A Massive, Late Neolithic Pit Structure Associated with Durrington Walls Henge
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Cuisine and Consumption at the Late Neolithic Site of Durrington Walls
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UCL Discovery Feeding Stonehenge: cuisine and consumption at the Late Neolithic site of Durrington Walls Oliver E. Craiga, Lisa-Marie Shillitoa,b, Umberto Albarellac, Sarah Viner-Danielsc, Ben Chanc,d, Ros Cleale, Robert Ixerf, Mandy Jayg, Pete Marshallh., Ellen Simmonsc, Elizabeth Wrightc and Mike Parker Pearsonf aBioArCh, Department of Archaeology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK. b School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, UK cDepartment of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, UK d Laboratory for Artefact Studies, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, The Netherlands e Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, Wiltshire, UK f Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK g Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Human Evolution, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany h English Heritage, 1 Waterhouse Square, 138-142 Holborn, London, UK Introduction Henges are distinctive monuments of the Late Neolithic in Britain, defined as ditched enclosures in which a bank is constructed outside the ditch. The largest is Durrington Walls (Fig 1), a 17ha monument near Stonehenge. Excavations at Durringon Walls from 1966 to 1968 revealed the remains of two timber circles, the Northern and Southern Circles, within the henge enclosure (Wainwright and Longworth, 1971). More recent excavations (2004-2007) have identified a settlement that pre-dates the henge by a few decades and is concurrent with the main construction phase of Stonehenge (Parker Pearson et al., 2007, Parker Pearson, 2007, Thomas, 2007). Middens and pits, with substantial quantities of animal bones, broken Grooved Ware ceramics and other food-related debris, accumulated quickly since the settlement has an estimated start of 2535-2475 cal BC (95% probability) and a use of 0-55 years (95% probability). -
British Archaeological Reports
British Archaeological Reports Gordon House, 276 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7ED, England Tel +44 (0) 1865 311914 Fax +44 (0) 1865 512231 [email protected] www.archaeopress.com E‐BAR INTERNATIONAL SERIES AVAILABLE BAR TITLES IN PDF FORMAT SEPTEMBER 2014 Descriptions of Archaeopress Archaeology and BAR titles can be seen at www.archaeopress.com Publication proposals to [email protected] Sign up for our Alerts at www.archaeopress.com Order BAR DIGITAL VERSIONS (Institutional Licences and subscriptions also available) and see also Archaeopress Archaeology digital versions at www.archaeopress.com CONTACT US FOR DETAILS OF OUR INSTITUTIONAL DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE BAR–S99 2001 (1981) The Defence of Byzantine Africa from Justinian BAR–S631, 1996 Le Bronze Ancien dans les Cyclades et en Crète Les to the Arab Conquest An account of the military history relations entre les deux régions. Influence de la Grèce and archaeology of the African provinces in the sixth and Continentale by Efi Karantzali. ISBN 0 86054 813 9. seventh centuries by Denys Pringle. ISBN 0860541193. AVAILABLE ONLY AS PDF DOWNLOAD £18.00 inc VAT AVAILABLE ONLY AS PDF DOWNLOAD £18.00 inc VAT BAR–S634, 1996 The End of Paganism in the North‐Western BAR–S602, 1995 Different Iron Ages Studies on the Iron Age in Provinces of the Roman Empire The example of the Temperate Europe edited by J.D. Hill and C. G. Mithras cult by Eberhard Sauer. ISBN 0 86054 816 3. Cumberpatch. ISBN 0 86054 779 5. AVAILABLE ONLY AS AVAILABLE ONLY AS PDF DOWNLOAD £18.00 inc VAT PDF DOWNLOAD £18.00 inc VAT BAR–S635, 1996 Le Campaniforme en France Analyse de la céramique BAR–S604, 1995 Trade in the Western Mediterranean, AD 400‐700: d’accompagnement by Marie Besse. -
Ever Increasing Circles: the Sacred Geographies of Stonehenge and Its Landscape
Proceedings of the British Academy, 92, 167-202 Ever Increasing Circles: The Sacred Geographies of Stonehenge and its Landscape TIMOTHY DARVILL Introduction THE GREAT STONE CIRCLE standing on the rolling chalk downland of Salisbury Plain that we know today as Stonehenge, has, in the twentieth century AD, become a potent icon for the ancient world, and the focus of power struggles and contested authority in our own. Its reputation and stature as an archaeological monument are enormous, and sometimes almost threaten to overshadow both its physical proportions and our accumu- lated collective understanding of its construction and use. While considerable attention has recently been directed to the relevance, meaning and use of the site in the twentieth century AD (Chippindale 1983; 1986a; Chippindale et al. 1990; Bender 1992), the matter of its purpose, significance, and operation during Neolithic and Bronze Age times remains obscure. The late Professor Richard Atkinson was characteristically straightforward when he said that for questions about Stonehenge which begin with the word ‘why’: ‘there is one short, simple and perfectly correct answer: We do not know’ (1979, 168). Two of the most widely recognised and enduring interpretations of Stonehenge are, first, that it was a temple of some kind; and, second, that its orientation on the midsummer sunrise gave it some sort of astronomical role in the lives of its builders. Both interpre- tations, which are not mutually exclusive, have of course been taken to absurd lengths on occasion. During the eighteenth century, for example, William Stukeley became obses- sive about the role of the Druids at Stonehenge (Stukeley 1740). -
