As part of its contribution towards the City of Liverpool's 2008 European Capital of Culture, the University of Liverpool conducted a two-part archaeological experiment referred to as the '2008 Stonehenge Rope Experiment using the principle of Occam's Razor. In part one of the experiment we demonstrated how Stonehenge could have originally been designed without using any complicated mathematics or astronomy (Hill in press), just using the three simple methods of folding a piece of rope, counting on one's fingers and aligning with the sun's shadow at midday. One piece of rope 180 feet long could be repeatedly folded in order to mark out an accurate replica of Stonehenge's extant ground plan. We then used a white-line marker machine to accurately mark out the position of every one of Stonehenge's features. Unfortunately, the results of part one of our experiment are no longer visible; but, the results of part two are, and the following discussion explains some of the lessons we learnt from the experience of building a henge today.

"If any one had said to me about a year ago that Stonehenge was meant to be deliberately flooded then I would have thought that they were crazy. However, having built an actual reconstruction of the first phase of Stonehenge, I now realise that Talboys’ ideas are more than just a theory (see my article http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/hill321/). These henges can flood, and they can remain flooded for quite some time. The fact that Stonehenge may have been deliberately flooded (for cosmological reasons) from time to time is a serious proposal and I would recommend Talboys’ The Stonehenge Observatory to anyone interested in understanding the many different functions that can be ascribed to this monument’s purpose. Moreover, Talboys’ style of writing is not heavy, and he reminds us all not to accept all those other “expert” opinions about Stonehenge at face value. I would recommend this book to those readers seeking a wider appreciation of the potential functions behind Stonehenge’s complex architectural design".

John Hill* (author) Design your own Stonehenge using the Occam's Razor Solution.
*also of the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool

Following an eMail from Dr. Rupert Till I feel obliged to re-post this article from a much more reliable source. Dr. Till was explained that I had made the mistake:

 "of believing a gutter press online report [The Sun] based on a newspaper article [the Yorkshire Post?] based on a press release! And of confusing what is reported on the internet with reality. The news article you comment on does not accurately reflect my research."

Dr. Till's research is described here with that specific to Stonehenge here. For the rest of this review I feel safe in quoting from the Yorkshire Post interview because he provides a link to it from his web site. He believes the original Stonehenge probably had a "very pleasant, almost concert-like acoustic" that our ancestors slowly perfected over many generations. On the subject of his tests at the replica of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Washington (near Oregon), Dr. Till said:

"We were able to get some interesting results when we visited the replica by using computer-based acoustic analysis software, a 3D soundfield microphone, a dodecahedronic (12-faced) speaker, and a huge bass speaker from a PA company.

"We have also been able to reproduce the sound of someone speaking or clapping in Stonehenge 5,000 years ago.

"The most interesting thing is we managed to get the whole space (at Maryhill) to resonate, almost like a wine glass will ring if you run a finger round it.

"While that was happening a simple drum beat sounded incredibly dramatic. The space had real character; it felt that we had gone somewhere special."

I beg your pardon, DJ Till, but I can't see that you were misrepresented by the article in the Sun anymore than the transcript of your interview in the Yorkshire Post! But thanks for drawing my attention to your work in more detail. I mean, from the report in The Sun I was under the impression that because "the stones are all curved and reflect sound perfectly" you were able to reproduce "the sound of someone speaking or clapping in Stonehenge 5,000 years ago" from which you were able "to get the whole space to resonate, almost like a wine glass will ring if you run a finger round it" and "while that was happening a simple drum beat sounded incredibly dramatic" so much so "It felt special".

However, from your interview with the Yorkshire Post and references you have provided I now see the error of my initial assessment. Yes, the stones at Maryhill (above) are all curved, because they are cast from concrete, not hewn from odd shaped bits of natural stone like those at Stonehenge (perhaps that's why you asked for permission to use my more accurate digital 3D models?). I imagine any room would resonate with the sound from "a dodecahedronic (12-faced) speaker, and a huge bass speaker from a PA company", but speaking and clapping, or banging a bone on a piece of wood alone - I can't see that making much of an impression? I see from your web site the few known Neolithic instruments include perforated cattle toes used as whistles. I guess if you perforated the cow's toe while it was still alive you might get a resounding "MOOOOOO"!

