June 18, 2004 — At least three of the builders of Stonehenge were from Wales, according to archaeologists who found the builders' grave close to the Stonehenge site, and have linked the remains to stones used in the construction of the Salisbury Plain monument.
The finding, which comes just before Sunday's summer solstice, not only sheds light on Stonehenge's origins, but also provides clues to prehistoric migration patterns within Europe following the Stone Age, which was the earliest known period in human culture.
Most historians believe that Stonehenge served as a temple to the gods of the sun and moon.
The Welshmen's bones originally were spotted last year next to a water pipe trench during routine road improvement work in Boscombe Down, which is very close to Stonehenge.
Later excavation work by Wessex Archaeology revealed that the bones were part of a mass, 2,300-year-old grave that contained eight decorated pots, arrowheads, flint tools, a boar's tusk, an ornamental bone toggle, and the remains of seven individuals whose skull similarities led researchers to believe were related.
The remains included a man who died between the ages of 35 and 45, two other men between the ages of 25 and 30, a male teenager who died at around 15 to 18, and three young children between the ages of two and seven.
Oxygen isotope analysis was conducted on the teeth of the adults, who have been nicknamed the Boscombe Bowmen. Such isotopes become imbedded in tooth enamel from drinking water. Their profile can indicate the person's distance away from the sea at certain periods in time reflective of tooth development, the person's location above sea level, and even general information about the climate that existed during the individual's lifetime, according to the Wessex Archaeology website.
"Ideally, as with the Boscombe Bowmen, strontium isotope analysis is used in conjunction with other lines of evidence such as oxygen isotope analysis to constrain possible areas where an individual could have spent their childhood and/or rule out areas where the tooth data does not match environmental values," said Jane Evans of the British Geological Survey.
She believes the recent find "provides a remarkable picture of prehistoric migration" from Wales to Salisbury.
The tooth study yielded a high proportion of strontium isotope, which is associated with high radioactivity. This limited the remains' point of origin to Cornwall, the Isle of Man, the northwest of England, parts of the Scottish highlands, and Wales. Climate considerations ruled out all but the Lake District and Wales.
Since geological studies indicate that the earliest bluestones of Stonehenge came from the Preseli Hills of southwest Wales, archaeologists who worked on the excavation are almost certain that the individuals in the grave were Welsh and that they were involved in the construction of the prehistoric monument.
Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology told Discovery News that it would be "a phenomenal coincidence" if the origin of the men and the stones were not linked.
He added, "The grave contents do not help in our understanding of how the temple worked, but they put a human face on it."
The mass grave dates to around the same time and place of the Amesbury Archer, a man from Central Europe who was given the richest burial of the age in Europe. He was found a few years ago, and his grave contained pots, metalworking tools, and the earliest known gold objects in Britain.
Although metalworking technology existed during certain phases of Stonehenge's construction, Fitzpatrick said, "The Welsh individuals brought the stones to the site purely with sweat, blood, and tears."
This must have been no easy task, as the remains for the oldest man in the grave indicate that he sustained a severe leg break during his lifetime that likely made his leg shorter and caused him to limp.
"Now we must ask ourselves why these people felt moved to carry stones over such a great distance," Fizpatrick said. "Stonehenge, save for its initial wooden monument, was not remarkable until the stones arrived, so we believe that the site in Wales must have been of some importance to the people of the time."
He believes it is possible that the stone circle was brought from Wales and reconstructed at Stonehenge. A similar monument does exist in the Preseli Hills, but a direct link between the two stone circles has yet to be made.
The Boscombe Bowmen and all of the other recent archaeological finds will be on public display from July 3 through Aug. 30 at the Salisbury Museum in England.
