Neolithic stone row uncovered near Stonehenge
LONDON — A huge ritual monument that dates from the time of Stonehenge has been discovered hidden under the bank of a nearby Stone Age enclosure in southwestern England.
Durrington Walls, a roundish “super-henge” has long puzzled archeologists because one side is straight while the rest of the structure is curved. As early as 1810, historian Richard Colt Hoare claimed its shape had been left “much mutilated” by centuries of agriculture.
Now, ground-penetrating radar has found the straight edge is aligned over a row of 90 standing stones, which once stood about 4½ metres high and formed a C-shaped arena that has not been seen for thousands of years. The stone line is likely to have marked a ritual procession route and is thought to date from the same time as the sarsen circle at Stonehenge.
Archeologists believe the stones were pushed over and a bank built on top, but they are still trying to work out exactly why they were built. Nothing exists like it in the Neolithic world.
“It’s utterly remarkable,” said Vince Gaffney, of the University of Bradford, northern England. “It’s just enormous. It is definitely one of the largest stone monuments in Europe and is completely unique. We’ve never seen anything like this in the world.
“We can’t tell what the stones are made of, but they are the same height as the sarsens in the Stonehenge circle, so they may be the same kind.”
Durrington Walls, a few kilometres northeast of Stonehenge, is one of the largest known henge monuments, measuring about 500 metres in diameter and built around 4,500 years ago in the Neolithic age.
It is surrounded by a ditch up to 16 metres wide and a bank more than one metre high and is built on the same summer solstice alignment as Stonehenge.
Some archeologists have suggested the builders of Stonehenge lived at Durrington. A nearby wooden structure, called Wood Henge, was thought to represent the land of the living while Stonehenge was the realm of the dead. But the discovery of the stones suggests Durrington Walls had a far earlier and less domestic history than has previously been supposed.
The Bradford archeologists have been working alongside an international team as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes project.
“Everything previously written about the Stonehenge landscape and the ancient monuments within it will need to be rewritten,” said Paul Garwood, principle prehistorian on the project.