I doubt this latest programme will reveal anything of any value because there has been no really investigative excavation within Stonehenge for over forty years. True, Profs Darvill and Wainwright excavated a tiny portion of previously excavated area and the SRP dug up an Aubrey Hole that contained cremations re-interred in 1935. Big deal. The rest is pure speculation based on the observation of a native from Madagascar who convinced Prof Parker-Pearson Stonehenge was a place of worship for the dead. Really? Where is Stonehenge in Madagascar? Apart from the choice of material where else on Earth can you see the level of expertise demonstrated in the design of Stonehenge? Nowhere. And yet for some reason British archeologists insist on placing this monument in the late Neolithic period based on the flimsiest of evidence. Keeps you in a job though doesn’t it Prof! Why don’t Channel Four, renowned for their hard hitting investigative journalism, petition the UK government for the opportunity to run physical (OSL) and chemical (Chlorine-36) tests on the Sarsen stones to determine, once and for all, the age of Stonehenge? What do we have to lose after half the site has been disturbed and some stones set in concrete – it’s not as if lifting a lintel to discover when it was placed or taking core samples is going to be any worse. Can anyone explain why the level of chalk protected beneath the Bank is 30cm higher than that exposed to the elements? Do you know how long it takes for 30cm of chalk to dissolve in Britain’s climate? Around 9,000 years or more and yet I keep hearing how Stonehenge was started 5,000 years ago based on the radiocarbon dating of 13 antler picks discarded in the Ditch. Rubbish. No, really, they are rubbish because tests to recreate similar chalk earthworks at Overton Down prove that Banks don’t erode into the Ditch over a couple of centuries like the archeologists first thought, they are deliberately refilled, so there’s nothing to suggest the discarded antlers were used to dig the original Ditch – they could have been placed there at any time prior to it being refilled. I bet you won’t see reference to that in this programme. Then there’s all that evidence to support the arrival, preparation and erection of the Sarsen Circle and Trilithons. Well, actually there isn’t! We’re talking about two pieces of bone found within the confines of the megalithic structure radiocarbon dated to 4200BC and 2600BC, the archeologists choosing the latter because it’s more appropriate to their timeline. Forget the fact Prof Darvill found evidence of the central site having been occupied around 7200BC. This dogmatism is not limited to the available evidence either. Descriptions of how the stones were erected have remained unchallenged since 1923 even though they are patently flawed. The idea that the stone pillars were positioned on the outside of the Sarsen Circle and raised toward the centre would result in the flatter face (on which they had been brought to the site) on the outside of the circle whereas they are all on the inside! What’s more, the builders had to achieve this with the central Trilithons already in place. All of this to uphold the belief that Stonehenge is a Neolithic temple to the dead built by farmers in their spare time – people declared on the archeological evidence as illiterate and semi-nomadic. Every attempt to recreate the way in which Stonehenge might have been built is done with the sole purpose of reinforcing the myth and with such scientific contempt it’s laughable.

And this is what I have to say having watched it:

Before this programme aired I said to my family it would contain less than 10% information of any relevance to Stonehenge. Hailed as the culmination of six years investigation during which the team has been digging not just the monument but the entire prehistoric landscape that focuses on Stonehenge, anyone not the least bit interested in the site over the past six years might have questioned my prediction. Having sat through one-and-a-half-hours I have to admit I was wrong – it was 11%.

The overriding theme behind this program – that of one monument in stone dedicated to the dead and another in wood dedicated to the living – was revealed to Prof. Mike Parker-Pearson by an archeologist from Madagascar who saw in Stonehenge the same reverence his people have to the dead, immortalized in stone. Ignoring the fact that nothing in Madagascar resembles Stonehenge in anything but the choice of material the Professor has dedicated the past few years to the pursuit of this idea to the exclusion of all else including, amongst others, the work of Prof. Richard Atkinson (though Atkinson’s crime was in not publishing what he had discovered I fail to see how his own small excavations outside the monument would have changed his or any other archeologist’s view at the time).

Parker-Pearson’s self proclaimed mandate involved the establishment of a link between Durrington Walls, the site of a major earthwork to the east of Stonehenge, and nearby Woodhenge, and the Stonehenge monument itself. A tentative link already existed in the form of the Avenue which leads from Stonehenge to the River Avon upon which Durrington is located. Indeed, Parker-Pearson sees in the river a living passageway along which the living would carry their dead on the way to Stonehenge. However, the inappropriately named Durrington Walls (contains no stone) and comically named “Woodhenge” bear no resemblance whatsoever to Stonehenge in size, layout or orientation. Had Woodhenge been built to commemorate life and Stonehenge death we might expect to see at least a similar placing of stone and wooden pillars – a tiny detail overlooked by the team who could only presume the design of Woodhenge because nothing remains of the original wooden structure. Instead the viewers were mislead into believing the entrance to Woodhenge would have framed the setting Sun at the time of the winter solstice in contrast to Stonehenge’s framing of the rising Sun at the time of the summer solstice. Apart from the fact that most archeologists do not recognize any alignments at Stonehenge and the central axis at Woodhenge is a good 10º off the winter solstice, would we not expect to see the Sun rising at a monument dedicated to the living and setting on one dedicated to the dead, in which case the purpose of each is wrong?

Another important feature on the landscape is the Cursus, a 2.5km earthwork stretching east-west to the north of Stonehenge. In the absence of any evidence linking this to any other site Parker-Pearson believes it separated the land of the living from that of the dead and was itself, out of bounds. So why wasn’t it built between Stonehenge and Woodhenge? In fact, why when Durrington and Woodhenge are a mere 250m away from the symbolic River Avon, was Stonehenge built 2kms away from it and halfway up a hill?

These are only the most superficial of observations in a programme which can surely only stun the archeological world by what has been (conveniently) overlooked. For example, the revelation from Mike Pitts that the Bluestones were placed in the Aubrey Holes as part of the original Phase 1 construction around 3000BC. There was no mention in the program of the accepted, earliest placement of the Bluestones at the center of the site. Neither was there mention of the original excavation of thirty other Aubrey Holes which yielded absolutely no evidence of them ever having held anything. But then there’s only so much you can say about Stonehenge in 11 minutes.