Dentist Garry Denke (1622-1699) proposed that Stonehenge may actually be modeled after a tooth-filled mouth. There were three phases in the completion of Stonehenge, and the Dentist felt that each phase was modeled after a mouth. He felt that the first phase was modeled after fish teeth, the second phase after a Great White, and the third phase after a baby's mouth. In a website dedicated to the Dentist's beliefs, pictures are included which show the similarities between the locations of the Stonehenge stones and how they are proportional to mouths.Bullseye said:This is as good as the threads posted by a certain Bishop!!!
Which website would this be?Garry Denke said:Dentist Garry Denke (1622-1699) proposed that Stonehenge may actually be modeled after a tooth-filled mouth. There were three phases in the completion of Stonehenge, and the Dentist felt that each phase was modeled after a mouth. He felt that the first phase was modeled after fish teeth, the second phase after a Great White, and the third phase after a baby's mouth. In a website dedicated to the Dentist's beliefs, pictures are included which show the similarities between the locations of the Stonehenge stones and how they are proportional to mouths.
Babies born with a set of teeth, presumably?Many geologists focus on the idea that Stonehenge may be modeled after the mouth of a baby.
Only certain stones with certain teeth? Seems to me a little contrived - surely you'd have to compare all of the stones in a specified tranche with all of the teeth in a baby's mouth?They even feel that there is evidence of a 'tongue' in the 'mouth.' These geologists have 'mapped out' just how the idea of Stonehenge and a baby's mouth are similar, comparing certain stones with certain teeth.
Can't disagree with that .... Stonehenge is truly a wonder. It may be a long time before we can understand what its creators were truly trying to convey. Until then, let's appreciate its artistic form and the labor that went into it.
LOL, what for 2 or so hrs that i had my hands on the stones for ? i also leant against them, which felt really nice, i felt a great happiness in myself too,Tin Finger said:or maybe a lorry ran past the road which is very close..
WhateverStormkhan said:The last time I was at Stonehenge (Midsummer 1985) the last impression I got was of a tooth-filled mouth.
I assume I should've been using a neolithic hot air balloon.
Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday July 24, 2005
The Observer
Stonehenge has always mystified. Julius Caesar thought it was the work of druids, medieval scholars believed it was the handiwork of Merlin, while local folk tales simply blamed the devil.
Now scientists are demanding a full-scale research programme be launched to update our knowledge of the monument and discover precisely who built it and its burial barrow graves.
This is the key recommendation of Stonehenge: an Archaeological Research Framework, edited by Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University, soon to be published by English Heritage. It highlights serious flaws in our knowledge of the monument, which is now a World Heritage Site.
'Stonehenge has not been well served by archaeology,' admitted Dr David Miles, chief archaeology adviser to English Heritage. 'Much of the area was excavated in the 19th century, when gentleman amateurs - glorified treasure-hunters, really - would get their labourers to dig great trenches straight into its barrows and graves.
'Then they would ransack them, taking away the human remains and grave goods. It was Indiana Jones stuff. We need to get that material back.'
Even in the 20th century, archaeological work, although carried out by professionals, was generally poor, said Miles. For example, the long barrows - the most ancient of the communal graves built round Stonehenge - have never been properly excavated. Yet these could be the resting places of the people who first made this area sacred.
'It is over 50 years since substantial excavations have taken place at Stonehenge and more than two decades since the small-scale excavations,' the report notes. This research gap needs to be rectified.
Crucially, science can now reveal rich details about prehistoric people from their remains. This is demonstrated by the 'Amesbury Archer', recently found in a 4,000-year-old grave, one of Europe's richest, near Stonehenge.
He was surrounded by about 100 items, including golden hair ornaments - some of the earliest gold objects found in Britain.
But his teeth provided the real surprise. Tests on their enamel, formed in early childhood and which contains telltale chemical signatures from local soil and rocks, showed the archer came from the Alps while the ornaments found in his grave were traced to Spain and France.
This discovery suggests that metalworkers from the Continent had already begun to trade and work in tin, copper and other metals in Britain 4,000 years ago and may have played key roles in building Stonehenge. The monument appears to have been the centre of major activity by travellers roaming across Britain, Ireland and the Continent.
