Stonehenge—A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument

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Stonehenge—A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument Page 42

by Mike Parker Pearson


  p. 117 A Beaker pot from a site called Naboth’s Vineyard near Cowbridge in Wales.In both shape and decoration, it is like those found at Durrington Walls. © National Museum of Wales

  p. 124 Copper axheads from Castletown Roche in Ireland. These are similar to the earliest metal axes used in Britain. © Colin Burgess and Phoenix Press

  Chapter 7

  p. 131 Reconstructed profile of the great trilithon Stone 56 in its pit, showing that Atkinson’s presumed ramp is too long to have been a construction ramp for erecting the stone. The numbers refer to Atkinson’s and Gowland’s trenches. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  Chapter 8

  p. 136 A reconstruction of the Early Mesolithic posts (today under the Stonehenge parking lot where they are marked by white circles on the tarmac) with the solstice-aligned chalk ridges in the background. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 138 A plan of the Greater Cursus, showing the Amesbury 42 long barrow and the locations of all excavations between 1917 and 2008. Adapted from Richards “The Stonehenge Environs Project” figure 62. © English Heritage

  p. 142 The eastern ditch of the Amesbury 42 long barrow, excavated by JulianThomas’s team in 2008. © Aerial-Cam

  p. 149 A Collared Urn (1880–1670 BC) from the Cuckoo Stone. This pot was carefullylifted from the ground so that its contents could be excavated in the laboratory. © Colin Richards and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 151 The Bulford Stone now lies close to where it once stood, in a field east of the River Avon. © Colin Richards and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  Chapter 10

  p. 168 A plan of Stonehenge showing the locations of the excavated cremation burials (black circles) in the Aubrey Holes and ditch. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 171 Tim Darvill (left), Geoff Wainwright (center) and Miles Russell (right) excavating at Stonehenge in 2008. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 178 William Stukeley’s drawing of how he imagined a British druid to have looked.

  Chapter 11

  p. 182 A section of Aubrey Hole 32, drawn by Stuart Piggott, showing the filled-in void where a bluestone once stood (5) and the chalk packing material for the stone (4,6, 7) from which bones of a cremation burial were recovered (4). To the left (at 3), the side of the pit has been crushed and the packing layer displaced where the stone was removed. From Cleal et al. “Stonehenge in its Landscape” figure 55. © English Heritage

  p. 184 Removing a bluestone from an Aubrey Hole, showing how the shape of a pit is altered when a stone is removed. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  Chapter 12

  p. 189 Jacqui McKinley (top) and Julian Richards (right) excavating the undifferentiated mass of prehistoric cremated bones deposited in Aubrey Hole 7 in 1935. © Mike Pitts and the Stonehenge Riverside Project. Photograph by Mike Pitts

  p. 190 The lead plaque left on top of the cremated bones in Aubrey Hole 7 by RobertNewall and William Young. © Aerial-Cam

  p. 192 The first cremated bones to be visible after our team lifted the lead plaque. ©Aerial-Cam

  Chapter 13

  p. 205 The polished stone macehead found with one of the cremation burials at Stonehenge by William Hawley. It would have been attached to a wooden handle through the shaft-hole. Courtesy of Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum

  p. 207 The unique, drum-shaped, small pottery object found with one of the cremation burials at Stonehenge and interpreted as an incense burner. From Cleal et al. “Stonehenge in its Landscape” plates 8.1 & 8.2 © English Heritage

  p. 210 The Amesbury Archer and the artifacts buried with him as grave goods, excavated by Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology. © Wessex Archaeology