On a personal note I was relieved to see a recreation of a Sarsen pillar being moved into place, flattest side down, from outside the circle before being raised upright from inside the circle. Will someone please explain to the team that this results in the flattest face of the pillar on the outside of the circle, whereas the flattest face is innermost in every case? But by far the greatest pleasure was right at the end of the programme when Parker-Pearson admitted the many trenches running parallel within the Avenue leading away from Stonehenge were indeed natural and created by streams 10,000 years ago which just happened to run in the direction of the midsummer sunrise. Would he care to consider another theory that they were the excess from a water-filled henge? Probably not.

My apologies Channel 4. It was worth the wait to include yet another piece of evidence to support my theory!

• The Wiltshire monument was completed around 4,500 years ago. New evidence suggests that it took around 35 years to complete. That's almost a decade less than it took the Millennium Dome to be constructed.
  If it did take 35 years it would demolish the timeline based on radiocarbon dating (oops, silly me, I already did that in my book - Ed.).
• It has now been conclusively proven that Stonehenge was not built as a venue for hippies to drink cider and dance around every mid-June as a cheap substitute for Glastonbury Festival.
  It is also conclusively proven that Stonehenge was not built as a venue by and for Neolithic farmers to worship their dead.
• The largest of the gigantic upright stones weighs about 40 tons - the equivalent of an articulated lorry or half a John Prescott.
  Which really makes you wonder how John Prescott would get to parliament without the invention of the wheel.
• The Time Team dig has established that Stonehenge was built around the same time as Durrington Walls, another henge, or circular earthwork, two miles away.
  On what basis? Did they find the same brand of Neolithic antler pick at both sites?
• The two adjacent henges were part of the same complex, with Durrington Walls the location for a massive Neolithic village that housed the workers who built Stonehenge. Time Team suggests that this site housed up to 4,000 people, which would have made it the largest Neolithic settlement in north-west Europe - but one of the smallest music festivals of 2009.
  ... and future archeologists will establish Milton Keynes as the center of Neolithic Britain on the same basis.
• The programme indicates that the circle at Durrington Walls represented life and the land of the living, while Stonehenge, encircled by burial mounds, represented the land of the dead. The two were connected by the River Avon and the procession route from one to the other represented the transition from life to death.
  Ah yes - the River Avon winds its way through Durrington towards Stonehenge and Neolithic Brits invented the Tom Tom!
• At the winter solstice, people would gather at Durrington Walls with the cremated remains of loved ones who'd died during the year and drink, dance and eat pork before emptying the ashes into the Avon and making the pilgrimage to Stonehenge. As funerals go, it beats pineapple and cheese on sticks while listening to Westlife.
  They know this because (1) hundreds of Beaker 'urns' were found at Durrington, (2) cremations have only ever been found around Stonehenge, and (3) Islam was invented much later in the Middle East.
• It is thought that the stones used at Stonehenge were moved from Marlborough Downs, about 20 miles to the north. Suggestions that the man responsible for their transportation was called Eddieus Stobartus are unconfirmed.
  True, but the profession of the body in the ditch is known!
• Recent digs suggest that the area around the stone circle was used to bury the cremated remains of hundreds of people.
  No doubt this is based on the volume of ash excavated divided by the volume generated by one person following cremation.
• Other experts believe that it was a place for healing - just like Lourdes or Holby City Hospital.
  An interesting comparison considering both Holby City and the Stonehenge healing center are fictitious. But then again so is the entire Stonehenge Neolithic temple idea and contemporary Durrington Walls.

The sad part is the author of the article in the Daily Mail believes what he wrote (and thinks his quips are amusing).

The heritage of Stonehenge was given a twist earlier this week by the national media. The spiritual history of the grounds, from burials to healing space, is an oft-observed legend, but a report from a university professor saw hacks redub the site “Ravehenge”.

“It has undoubtedly been put to the press in an eye-catching way with the use of the word rave and all that sort of thing,” laughs Dave Batchelor, archaeologist at Stonehenge, reflecting on the report by Huddersfield University’s Dr Rupert Till.

In conclusions which were far from revelatory, Till used a computer model of Stonehenge and a concrete replica in America’s Washington State to recreate the sounds of the space 5,000 years ago, adjudging it to have possessed perfect acoustics.

The reasons why prehistoric communities built the site in around 2,500 BC are impossible to define, not least because it was created before the introduction of a written language. Batchelor knows it must have been an important plot for such an immense construction effort to have been designed on uneven land with stones transported hundreds of miles.

"It was obviously an incredibly special place, because why did they bring stones from south west Wales to that particular point?" he ponders. "If you go to Stonehenge it’s not on a flat piece of land, which made building difficult, so that piece of land must have been incredibly important to them to say ‘we’re doing it here’, and then you consider the amount of effort they must have undertaken to build it.