Archaeologists now want to hunt down the remains taken from barrows around Stonehenge: some may be in local museums, others in private hands. 'Some people probably have them under their beds,' said Miles.
Armed with these materials, scientists could then recreate much of our ancient past. It might even be possible to make facial reconstructions of some individuals.
Stonehenge took at least 1,000 years to build and its use clearly changed over the millennia. Recent studies suggest it may have been 'Christianised' in the first millennium AD and at one point was used as a place of execution by the Anglo-Saxons to judge from the primitive gallows, dated to around the 7th century, found there.
Some scientists have even argued that the great circles could have been used as an astronomical observatory or a computer. This idea is generally dismissed by the report, although the alignment of its stones to the rising midwinter sun, a date associated with the return of light and warmth, is widely accepted.
The great stone circles are therefore concerned with death and rebirth. Built mainly by Stone Age peoples, without the aid of metals, Stonehenge became the focus of intense interest a few centuries later when metal-working Bronze Age craftsmen from across Europe arrived in the neighbourhood. During this period Stonehenge appears to have become the fashionable place to be buried.
Indeed, it may be that the area was split into a Land of the Living, where ceremonial parties were held by relatives, and the Domain of the Dead, with Stonehenge at its centre, where people were buried.
'There is no site like this anywhere else and we badly need to improve our understanding of it,' said Miles. 'This is not a call for an autopsy of the place. We are not going to make a mess. It will be sensitive: more like targeted brain surgery.'
FuManChu said:England's ancient Stonehenge monument resembles a female fertility symbol, Canadian researchers say. Viewed from above, the pattern of stones resembles the female genitalia, according to Anthony Perks, a retired professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Columbia.
Source
>PDF of full article here<Mystery Man of Stonehenge
Who was he and where did he come from? And what was his role in the making of the great monument? The discovery of a 4,300-year-old skeleton surrounded by intriguing artifacts has archaeologists abuzz
Early one Friday in May 2002, a crew from England's Wessex Archaeology discovered two graves that predated the Romans by more than 2,500 years. When the sifting and analysis was done, 100 artifacts had been retrieved—the richest Bronze Age grave ever discovered in Britain.
There were two male skeletons, the most important of which was interred in a timber-lined grave on its left side, facing north. The legs were curled in a fetal position, common in Bronze Age burials. An eroded hole in the jawbone indicated that he'd had an abscess; a missing left kneecap was evidence that he'd sustained some horrific injury that'd left him with a heavy limp and an excruciating bone infection. A man between 35 and 45 years of age, he was buried with a black stone wrist guard on his forearm of the kind used to protect archers from the snap of a bowstring. Scattered across his lower body were 16 barbed flint arrowheads (the shafts to which they presumably had been attached had long since rotted away).
The archaeologists started calling him the Amesbury Archer, and they assumed he had something to do with Stonehenge because the massive stone monument was just a few miles away. Because of his apparent wealth, the press soon dubbed him the "King of Stonehenge." "Most people would not have had the ability to take such wealth with them into their graves," says Mike Pitts, author of Hengeworld, who calls the find "dynamite."
Using a laser scan to determine the makeup of the oxygen in the archer’s tooth enamel, a team at the British Geological Survey led by geoscientist Carolyn Chenery concluded that he grew up in a cool region of Central Europe, most likely somewhere close to the Alps or present-day southern Germany.
Dig throws new light on Stonehenge mystery
by David Vallis
THREE weeks of excavations at Durrington Walls have been helping to throw new light on the mysteries of the Stonehenge World Heritage site.
The dig, which started on August 21 and is due to end today (September 15) has attracted interest from eminent archaeologists, who have been regularly visiting the site since the work got underway.
And last Saturday and Sunday members of the public got the chance to view the excavations and talk to members of the team carrying out the research project.