University of Birmingham News Release Strictly
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM NEWS RELEASE STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 00.01 BST ON WEDNESDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2014 New digital map reveals stunning hidden archaeology of Stonehenge A host of previously unknown archaeological monuments have been discovered around Stonehenge as part of an unprecedented digital mapping project that will transform our knowledge of this iconic landscape – including remarkable new findings on the world’s largest ‘super henge’, Durrington Walls. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, led by the University of Birmingham in conjunction with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, is the largest project of its kind. Remote sensing techniques and geophysical surveys have discovered hundreds of new features which now form part of the most detailed archaeological digital map of the Stonehenge landscape ever produced. The startling results of the survey, unveiled in full at the British Science Festival, include 17 previously unknown ritual monuments dating to the period when Stonehenge achieved its iconic shape. Dozens of burial mounds have been mapped in minute detail, including a long barrow (a burial mound dating to before Stonehenge) which revealed a massive timber building, probably used for the ritual inhumation of the dead following a complicated sequence of exposure and excarnation (defleshing), and which was finally covered by an earthen mound. The project has also revealed exciting new – and completely unexpected – information on previously known monuments. Among the most significant relate to the Durrington Walls ‘super henge’, situated a short distance from Stonehenge. This immense ritual monument, probably the largest of its type in the world, has a circumference of more than 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles). -
Circular Route from Durrington Walls to Stonehenge
Circular route from Durrington Walls 3 Stonehenge Cottages, King to Stonehenge Barrows, Amesbury, Wiltshire SP4 7DD This walk explores two major historic monuments, Durrington TRAIL Walls and Stonehenge, in Walking the heart of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. On this GRADE circular walk you will discover the Moderate landscape in its full glory from the Bronze Age barrows to the First DISTANCE World War military railway track, 5 miles (7.6km) as well as its diverse wildlife and plants. TIME 4 hours Terrain OS MAP Landranger 184; This circular walk follows hard tracks and gently sloping downs. Surfaces can be uneven, with potholes Explorer 130 or long tussocky grass. Dogs welcome on a lead and under control, as sheep and cattle graze the fields and there are ground-nesting birds. Contact Things to see 01980 664780 [email protected] Facilities Durrington Walls The old railway track The Avenue Have a look around you and Stonehenge Landscape has a This impressive bank and ditch http://nationaltrust.org.uk/walks appreciate the nature of this rich military history. The Lark Hill earthwork is more than 1.5 henge as an enclosed valley. Military Light Railway (LMLR) miles (2.5km) long. It may have If you were here over 4,500 line, ran through the landscape been the ceremonial route and years ago you would have seen from Amesbury to Larkhill and on entrance to the stone circle and In partnership with several shrines around the to the Stonehenge aerodrome recent excavations suggest it slopes, and Neolithic houses from 1914 until 1929. -
The Spring 2015 Newsletter from the Kent Archaeological Field