Well., it just goes to prove the old adage "ask a stupid question". Dave Batchelor "knows it must have been an important plot for such an immense construction effort to have been designed on uneven land with stones transported hundreds of miles". Everyone is so tied-up with the immense task of bringing the stones to the site, which only requires brute force however difficult the journey, they overlook the details like "how did they establish a datum by which the 30 stones in the lintel ring could have been placed perfectly level at a height of 4m (13ft) above sloping ground?". More to the point, why did the lintel ring have to be perfectly level in the first place? Forget the effort required, consider the technology. It just DID NOT exist in the late Neolithic period in northern Europe!

This type of study makes you wonder who's paying the bills. Professor Till has fallen into the old trap of seeing in Stonehenge a reflection of his own speciality. A truly scientific study would ask whether or not the arrangement of stones was ideal for the purpose. Are we to believe the illiterate and mechanically challenged people of the late Neolithic age in Britain (they left no written record and hadn't invented the wheel or pulley) were so acoustically aware as to have experimented with other 25+ ton rocks in various arrangements until they happened upon the design we see at Stonehenge? Why didn't they leave an evolutionary trail of other acoustically bestowed megalithic sites Prof? The answer is, the Neolithic people were as capable of designing a sound system as my grandmother. How the f**k do these people get airtime?

Archaeologists at the University of Sheffield have revealed new radiocarbon dates of human cremation burials at Stonehenge, which indicate that the monument was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3000 B.C. until well after the large stones went up around 2500 B.C.

The Sheffield archaeologists, Professor Mike Parker-Pearson and Professor Andrew Chamberlain, believe that the cremation burials could represent the natural deaths of a single elite family and its descendants, perhaps a ruling dynasty. One clue to this is the small number of burials in Stonehenge´s earliest phase, a number that grows larger in subsequent centuries, as offspring would have multiplied.

Many archaeologists previously believed that people had been buried at Stonehenge only between 2700 and 2600 B.C., before the large stones, known as sarsens, were put in place. The new dates provide strong clues about the original purpose of the monument and show that its use as a cemetery extended for more than 500 years.

The earliest cremation burial dated — a small pile of burned bones and teeth — came from one of the pits around Stonehenge´s edge known as the Aubrey Holes and dates to 3030-2880 B.C., roughly the time when Stonehenge´s ditch-and-bank monument was cut into Salisbury Plain.

The second burial, from the ditch surrounding Stonehenge, is that of an adult and dates to 2930-2870 B.C. The most recent cremation comes from the ditch´s northern side and was of a 25-year-old woman; it dates to 2570-2340 B.C., around the time the first arrangements of sarsen stones appeared at Stonehenge.

This is the first time any of the cremation burials from Stonehenge have been radiocarbon dated. The burials dated were excavated in the 1950s and have been kept at the nearby Salisbury Museum.

Another 49 cremation burials were dug up at Stonehenge during the 1920s, but all were put back in the ground because they were thought to be of no scientific value. Archaeologists estimate that up to 240 people were buried within Stonehenge, all as cremation deposits.

The latest findings are the result of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a collaboration between five UK universities, which is funded by the National Geographic Society and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with support from English Heritage. The project´s last digging season near Stonehenge saw excavation of houses at nearby Durrington Walls, the precise dating of Stonehenge´s cursus — the ditched enclosure nearly two miles long that has long puzzled archaeologists — and new discoveries about the "Cuckoo Stone" and the timber monuments south of Woodhenge.

Professor Mike Parker-Pearson, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, who leads the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project, said: "I don´t think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge — it was clearly a special place at that time. One has to assume anyone buried there had some good credentials.

"The people buried here must have been drawn from a very small and select living population. Archaeologists have long speculated about whether Stonehenge was put up by prehistoric chiefs — perhaps even ancient royalty — and the new results suggest that not only is this likely to have been the case but it also was the resting place of their mortal remains."

The earliest burials are from an Aubrey Hole (see below) which had been disturbed twice in the past to our knowledge. The second burial I presume is that of the male in the Ditch which was dated to between 2400-2140BC by the Ancient Monuments Laboratory, either that or the Sheffield team have ignored this particular burial because it doesn't agree with their plan for Stonehenge and found one that AML overlooked. I can't find anything on the third claim of a woman, possibly because this is the first time any of the cremations have been radiocarbon dated. What is really puzzling here is that only three results of the estimated 240 cremation deposits have been quoted. Does that mean there are more to be analyzed? How can anyone claim "The people buried here must have been drawn from a very small and select living population" on the basis of three results? And who's to say these burials aren't structured deposits - the remains of prestigious people kept aside for a few hundred years before being interned as burnt offerings. Does DNA analysis from the burials indicate some kind of blood line?

I think most archeologists agree there is no stratigraphical relationship between the Sarsen Stones at the center of the site and the surrounding Bank and Ditch - so the former could predate the latter added to which the radiocarbon evidence for the arrival of the stones on site is non-existent. So only if you find a skeleton buried beneath one of the stones can you say it was used as a burial site from its inception. I mean, that would be significant, wouldn't it - the stone marking the site of a grave and not some remains in a barbeque pit?

One last point. I thought the proper way to state a radiocarbon date was ± possible errors with a % confidence, you know guys, like the single determination from Aubrey Hole 32 in the AML report which was dated 3798+/-275BP and calibrated to 3020-1520 cal BC (95% confidence). In which Aubrey Hole did you find your burial?