The visits were arranged as part of last week's Heritage Open Days and included demonstration of Neolithic craft, performed by a re-enactment group. Durrington Walls lies close to Woodhenge and is one of the key prehistoric monuments of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
It is a circular henge enclosure - the largest of its kind in Britain - and is surrounded by a bank and ditch that is even bigger than that at Avebury.
And it was built at the same time as the first stones were put up at Stonehenge.
The latest excavations have been taking place as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Research Project, with the aim of exploring the links between Durrington Walls, the River Avon and Stonehenge.
It is believed the once massive circular earthwork, which was about 500 metres (about a third of mile) in diameter, was erected for rituals and feasts - such as midsummer pig roasts.
And new excavations have revealed traces of a causeway or walkway, leading from Durrington Walls to the Avon, about 30-metres away.
This, say archaeologist suggests the dead were ritualistically carried from the earthworks to the river, where their remains were deposited.
Archaeologists and students from Salisbury and the universities of Bournemouth, Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol and London have been carrying out the excavations and some of the work has been filmed by Channel 4's Time Team for a programme to be shown next spring.
SoundDust said:from the Observer (link)
Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday July 24, 2005
The Observer
Stonehenge has always mystified. Julius Caesar thought it was the work of druids, medieval scholars believed it was the handiwork of Merlin, while local folk tales simply blamed the devil.
Now scientists are demanding a full-scale research programme be launched to update our knowledge of the monument and discover precisely who built it and its burial barrow graves.
This is the key recommendation of Stonehenge: an Archaeological Research Framework, edited by Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University, soon to be published by English Heritage. It highlights serious flaws in our knowledge of the monument, which is now a World Heritage Site.
'Stonehenge has not been well served by archaeology,' admitted Dr David Miles, chief archaeology adviser to English Heritage. 'Much of the area was excavated in the 19th century, when gentleman amateurs - glorified treasure-hunters, really - would get their labourers to dig great trenches straight into its barrows and graves.
'Then they would ransack them, taking away the human remains and grave goods. It was Indiana Jones stuff. We need to get that material back.'
Even in the 20th century, archaeological work, although carried out by professionals, was generally poor, said Miles. For example, the long barrows - the most ancient of the communal graves built round Stonehenge - have never been properly excavated. Yet these could be the resting places of the people who first made this area sacred.
'It is over 50 years since substantial excavations have taken place at Stonehenge and more than two decades since the small-scale excavations,' the report notes. This research gap needs to be rectified.
Crucially, science can now reveal rich details about prehistoric people from their remains. This is demonstrated by the 'Amesbury Archer', recently found in a 4,000-year-old grave, one of Europe's richest, near Stonehenge.
He was surrounded by about 100 items, including golden hair ornaments - some of the earliest gold objects found in Britain.
But his teeth provided the real surprise. Tests on their enamel, formed in early childhood and which contains telltale chemical signatures from local soil and rocks, showed the archer came from the Alps while the ornaments found in his grave were traced to Spain and France.
This discovery suggests that metalworkers from the Continent had already begun to trade and work in tin, copper and other metals in Britain 4,000 years ago and may have played key roles in building Stonehenge. The monument appears to have been the centre of major activity by travellers roaming across Britain, Ireland and the Continent.
Archaeologists now want to hunt down the remains taken from barrows around Stonehenge: some may be in local museums, others in private hands. 'Some people probably have them under their beds,' said Miles.
Armed with these materials, scientists could then recreate much of our ancient past. It might even be possible to make facial reconstructions of some individuals.
Stonehenge took at least 1,000 years to build and its use clearly changed over the millennia. Recent studies suggest it may have been 'Christianised' in the first millennium AD and at one point was used as a place of execution by the Anglo-Saxons to judge from the primitive gallows, dated to around the 7th century, found there.
Some scientists have even argued that the great circles could have been used as an astronomical observatory or a computer. This idea is generally dismissed by the report, although the alignment of its stones to the rising midwinter sun, a date associated with the return of light and warmth, is widely accepted.
