from Wessex Archaeology, who was not a member of
the research team, commented: "There haven't been many excavations near
Stonehenge in recent years and the new work will stimulate exciting new
theories in coming years.

"But we shouldn't forget that Stonehenge became special when people
brought the stones from Wales, 250km away. Some of the answers about
Stonehenge aren't just to be found in Durrington, but further afield."
Stonehenge was the largest cemetery in Britain at the time, containing
about 250 ashes from cremations.

In a separate area, further up the valley from Durrington Walls, Julian
Thomas of Manchester University, discovered two other Neolithic houses.
But these were free of rubbish.

The researchers think these dwellings were deliberately kept clean. They
could have been home to community leaders, or they might have been
sacred sites, where rituals were performed.

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