Mike Parker-Pearson, professor of archaeology at Sheffield University, revived an earlier theory that the holes had held bluestones as the evidence of crushed and compacted chalk had been recorded in 1920 in three of the pits (1).

Professor Parker-Pearson said: "It's very exciting that we have evidence for stones right from its beginnings around 3000 BC. That's almost 500 years earlier than anyone had thought. These stones were very closely associated with the remains of the dead (2). There were cremation burials from inside the holes holding the stones and also the areas around them."

1. To be more precise, hard compressed chalk rubble had already been identified on the bases of Aubrey Hole (AH) 3 and AH5 by Col. Hawley who believed it had been deliberately returned and crushed under a stone or post. He found no such evidence at the base of AH7, which he had excavated three weeks earlier, or for that matter at the base of any of the other 29 Aubrey Holes he excavated between 1920 and 1924. Atkinson found a thin layer of compressed chalk at one side on the bottom of AH31 and on the bottom of AH32 which, unlike Hawley’s compressed rubble, had been rammed in as a wet pasty mass, and so was not considered a primary deposit. AH7 had been the subject of a secondary fill in prehistory and indeed a tertiary fill when the excess remains of most cremations recovered by Hawley were reinterred in 1935.

2. Associated as in almost all of the 32 Aubrey Holes excavated contained cremated remains whereas two (or three) show evidence of having held something, perhaps a stone but more likely a timber post because many also contained wood ash (the product of burning the posts in situ?).

It's a bloody good job this evidence isn't being presented at a murder trial.

Over the past decade, Dr Joshua Pollard from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology has co-directed two projects at the Neolithic monument complexes of Avebury and Stonehenge. The Longstones Project sought to understand the sequence and context of monument construction in the later Neolithic of the Avebury region, while the Stonehenge Riverside Project examined the local and regional context of Stonehenge as part of a more extensive ceremonial complex focused on the River Avon.

The henge monument of Avebury is one of the most significant Neolithic sites in the world. Constructed in several stages during the course of the third millennium BC – the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age – the massive earthwork enclosure and stone settings have had a complex history, both in their construction and destruction. Comparable monuments were built in both places at similar times, but were different in detail, almost as if the two places were in competition with each other, yet retaining their regional identity. The critical period around 2,500 BC, which saw the creation of the main megalithic settings at Stonehenge and Avebury, and the construction of colossal earthworks such as Durrington Walls and Silbury Hill, also coincides with an explosion of contact with continental Europe and the appearance of early metalwork.

But one of the most fascinating features of the Avebury work was the realisation that the megalithic constructions seemed to mark the end of the active engagement of people with these places. Timber and earthwork constructions of the period are often found to be associated with feasting debris – flint, pottery and animal bone – and evidence of people gathering periodically and living in these places. But once some of these sites were converted to stone, there is little evidence of people visiting. Instead, all that is found is the occasional human burial close to the stones. From fieldwork it has been possible to establish that the avenues of stones at Avebury could never have functioned as proper processional routes, which suggests the idea that they may have been constructed as paths for the ancestral dead, rather than for the living, as we tend to assume.

Comparable monuments ... were different in detail - like the postcode (zip code)? Surely the only thing linking Avebury and Stonehenge (apart from proximity) is Sarsen as a building material. Avebury is massive by comparison in every respect - area, bank, even the ditch has a totally different profile and construction. Stonehenge is precise by comparison - position and finish of stones, alignments (?), levels, joint techniques. The Oval and the Albert Hall are more comparable. Why is there no evidence to suggest the avenues of stones at Avebury could never have functioned as proper processional routes? Perhaps they indicated a route of a totally different nature.

From the title you'd be forgiven for thinking the Government had decided to allow the pot-smoking hippies to take over the site completely, but then it is Mike Pitts, author of the surreal 'Hengeworld' book. Now he's dug-up Aubrey Hole 7 (for the third time) only to discover a twice-overlooked piece of evidence suggesting it held a Bluestone as early as 3,000BC, just in time (sorry!) to totally discredit the work of arch-rivals Darvill and Wainwright, who had themselves confirmed a date for the arrival of the Bluestones as late as 2,300BC. The fact that Col. Hawley and Prof. R. J. C. Atkinson failed to realize the significance of the evidence, especially as they had reported the same effect in four other Aubrey Holes, is even more incredulous when you consider a total of 32 Aubrey Holes have been excavated with no prior evidence of them having held a Bluestone, only timber posts and cremated remains.

Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300BC - a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious edifice was built. The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring's original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought. The dating is the major finding from an excavation inside the henge by Profs Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright.
 

The duo found evidence suggesting Stonehenge was a centre of healing. Others have argued that the monument was a shrine to worship ancestors, or a calendar to mark the solstices.

"We told the world we were going to date Stonehenge. That was a risk, but I was always confident," said Professor Darvill.