The great stone circles are therefore concerned with death and rebirth. Built mainly by Stone Age peoples, without the aid of metals, Stonehenge became the focus of intense interest a few centuries later when metal-working Bronze Age craftsmen from across Europe arrived in the neighbourhood. During this period Stonehenge appears to have become the fashionable place to be buried.
Indeed, it may be that the area was split into a Land of the Living, where ceremonial parties were held by relatives, and the Domain of the Dead, with Stonehenge at its centre, where people were buried.
'There is no site like this anywhere else and we badly need to improve our understanding of it,' said Miles. 'This is not a call for an autopsy of the place. We are not going to make a mess. It will be sensitive: more like targeted brain surgery.'
You have half an hour to get there!Stonehenge opens for Boxing Day
One of the country's most popular monuments is opening on Boxing Day for the first time in a decade.
English Heritage says it is responding to visitor demand and opening Stonehenge to the public on 26 December and New Year's Day.
The ancient monument will be open from 1000 GMT with last admissions at 1600 GMT on both days.
However, visitors will be restricted to the perimeter of the site and not allowed into the stone circle.
Peter Carson, Stonehenge director, said: "We normally stay closed during the festive holidays, but coach tours still come in their droves and look at Stonehenge from the roadside.
"So it seemed important to have the site open for a few extra days over the holiday period."
Stonehenge is managed by English Heritage on behalf of the nation. In 1986, it became as a World Heritage Site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wilt ... 500826.stm
The curse of Stonehenge will remain until it is handed back to the druids
This world heritage site is a national disgrace. Consultants have made millions but achieved nothing in 20 years
Simon Jenkins
Friday January 27, 2006
The Guardian
West of Amesbury on the A303, the road dips and rises towards a meadow in the distance. In the meadow stands a clump of grey stones, looking like dominoes rearranged by a shell from the neighbouring artillery range. The clump is Britain's greatest stone-age monument.
Nobody can touch it. Stonehenge is cursed. I have bet every chairman of English Heritage - Lord Montagu, Sir Jocelyn Stevens and Sir Neil Cossons - that no plan of theirs to meddle with the stones will ever work. This week the latest tunnel proposal collapsed, following last year's rejection of a new visitor centre. The fate of the site is consigned to that Blairite neverland called "consultation", joining St Bart's and Crossrail among the living dead, projects which move only because they are maggot-ridden with costs.
I have attended many Stonehenge consultations. They are raving madhouses. The sanest people present are the pendragons, druids, warlocks, Harry Potters, sons of the sun and daughters of the moon. They have a clear use for the stones and speak English. Weirdness sets in with Wiltshire county councillors, health-and-safety officers and archaeologists, all of whom think the stones are theirs as of right. But for total extragalactic dottiness, nothing tops the Ministry of Defence. It moves only in twos, each official with a soldier doppelganger at his side.
These people lay claim to the stones under ancient brehon, mortuary and gavelkind, if not by line of descent from neanderthals. To them Stonehenge is a sacred receiving dish, like the one recently discovered in Moscow, a relic of a long-forgotten Wiltshire chapter of the KGB. To the ministry the stones are a crucial link in a chain of extraterrestrial defence, located at the southern tip of the feared Swindon Triangle. In the late 1980s a road to some proposed new visitor centre cut across an officer's vegetable patch at Larkhill Barracks. The ministry instantly declared the patch vital to national security. The Army Board even took the matter to Downing Street and a meeting with Margaret Thatcher. When she furiously overruled it, the board marked her order "urgent" and threw it in the bin.
