Oh boyo, Welsh built Stonehenge

IT seems that the Welsh did a lot more than provide the vital stones for Stonehenge – they delivered a full construction service as well.

Studies of burned skeletons found near the site suggests a sizeable number of the ancient community may have been the prehistoric equivalent of Dai the Builder.

Many of the individuals are likely to have come from the Preseli Hills, West Wales, where the smaller bluestones at the site were quarried, analysis showed.

The estimated dates of the bones are around the time the monuments were built in 3000 BC.

Scientists from Oxford University, University College London and the Paris Natural History Museum were able to determine the background of the individuals by studying traces of strontium, a radioactive isotope in the remains.

Strontium is absorbed by plants from the ground where they grow. So someone eating food gathered from the Stonehenge area would have a different ‘signature’ in their bones from someone in Wales – where the highest strontium readings are found.

In the journal Scientific Reports, the authors write: ‘New developments in strontium isotopic analysis of cremated bone reveal that at least ten of the 25 cremated individuals analysed did not spend their lives on the Wessex chalk on which the monument is found.

‘Combined with the archaeological evidence, we suggest that their most plausible origin lies in West Wales, the source of the bluestones erected in the early stage of the monument’s construction.’

The bones were originally excavated from a network of 56 pits in the 1920s, placed around the inner circumference and ditch of Stonehenge. They are known as Aubrey Holes after the 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey, who first noted them.