But without a reliable carbon date for the construction of Stonehenge, it has been difficult to establish this, or any other, theory. Until now, the consensus view for the date of the first stone circle was anywhere between 2600BC and 2400BC. To cement the date once and for all, Professors Darvill and Wainwright were granted permission by English Heritage to excavate a patch of earth just 2.5m x 3.5m, in between the two circles of giant sarsen stones. The key was to get organic matter from the bluestone sockets. The dig unearthed about 100 pieces of organic material from the original bluestone sockets, now buried under the monument. Of these, 14 were selected to be sent for modern carbon dating, at Oxford University. The result - 2300BC - is the most reliable date yet for the erection of the first bluestones.

Among other key finds, the team uncovered organic material that indicates people inhabited the Stonehenge site as long ago as 7200BC - more than 3,500 years earlier than anything previously known. They also found that bluestone chippings outnumbered sarsen stone chippings by three to one - which Wainwright takes to be a sign of their value. Dave Batchelor, Stonehenge curator at English Heritage, said: "We are pleased that the professors' precision in targeting that small area of turf and their rigorous standards in archaeological excavations have produced such a rich collection of physical evidence.

Of course, it's neither a conclusive date for the arrival of the Bluestones on site nor the erection of the Sarsens, but one in a number of dates during which the site was worked in the past, as is the case in these latest of excavations. Did the Professors replace the soil as they had found it, or were the holes simply refilled with what remained after they had removed what they considered important? Let's not forget that Roman coin they unearthed. Only 14 of the 100 organic samples found were set aside for radiocarbon determination and it appears at least one of those returned a date of 7200BC. Once again objectivity goes out of the window - the later date is considered 'significant' because it fits in nicely with the perceived date of construction in the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age. None of the samples were excavated from beneath an existing Bluestone which would give a terminus post quem for its erection. Come on guys, be objective, this is supposed to be a scientific study. There is only one way to determine the date of construction of course - Optically Stimulated Luminance. Either that or a time-machine.
P.S. Aunty Beeb - if you are going to spend money on CAD models of the site the least you could do is get the relative heights of the stones correct!

Archaeologists have found traces of the 20ft-high timber fence that snaked almost two miles across Salisbury Plain and hid sacred ceremonies from unworthy locals more than 5,000 years ago. And experts believe that the time and energy taken to construct such a barrier, which has no other practical or defensive use, meant that it was designed to hide religious ceremonies from prying eyes. 'The palisade is an open structure which would not have been defensive and was too high to be practical for controlling livestock. It certainly wasn’t for hunting herded animals and so, like everything else in this ceremonial landscape, we have to believe it must have had a religious significance. The most plausible explanation is that it was built at huge cost to the community to screen the environs of Stonehenge from view. Basically, we think it was to keep the lower classes from seeing what exactly their rulers and the priestly class were doing.'
Once again the archeologists are at a loss to explain the need for such a barrier, so it must be ceremonial. However, if the purpose was to shield the site from view we could expect to see a corridor of two parallel fences on the approach to Stonehenge opening into a very wide structure encircling the site, so why not accept they don't know what it was for and leave it at that? And haven't we had the same excuse for the high earthwork bank and rings of stones at Stonehenge - to restrict view to the prying public? At an estimated 20ft it would have been three times the height required to shield the site from public view! Instead it is slightly taller than the Sarsen circle, which is a clue to its actual purpose in shielding the site from the wind blowing over the surface of a water-filled henge. As soon as they release the details I'll add it to the 3D models.

In the Blue Corner we have Prof. Parker-Pearson supported by National Geographic and in the Red Corner we have Profs. Darvill and Wainwright supported by BBC Timewatch/Smithsonian. Yes it promises to be the archeological equivalent of a "rumble in the jungle" - or will it be just another storm in a teacup as the egg-heads do battle over whether Stonehenge was a mortuary or hospital. Only time will tell ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The meaning of Stonehenge -- the fascinating prehistoric monument in Great Britain believed to be erected from 3000 BC to 1600 BC -- is explained as never before in an all-new documentary that utilizes evidence from a recent Smithsonian Channel(TM)/BBC Timewatch-sponsored dig within the inner circle -- the first dig to be allowed in nearly 50 years.
With evidence and conclusions contrary to those posited in June news accounts and elsewhere, British archaeologists Prof. Timothy Darvill of the University of Bournemoth and Prof. Geoffrey Wainwright, President of the Society of Antiquaries -- both world-renowned experts on Stonehenge -- sharethe conclusions they have reached in STONEHENGE DECIPHERED, premiering Saturday, September 27 (2008) at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel. The documentary will premiere in the U.K. on the same day as part of the BBC Timewatch series. In addition, an article about the program will appear on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine's October issue and on Smithsonian.com, concurrent with the film's premiere on Smithsonian Channel.
From late March to mid-April of this year, the dig, part of the U.K.'s Bluestone Project, was filmed by Smithsonian Channel and BBC Timewatch under the supervision of English Heritage, which maintains the UNESCO World Heritage Site. So far, all conclusions about why Stonehenge was built, and what it was for, have remained under wraps, but the professors will break their silence at a press conference in the U.K. tentatively scheduled for September 22. Those associated with the project will only say that new carbon dating establishes the most precise date ever for Stonehenge, and that the recent evidence shows that most earlier explanations for the purpose of Stonehenge were focused on the wrong stones. The secret to Stonehenge, they believe, lies not in the huge, iconic sarcen stones, but in the monument's smaller bluestone rocks, which were carried over 150 miles in a feat of engineering that has never been fully explained, from the Preseli Hills in Wales, an area reputed to be magical, to the Stonehenge site.
One way to find the true age of the rocks would be to allow OSL and Chlorine-36 dating of actual stones on site (click here for more info), not the radiocarbon dating of grains of corn found during a dig. YOU CAN'T RADIOCARBON DATE STONE GUYS! Why won't English Heritage give permission to date the stones? Perhaps they think once solved the site won't attract as many visitors.
 