Stonehenge may be vital for national security but, as a world heritage site, it is a national disgrace. It comprises the stones, a temporary shelter, a public lavatory and a concrete tunnel. In 1992 Lord Montagu commissioned the architect Ted Cullinan to design a new centre, which was rejected as too expensive (at under £1m). Consultants were brought in and, after a myriad of plans, suggested a new one at £67m, which was accepted as about right. It was located over a mile from the stones, requiring some sort of train for the disabled and, at one point, a glass replica for those who did not want to walk. Further trains were proposed for everyone until the place was getting like Clapham Junction.
No sooner were the railwaymen at work than the roadbuilders wanted some of the action. They thought to put the A303 in a tunnel. Tunnels are like computers in Whitehall, costing a fortune and never quite happening. The A303 tunnel began at £125m. Someone then discovered that Wiltshire was made of chalk and it soon cost £470m. This is what killed it. The "Stonehenge experience" is back to c1600 BC.
There are still sceptics who refuse to believe that these stones are cursed. What evidence do they want? The place was the crossroads of neolithic Britain and is clearly a cat's cradle of ley lines and hidden forces. There are more spells round here than in Hogwarts. You cannot drive from Savernake to Devizes without encountering devil's disciples, screaming mandrakes and shooting dog stars. On a full moon you will see defence-ministry virgins dancing across the Great Bog of Wylye clad in nothing but white papers. How anyone thought they could push a tunnel through this lot defeats me.
I cannot see the point of Stonehenge in its present form. It is a monument to the cult of the picturesque ruin. Even for neo-ancients, the aura of crumbling, overgrown antiquity was lost when the stones were twisted, propped up and rearranged by the Ministry of Works and the site turned into a municipal rockery over the course of the 20th century. The remains have been thoroughly surveyed by excellent archaeologists and their findings have been published. The stones are disappointingly small, coming alive only at solstice and through the filtered lenses of coffee-table books. Avebury's stones are more evocative and the great Rudston monolith in Yorkshire more imposing.
Stonehenge is a place of pagan worship and as such should be handed to those for whom it means something, the druids and astronomical clock-watchers. They should be given a lottery grant and told to put the stones back in working order. The henge's essence is the astronomical alignment of its circles and avenues. It needs to be complete. We do not leave sundials out of line or watches without escapements or grandfather clocks without chimes. There is no difficulty in this. The missing sarsens came from Marlborough Down and the missing bluestones from Pembroke's Preseli Hills. Reconstructed, Stonehenge could make sense again, other than just to archaeologists.
There is no doubt that these henges have iconic status. There is (or was) a carhenge in Nebraska, a fridgehenge in New Zealand, a tankhenge in Berlin, not to mention foamhenges, sandhenges and woodhenges galore. A false start on restoration was made by millennium enthusiasts in 2000 who tried to ferry a bluestone from Pembrokeshire up on to Salisbury Plain. The project was hit by the curse and the stone fell off its barge into the Bristol Channel. But the intention was admirable. Stonehenge is a work not of art but of religious architecture, designed for a purpose. It deserves the dignity of completion, not the sadness of ruin. That is the cry of its genius loci.
Until this decision is made, the curse will remain. It will defeat every minister, official, quangocrat and coach operator. As Stonehenge magnetises hippies and nerds, so it repels bumbledom, and will continue to do so. It is a place of infinite patience. It has, to put it mildly, time on its side. English Heritage and successive governments can fiddle. Traffic will thunder past and warplanes roar overhead, but they will not do so for ever. The stones will survive. Eventually a brave soul will arrive, restore them and lift the curse.
One group alone has defied the spirits of this place. One freemasonry has been granted power by spontaneous combustion of John Prescott's ectoplasm. The knights with the Gift of the Golden Fee are our old friends, the consultants. While the stones sit bleak and tourists languish, the planners, engineers, accountants, lawyers and publicists have for 20 years made millions out of Stonehenge. They stick like exotic lichen to each heelstone, capstone and altar stone. The sun never sets on their countenance. For them every lottery ticket is a jackpot. They know the secret of the runes. Nothing gets done. But in Blair's country of the blind we can rest assured that the one-eyed consultant is king.
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