  Chapter 14

  p. 222 Diggers stand in the holes where standing stones once stood at Bluestonehenge on the bank of the River Avon at West Amesbury. © Aerial-Cam

  p. 224 A laser scan of the Bluestonehenge stoneholes. Laser-scanning is used to record objects and features in three dimensions. © Kate Welham and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 227 The chalk plaques found in a pit east of Stonehenge, during road-widening in1968. The small plaque is 56 millimters across. © The Prehistoric Society

  p. 228 One of the chalk plaque fragments from Durrington Walls. This was the most elaborately decorated artifact found in the Neolithic village. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  Chapter 15

  p. 235 In the field west of Stonehenge, we dug a number of trenches to explore the enigmatic palisade ditch. Stonehenge is visible to the right beyond the cars. © Aerial-Cam

  p. 237 A carved chalk pig, dating to the Late Bronze Age, was found in the upper layers filling the palisade ditch. The pig has four “button” feet, a snout, and floppy ears. © Aerial-Cam

  p. 241 The Stonehenge Avenue turns sharply eastward at a point known as the elbow.We re-opened Atkinson’s trenches here to check whether the avenue was built all at once or in two stages. Stonehenge is on the horizon (center). © Aerial-Cam

  p. 250 Computer specialists Lawrence Shaw and Mark Dover (standing right) visit Colin Richards’s trench immediately north of Stonehenge. Here the sarsen stones were dressed (shaped and finished) before they completed the last step of their journey. © Aerial-Cam

  p. 251 Colin Richards and his team plotted every stone chipping found in the trench.The distribution shows the straight edge where a sarsen once lay while it was being dressed. © Colin Richards and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 253 Supervisor Chris Casswell stands with a scale behind tiny Stone 11 at Stonehenge. It is clearly too short to have supported a lintel and has not been dressed in a similar fashion to the other stones of the sarsen circle. © Aerial-Cam

  Chapter 16

  p. 264 Students digging test pits near Fargo Plantation, south of the Cursus. Colin’s team here found small chips of bluestone as well as remains of the 1977 Stonehenge festival. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 267 Stone 68, a Stonehenge bluestone of spotted dolerite, has been carefully shaped and has a groove down one side. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 278 In the Preseli Hills there are several outcrops of dolerite and rhyolite from which the Stonehenge bluestones derive. This landscape also contains Neolithic tombs and other prehistoric monuments. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 279 Proposed routes by which the bluestones were taken from Preseli to Stonehenge.I favor the more northerly route because it avoids difficult sea crossings. © MikeParker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project After Richards (2007)

  p. 285 The maximum extent of the British–Irish Ice Sheet c. 27,000 years ago. The glaciers from this and previous glaciations never reached Salisbury Plain. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project. After Clark et al. (2010)

  Chapter 17

  p. 295 The recent discovery of Stukeley’s drawing of 1723 raised the possibility of an undiscovered route by which the sarsens were brought from Avebury and Clatford to Stonehenge. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 298 William Stukeley drew the abandoned but shaped sarsens at Clatford in 1723. The stones have gone and the road has moved but we have identified the precise spot from the positions of the round barrow and the windmill.

  p. 298 Stukeley’s drawing of the Devil’s Den at Clatford in 1723. The stone structure of this type of tomb, probably a portal dolmen, was never covered by a mound.

  p. 301 Landscape archaeologist Dave Field (left) discusses the excavations at Marden in 2010 with site director Jim Leary (center) and colleague. They are standing on a layer of soil on top of the chalk floor of a Neolithic house. The edge of the circular hearth is visible in front of them. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  Chapt
er 20

  p. 315 Stonehenge (in its Stage 1; top), Llandegai Henge A (middle), and Flagstones (bottom) had many features in common, including burials and large stones. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 320 Middle–Late Neolithic cremation enclosures and related sites of the same date as Stonehenge occur throughout Britain. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 324 The Ring of Brodgar is one of Orkney’s many Neolithic monuments. In its first stage, Stonehenge would have looked very much like this, with its bank and ditch and ring of bluestones in the Aubrey Holes. © RCAHMS. Licensor http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/

  p. 329 In 2010, I went to Orkney to work as a volunteer digger for archaeologist Nick Card, who had been excavating a Neolithic village at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney, west of the Ring of Brodgar. The buildings are very large, more like halls than domestic houses, and have well-preserved stone walls. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 337 On this plan of the pits and stakeholes excavated by Alex Gibson at Upper Ninepence in Wales, one can trace the outlines of two D-shaped buildings. The larger (Structure 3) appears to have had no hearth; the smaller (Structure 2) does. Image courtesy of Alex Gibson