Have you ever touched one of the stones beyond the roped-off area at Stonehenge? Do you know anyone who has? Why are English Heritage so reluctant to let anyone, even archeologists into the inner sanctum? The truth is out there ....

Why is Stonehenge the most famous prehistoric monument in the world? A large part of the answer lies in the domination of modernity by Western nations, and the supremacy of Britain among them, both in military and economic terms, as that modernity was being developed. In that sense Stonehenge was simply the top antiquity of the top nation at a critical moment in history. Situation helped its fame, as it is set in the heartland of the realm. Indeed, for almost 200 years it has been right next to the London-to-Exeter highway, a position which is now its greatest liability as the stranglehold of main roads around it has so far prevented any redevelopment of the site to make it more attractive and appropriate for visitors. Just as important, however, has been the fact that Stonehenge simply looks like nothing else: no other ancient structure in Europe has its trademark form, of a freestanding pattern of door-jamb-and-lintel settings composed of megaliths. It is clearly the work of human hands, but has an unusually primordial and organic appearance, of mighty boulders smoothed, shaped and fitted together in such a way as to enhance their natural power as well as to create a building. As such, it has attracted curiosity and admiration ever since the twelfth century, and probably for much longer.

Since 1900, archaeology has made one considerable contribution to an understanding of Stonehenge: to establish firmly that it was a creation of the late Neolithic. The stones that we see now were mostly erected in a series of still hazily understood phases between about 2600 and 2000 bce, within a much older earthwork that once probably contained a timber circle. Other than that, we are still left with a conclusion which can be surmised without the aid of excavation: that it was the work of a bunch of reckless, megalomaniac, elitist carpenters. They were clearly carpenters because they worked stone with techniques much more appropriate to wood, such as mortise-and-tenon joints. They were megalomaniac to have tried that at all, and even more so in their choice of stone. It is very rare to find a prehistoric monument in Britain made of large stones that were obtained from more than five miles away. The huge sandstone uprights and lintels of Stonehenge were dragged about twenty miles, while the smaller but still substantial blocks called the Altar Stone and the bluestones were obtained from more than a hundred miles further than that; as the crow flies and not as the person tugs, paddles and sails. Such an enterprise is unique in the British prehistoric record, and may be in Europe. ... Finally, they were elitist because, unlike the hundreds of other stone circles of Neolithic Britain, Stonehenge was constructed as a series of screens, to conceal the activities of what could only have been a relatively small number of people (or deities or spirits) in the centre.

So, Stonehenge looks like nothing else; is very rare in the origin of material; represents a unique enterprise in the British prehistoric record; is unlike the hundreds of other stone circles of Neolithic Britain; and yet is firmly established in the late [British] Neolithic. Incredible (Ed.).

Liverpool, UK - 21 May 2008: Archaeologists at the University of Liverpool are investigating whether Stonehenge could have been designed using no more than simple numeracy, a piece of rope and the sun's shadow.

The complex design of Stonehenge - erected in Wiltshire nearly 5,000 years ago - has mystified archaeologists, engineers and astronomers for years and researchers are still unclear as to how such a structure could have been built by a preliterate culture.

Archaeologists at the University, together with pupils from Northcote Primary School in Walton, will test the theory and attempt to mark out the extant ground plan of Stonehenge, demonstrating how it can be achieved with just lengths of rope, the sun’s shadow and the simplest form of numeracy – finger counting. The team will follow the principle of Occam’s Razor – the notion that the simpler the theorised process, the more likely it is to be correct.

John Hill, a PhD student at the University’s School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, said: “For years scholars have claimed that the prehistoric people who built Stonehenge possessed advanced knowledge of mathematics, geometry and astronomy but with the help of primary school pupils we will lay out the monument’s design using only the most basic of techniques.

“This experiment will demonstrate how Stonehenge could have been designed by people with no greater scientific or mathematical ability than being able to count with their fingers. We are confident of using this form of math to create a full-scale replica of the ground plan. We’ll also show how the stones were positioned.

“This is the first attempt in modern research to plot out the architectural design of Stonehenge in this way. We believe that rope, shadows and basic counting were the key constituents of the Stone Age toolbox. For this reason there will be no sophisticated surveying equipment or maps - we’re really going back to basics, using only the methods available to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (3000-1800BC) people.”

Let's define the parameters for this scientific experiment. The pupils from Northcote Primary, without any help from John Hill, PhD, will attempt to recreate the geometry of Stonehenge using nothing more than rudimentary mathematics. Rubbish. This is yet another experiment to demonstrate how one aspect of Stonehenge could have been achieved by people from the late Neolithic who (the archeologists admit) lacked the math, geometry or communication skills for such a project. Good. The result can only show contemporary timber and stone circles to be nothing more than poor copies of Stonehenge created by people with as much knowledge as today's primary schoolchildren.