Welcome to the Spring 2015 Newsletter from the Kent WELCOME Archaeological Field School STUDY TRIPS STUDY ROMAN BUILDINGS Dear Member, THE ROMAN VILLA AT We will be sending a Newsletter email each TESTON quarter to keep you up to date with news and NERO'S ROMAN PALACE AT views on what is planned at the Kent OPLONTIS Archaeological Field School and what is PRIHISTORIC REMAINS AT happening on the larger stage of archaeology HOLLINGBOURNE both in this country and abroad. ROMAN BATHHOUSE AND ESTATE AT ABBEY FIELDS This Newsletter is a supplement to the normal DIOCLETIAN'S PALACE IN quarterly newsletter and focuses on the courses SPLIT available at the school. RESEARCH NEWS For more details see: www.kafs.co.uk COURSES KAFS BOOKING FORM KAFS MEMBERSHIP FORM Study trips planned for next year include: The enigma of Stonehenge continues to fascinate: Join us on Friday 22nd May 2015 at 5.00am on an exclusive visit inside the stone circle to watch the sunrise. Friday 22nd May 2015. Summer Sunrise from inside the stones of Stonehenge with Dr Paul Wilkinson. £75 for members with only four places available. Stay at the nearby Amesbury Travelodge for £45! 05.00 Meet at the new Visitor Centre 05.30 Entrance to the centre of the stones to watch for that magical moment of sunrise 07.00 Breakfast at the nearby Little Chef (part of the ticket) 09.00 Return to the Stonehenge Visitor Centre for a comprehensive tour of the new facility with an opportunity to revisit the stones and walk along the Avenue, the original approach to Stonehenge and visit the Stonehenge cursus and the round barrows on King Barrow Ridge 1.00 Lunch 2.00 Visit to Durrington Walls and Woodhenge 3.00 Summing up and disperse See www.kafs.co.uk for further details. -
Durrington Walls
Feeding Stonehenge: cuisine and consumption at the Late Neolithic site of Durrington Walls Oliver E. Craig1, Lisa-Marie Shillito1,2, Umberto Albarella3, Sarah Viner-Daniels3, Ben Chan3,4, Ros CleaP, Robert Ixer6, Mandy Jay7, Pete Marshall8, Ellen Simmons3, Elizabeth Wright3 & Mike Parker Pearson6 The discovery o f Neolithic houses at Durrington Walls that are contemporary with the main construction phase o f Stonehenge raised questions as to their interrelationship. Was Durrington Walls the residence o f the builders o f Stonehenge? Were the activities there more significant than simply domestic subsistence? Using lipid residue analysis, this paper identifies the preferential use of certain pottery types for the preparation o f particular food groups and differential consumption of dairy and meat products between monumental and domestic areas o f the site. Supported by the analysis o f faunal remains, the results suggest seasonal feasting and perhaps organised culinary unification o f a diverse community. Keywords: UK, Stonehenge, Neolithic, feasting, isotopic lipid residue analysis, public and private consumption 1 BioArCh, Department o f Archaeology, University o f York, Heslington, York YO lO 5DD , U K (Email: Oliver. craig@york. ac. uk) 2 School o f History, Classics and Archaeology, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK 2 Department o f Archaeology, University o f Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street, Sheffield S I 4ET, U K 4 Laboratory for Artefact Studies, Faculty o f Archaeology, Leiden -
The Archaeology of the North Sea Palaeolandscapes
Mapping Doggerland: The Mesolithic Landscapes of the Southern North Sea edited by Vincent Gaffney. Kenneth Thomson and Simon Finch, Archaeopress 2007, pages 105-118 Mapping Doggerland 9 The Archaeology of the North Sea Palaeolandscapes Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney and Kenneth Thomson 9.1 Introduction that the emergent landscape of the SNS should possess seasonally visited base camps during the Early Mesolithic. The map data generated as part of this project represents However, information from Scandinavian suggests a con- one of the largest samples of a, potentially, well preserved trasting lifestyle utilising only resources within a maritime early Holocene landscape surviving in Europe and it is zone (Indrelid 1978:169-70, Nygaard 1990:232), and it is essential that some consideration of the archaeological possible that the contemporary occupants of the "Dogger- context of the mapped remains is presented here. The land" coastline might have followed a similar lifestyle. If European cultural period associated with this landscape is this comparison were correct it would contrast with con- the Mesolithic which lasts between c. 10,000 BP and c. ventional models of Mesolithic movement for England at 5,500 BP, dependent on geographic position. Tremendous least (Darvill 1995, figure 20; Smith 1992). Indeed, whilst environmental change forms the backdrop to cultural it must be acknowledged that previous models have rarely events throughout this period. Sea level rise, associated had access to data from the original coastlines, recent dis- with climate change, resulted in the loss of more than coveries at sites including Howick in Northumberland 30,000 km2 of habitable landscape across the southern (Waddington et al. -
Durrington Walls
Durrington Walls 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. But some archaeologists point out that there are problems dating Stonehenge itself because the stone circle has been rebuilt many times. The village would have housed hundreds of people (Image: National Geographic) 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. -
Stonehenge Archeologists Find Huge Neolithic Site 7 September 2015