  Chapter 21

  p. 347 Visible from Stonehenge to its south are the Early Bronze Age round barrows on Normanton Down, including the rich burial under Bush Barrow. A viewshed is those areas of landscape visible from any particular point, in this case Stonehenge. After Needham et al. (2010)

  p. 348 John Gale’s team of Bournemouth University students excavating a round barrow at High Lea Farm, Dorset in 2008. The central baulk preserves the last remnants of the turf that once formed the mound, capped by chalk from the ditch. © Mike Parker Pearson and the Stonehenge Riverside Project

  p. 351 Bush Barrow was excavated by Richard Colt Hoare in 1808. A plan of this Early Bronze Age grave, dating to about 1900 BC, has been reconstructed by Stuart Needham and colleagues from Hoare’s description of where the many grave goods lay in relation to the skeleton. The objects include bronze studs from the handle ofa dagger or knife (1), a bronze ax (2), a pair of bronze daggers and a gold belt buckle (3), a small bronze dagger (4), a gold lozenge (5), and a stone macehead and its bone and gold fittings (6). After Needham et al.(2010)

  p. 352 Silbury Hill has been excavated twice in modern times, by Atkinson in 1968–1970 and by English Heritage in 2007–2008. It dates to 2490–2340 BC, broadly contemporary with Stage 3 at Stonehenge. Aerial view. © English Heritage.

  INDEX

  __________

  (Page numbers in italic type refer to illustrations.)

  A

  A 303 trunk road, 156, 227, 231

  Aedui, King of, 178

  Albarella, Umberto, 119

  Alfred the Great, 6n

  Allen, Denise, 220

  Allen, Mike, 56, 77, 156, 164, 171, 240, 242, 244, 248, 306

  Altar Stone, 31, 32, 33, 131, 265, 266, 270, 291

  Amesbury, 156, 209

  cart tracks between Stonehenge and, 313

  see also West Amesbury

  Amesbury Abbey, 313

  Amesbury Archer, 209, 210, 213, 281, 333, 350

  likely origins of, 214

  Amesbury 42 long barrow, 140, 142, 145, 146, 147

  ancient Egypt, 12, 323

  Anderson-Whymark, Hugo, 249

  Anglesey, 179, 271

  animal bones see faunal remains; Durrington Walls: faunal remains from

  Annals (Tacitus), 179

  Antequera, 332

  Antiquity, 14, 332

  antler picks, 32, 43, 89, 90, 112, 113, 128, 130, 132, 143, 144, 218, 220, 248, 304

  Antrobus, Sir Edmund, 217

  Antrobus, Sir Edward, 217

  archaeoastronomy, 48

  see also solstices; Stonehenge: astronomical factors

  arrowheads

  barbed-and-tanged, 153, 195, 206, 209

  chisel, 64, 66, 158, 159, 220, 223, 227

  flint, 15, 64, 65, 67, 119, 233, 276

  from Millmead, 158

  leaf-shaped, 20, 66, 76, 115

  oblique, 64, 67, 77, 187

  stylistic dating of, 66, 134, 236

  Arthur, King, 312

  Arts and Humanities Research Council, 92

  astronomer-priests, 46, 48, 254

  Atkinson, Richard, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 129, 166, 181, 184, 188, 220, 239, 250, 280, 299, 311, 332, 343, 346

  book by, 39, 40; see also Stonehenge (Atkinson)