Stonehenge stood as giant tombstones to the dead for centuries—perhaps marking the cemetery of a ruling prehistoric dynasty—new radiocarbon dating suggests. The site appears to have been intended as a cemetery from the very start, around 5,000 years ago—centuries before the giant sandstone blocks were erected—the new study says. New analysis of ancient human remains show that people were buried at the southern England site from about 3000 B.C. until after the first large stones were raised around 2500 B.C. "This is really exciting, because it shows that Stonehenge, from its beginning to its zenith, is being used as a place to physically put the remains of the dead," said Mike Parker Pearson of England's University of Sheffield. "It's something that we just didn't appreciate until now." Parker Pearson heads the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a seven-year archaeological investigation of the Stonehenge area, supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

Only those with no prior interest in Stonehenge can find this documentary in any way revealing. Completely lacking in hard evidence and made with more than the usual measure of scientific license, for the rest of us (and I'm sure more than one archeologist would agree) this simply is one man's self-indulgence. The discovery of a settlement at Durrington Walls would suggest use of Stonehenge for ceremonial purposes but that does not mean the people living at Durrington had any more to do with the construction of Stonehenge than do the people of modern day West Amesbury. To the best of my knowledge there have been no radiocarbon datable remains found within the perimeter of the site in recent years, so any new radiocarbon dating must be from the areas excavated around Durrington and the Cursus. It should also be noted that, unless there is proof of a person dying in situ, a skeleton can only be considered a structured deposit, i.e. confirmation of activity after the date of death and not the date of construction. There is no way of knowing for sure that the Sarsen stones came from Marlborough and certainly nothing to say how they were moved, prepared or erected. Neither is there any way of knowing the beliefs of a people for which there is no historical record. For example, on what does Parker-Pearson base his analysis of events following the crushing of a worker? As Parker-Pearson confesses at the start of the documentary, his theory hangs on the words of a native from Madagascar who, on seeing Stonehenge for the first time, stated, "This is all for the ancestors". Perhaps that's true of his island whose inhabitants still erect stones to their dead, after all, we still place headstones to our own, but Stonehenge is Westminster Cathedral by comparison. I really don't know why National Geographic found it necessary to air (fund) this documentary when they could have achieved as much with a Donald Sutherland narration of the movie 10,000BC.

What they are looking for is evidence for the dating of the arrival of the bluestones at Stonehenge. They had no luck - though perhaps even better, they did find some carbonized grains. These are, at present, with the laboratory to see if they are big enough to provide a date; if so, they will provide excellent evidence. However, the most surprising discoveries so far have been Roman. In a small pit containing a small bluestone in the corner of the trench, itself cut into the main socket of one of the uprights, they found a Roman coin. Even more alarming was the excavation of the large pit in the centre of the excavation. Near the bottom they found a very small piece of Roman pottery – in fact, at the end of the dig, they found another Roman coin at the bottom of the pit. Was there a major re-ordering of the site in the Roman period? Were the Romans rather like English Heritage? When they came to Stonehenge, did they find a somewhat decrepit monument in need of tender loving care, and decide to send along a gang to tidy it up and pay due respects to whatever gods were originally worshipped there? If so, one wonders just how extensive this tidying up was, and how much of the existing plan of Stonehenge is due to Roman interference?

The first excavation inside the ring at Stonehenge in more than four decades gets under way on Monday. The two-week dig will try to establish, once and for all, some precise dating for the creation of the monument. [Professors] Darvill and Wainwright hope the dig will demonstrate such beliefs also lay behind the creation of Stonehenge, by showing that the make-up of the original floor of the sacred circle at the monument is dominated by bluestone chippings that were purposely placed there.

Great sites rarely come much greater than Silbury Hill - at least in terms of scale. This giant Neolithic tumulus near Avebury, the largest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe, has been a source of observation, speculation and wishful thinking for hundreds if not thousands of years. The ditch surrounding Silbury Hill is often considered a mere quarry from which the mound material was derived. However, its circular nature, and the regularity of its rectangular western extension, indicate that it served more than a functional purpose.

Archaeologists have come to see that ditches, even massive ditches around henges or hillforts, need not always be just utilitarian structures but may have had a metaphysical function too - for example, to keep evil spirits at bay. The rectangular extension at Silbury, if waterfilled, would have served as a cistern or reservoir. Elsewhere in the world, cisterns have often been the focus of ritual and ceremony. The mirror-like quality of standing water may have had symbolic implications too. Given archaeologists' fascination with shamanism, it is significant that mirrors are considered symbols of shamanic ceremony and power.

For just three days in early summer 2001, as the water-filled ditch dried out, a huge vegetation mark, straight-edged and some 10m wide, appeared to extend across the ditch floor for some 50m towards the mound. Its orientation, however, was curious, running diagonally across the ditch extension towards a position off-centre of the mound. The feature definitely seems man-made. It may be that the hill's Neolithic builders dug a deeper channel here to collect water from local springs and bring it to the deep ditch encircling the mound.