Stonehenge archeologists find huge neolithic site 7 September 2015 Birmingham and the Vienna-based Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI ArchPro). The newly discovered stones, which have yet to be excavated, are thought to have been toppled over, with the bank of the later Durrington Walls henge built over them. The neolithic henge, or monument, which is a part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, is one of the largest known henges, measuring 500 m in The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge is a ring of diameter and more than 1.5 km in circumference. standing stones believed to have been erected between 3,000 and 2,000 BC The buried remains of a mysterious giant prehistoric monument have been discovered close to Britain's famous Stonehenge heritage site, archaeologists said Monday. Up to 90 standing stones, some originally measuring 4.5 metres (15 feet) and dating back some 4,500 years, are believed to have been buried under a bank of earth and remained hidden for millenia. Archaeologists using multi-sensor technologies Stonehenge in southern England is one of the most discovered the "C-shaped arena" at Durrington iconic ancient sites in Europe Walls—a so-called "superhenge" located less than three kilometres (1.8 miles) from Stonehenge, in southwestern England. Project initiator Wolfgang Neubauer described the "Durrington Walls is an immense monument and latest discovery as a "very important and fantastic up till this point we thought it was merely a large finding" and said the monument could originally bank and ditched enclosure, but underneath that have comprised up to 200 stones. -
Stonehenge's Avenue and Bluestonehenge
Stonehenge’s Avenue and Bluestonehenge Michael J. Allen1, Ben Chan2, Ros Cleal3, Charles French4, Peter Marshall5, Joshua Pollard6, Rebecca Pullen7, Colin Richards8, Clive Ruggles9, David Robinson10, Jim Rylatt11, Julian Thomas8, Kate Welham12 & Mike Parker Pearson13,* Stonehenge has long been known to form part of a larger prehistoric landscape (Figure 1). In particular, it is part of a composite monument that includes the Stonehenge Avenue, first mapped in 1719–1723 by William Stukeley (1740) who recorded that it ran from Stonehenge’s northeast entrance for over a kilometre towards the River Avon, bending southeast and crossing King Barrow Ridge before disappearing under ploughed ground. He also noted that its initial 500m-long stretch from Stonehenge was aligned towards the midsummer solstice sunrise. Archaeological excavations during the 20th century revealed that the Avenue consists of two parallel banks with external, V-profile ditches, about 22m apart. The dating, phasing and extent of the Avenue, however, remained uncertain. Its length could be traced no closer than 200m from the River Avon (Smith 1973), and the question of whether the Avenue’s construction constituted a single event had not been entirely resolved (Cleal et al. 1995: 327). Our investigations were part of a re-evaluation of Stonehenge and its relationship to the River Avon in 2008–2009, involving the re-opening and extension of trenches previously dug across the Avenue during the 20th century and digging new trenches at West Amesbury beyond the then-known limit of the Avenue. The result of this work was the discovery of a new henge at West Amesbury, situated at the hitherto undiscovered east end of the Avenue beside the River Avon. -
Architecture and Meaning in the Structure of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK Timothy Darvill
Houses of the Holy: architecture and meaning in the structure of Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK Timothy Darvill Timothy Darvill is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensic Science, Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests lie in the Neolithic of Northwest Europe and in archaeological resource management, and he has carried out fieldwork in Germany, Russia, Malta, England, Wales, and the Isle of Man. In 2008, together with Geoff Wainwright, he undertook excavations inside the stone circles at Stonehenge as part of ongoing research into the links between Stonehenge and the sources of the Bluestones in the Preseli Hills of southwest Wales. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Time & Mind. [email protected]. Abstract Stonehenge in central southern England is internationally known. Recent re-evaluations of its date and construction sequence provides an opportunity to review the meaning and purpose of key structural components. Here it is argued that the central stone structures did not have a single purpose but rather embody a series of symbolic representations. During the early third millennium this included a square-in- circle motif representing a sacred house or ‘big house’ edged by the five Sarsen Trilithons. During the late third millennium BC, as house styles changed, some of the stones were re-arranged to form a central oval setting that perpetuated the idea of the a sacred dwelling. The Sarsen Circle may have embodied a time- reckoning system based on the lunar month. From about 2500 BC more than 80 bluestones were brought to the site from sources in the Preseli Hills of west Wales about 220km distant.