  at Dorchester-on-Thames, 320

  and earthworms, 306

  and Q and R Holes’ dating, 303

  sarsens’ marshalling area suggested by, 294

  stone-moving, demonstration of, by, 266

  view of Stonehenge people, 340

  Aubrey, John, 2, 29, 38, 188, 297

  Aubrey Holes, 30, 38, 46, 107, 167, 181, 182, 184, 201, 203, 223, 224, 253, 309

  bluestone holes’ similarity to, 183

  burials now known to have been placed in, 194

  identification of purpose of, 343

  laying-out of, 255, 258

  lead plaque in, inscription on, 188, 190

  No. 7, 167, 172, 173, 181, 187, 189, 192, 199, 200

  No. 32, 182, 183, 184

  Ring of Brodgar compared to, 325

  shown to be among first Stonehenge constructions, 186

  Aurelius Ambrosius, 312

  aurochs (Bos primigenius), 18

  Austin, Louise, 284

  Avebury, 9, 11, 27, 6 94, 294, 340, 344

  complex sequence of use at, 59

  map showing location of, 24

  Museum, 40, 176

  Sanctuary at, 60

  Avenue see Durrington Walls: avenue; Stonehenge avenue

  Avon valley, 23, 121, 296, 299

  see also River Avon

  axes

  battle-, 154, 271, 282

  copper, 16, 123, 124

  flint or igneous, 15, 123, 154, 159

  jadeitite, 21

  movement of, 271, 275, 290

  rhyolite, 289

  stone, 17, 20, 22, 124, 154, 159, 275

  stone, polished, distribution of, in South Wales, 289

  axis mundi, 245

  B

  Ballynahatty, 335

  Bangor, 316

  Barford, 319

  Barnholm, 158

  Barnhouse, 52, 55, 107, 324

  Beacon Hill, 146

  Beaker people, 206, 210, 229, 233, 331, 344

  arrival of, 344

  cattle as center of culture and economy of, 215

  copper used by, 124, 125

  distribution of, 208

  funerary sites of, 208, 345

  head-binding among, 212

  pottery of, 54, 77, 117, 117, 170, 206, 212, 344, 350

  semi-mobility of, 215

  skulls of, 206, 208, 212

  team assembled to research, 211

  teeth of, 211

  Beamish, Capt., 32

  bear, 158

  Bedd Arthur, 277

  Bedd yr Afanc, 276

  Bender, Barbara, 13

  Bennett, Wayne, 157

  Bevins, Richard, 265, 286

  Biconical Urn, 149

  bioturbation, 242, 243, 305

  bluestone circle, 33, 168, 186, 193, 223, 224, 252, 259, 260, 262, 308, 311, 325, 346

  bluestone horseshoe, 27, 311

  bluestone oval, 33, 131, 169, 193, 223, 224, 259, 260, 277, 311, 336, 343, 346

  Bluestonehenge, 216, 222, 317, 333, 344, 345

  arrowhead from, 64

  laser scan of, 224

  named, 223

  possible purpose of, 229

  richness of finds at, 225

  bluestones, 7, 27, 40, 132, 166, 267, 310, 336

  Aubrey Holes’ similarity to holes of, 183, 193

  belief in healing powers of, 280, 281, 282, 304

  and Bluestonehenge, see main entry

  and Boles Barrow
boulder, 272

  chippings from, 42, 141, 228, 243, 248, 253, 261, 270, 282, 304

  dolerite majority stone type among, 263

  double arc of holes for (Q and R Holes), 43, 166, 183, 193, 223, 253, 260, 303, 307, 310, 343

  dressing of, 253

  first circle of, at Stonehenge, 193

  and glacial erratics, 269, 274

  glacial transportation of, speculation on, 268, 275, 285

  igneous rocks among, range of, 265

  labor required to move, 267

  “lost” circle of, 262

  means of moving, speculation on, 268, 287

  micaceous sandstone among, 262, 263, 265

  millennium experiment concerning transportation of, 266

  numbering system for, 34

  origin of, 261

  possible route of, to Stonehenge, 265, 279, 290

  press announcement concerning, 303

  removed and re-erected, 169

  second delivery of, 224

  Somerset origin of, flaws in argument for, 274

  special nature of, 274

 

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