Significant Orkney Temple Predates Stonehenge

Artist's conception of a section of the Ness of Brodgar.

A 5000-year-old temple in Orkney, at the northern tip of Britain, could be more important than Stonehenge, some archaeologists are saying. Known as the Ness of Brodgar, it may replace Stonehenge as the center of Neolithic culture.

So far, the remains of 14 Stone Age buildings have been excavated, but thermal geophysics technology has revealed that there are 100 altogether, forming a kind of temple precinct. The site also contains Britain’s earliest known wall paintings.

“The excavation of a vast network of buildings on Orkney is allowing us to recreate an entire Stone Age world,” according to Neil Oliver. “It’s opening a window onto the mysteries of Neolithic religion.” 

Experts believe that the site will give us insights into what Neolithic people believed about the world and the universe. 

Some parts of the temple are 800 years older than Stonehenge, which lies 500 miles to the south in Wiltshire. The site is very close to the Ring of Brodgar stone circle and the standing stones of Stenness, and is surrounded by a wall believed to have been 10-feet high.

Archaeologists found red zigzag lines on some of the buildings’ inner walls that they believe is Stone Age art – the oldest ever found. So far only around 10 per cent of the site has been examined – and it could take decades to uncover and analyse everything there. 

Click here for the article and more photos.

Stonehenge Site Important Even Before Stones

Newly unearthed evidence points to the Stonehenge area in England being an important site for Stone Age people thousands of years before the famous monolithic stones were erected.

A team of student archaeologists has uncovered a huge cache of artifacts belonging to hunter-gatherers from the middle of the Stone Age, including the remains of a gargantuan Mesolithic-era feast, which took place close to Stonehenge.The site has also yielded what are believed to be the oldest carved figurines yet found in the UK, indicating a continuity of human presence in what seems to have been a sacred spot for thousands of years.

According to the Independent:

With the tools were animal remains, including what Jacques and his team thought was a cow’s tooth, which they sent away for radiocarbon dating. The result was an astonishingly early date of around 6250 BC, firmly in the Mesolithic period and more than 3,000 years before construction on Stonehenge began. Further excavations ensued and, by the end of September 2011, the team had uncovered a rare Mesolithic hoard of more than 5,500 worked flints and tools from just two small trenches 35m away from each other. 

As well as the tools and tool production debris, large quantities of burnt flint were found, indicating a fire, and more than 200 cooked animal bones, which came not from a cow, but from at least one aurochs – a gigantic creature resembling a buffalo that is now extinct.

Archeologists are linking the recent finds to the mysterious Stonehenge “totem poles,” three colossal Mesolithic post holes found during the excavation of the Stonehenge car park some years ago ~ another clue that the area was important to people in the Mesolithic era.

Click here for the complete article.

Origin of More Stonehenge Rocks is Located

19th Century engraving of Stonehenge's monoliths.

Scientists believe they have located the origin of a number of the famous bluestone monoliths forming the inner circle and horseshoe configurations at Stonehenge.

According to Culture 24:

One type of bluestone, the so-called spotted dolerite, was convincingly traced to the Mynydd Preseli area of North Pembrokeshire in the 1920s, but the origins of many of the others have remained a mystery. Now geologists at the museum in Cardiff believe they have identified the source of one of the rhyolite types.

A team led by Keeper of Geology Dr Richard Bevins has been using “standard petrographical techniques” and “laser ablation induction coupled mass spectrometry” on samples from Stonehenge and Pembrokeshire.

Their findings, which involve the application of zircon chemistry as a new tool for “provenancing rhyolitic lithics,” point to a source for the stones in an area north of the Mynydd Preseli range, in the vicinity of Pont Saeson.

The results may also provide some new clues about how and why the stones were transported to the Stonehenge area.

“It has been argued that humans transported the spotted dolerites from the high ground of Mynydd Preseli down to the coast at Milford Haven and then rafted them up the Bristol Channel and up the River Avon to the Stonehenge area,” explained Dr Bevins. “However, the outcome of our research questions that route, as it is unlikely that they would have transported the Pont Saeson stones up slope and over Mynydd Preseli to Milford Haven.”

Click here for the article.

More Megalith Clues Point to Ritual Animal Killings

Some of the few megaliths still standing at Dartmoor.

Nine megaliths in a remote part of Dartmoor, England, may shed light on the meaning behind prehistoric stone megaliths such as Stonehenge. The Dartmoor stones were recently carbon-dated to around 3500 BC, and likely predate Stonehenge. Both sites feature standing stones aligned to mark the rising of the midsummer sun and the setting of the midwinter sun.

Archaeologist Mike Pitts says that "huge quantities of barbecued juvenile pig bones" were found near Stonehenge, indicating that the animals were born in the spring and killed not far from the site "for pork feasting" in midwinter.

According to Discovery News:

"The general feeling is that the sun was symbolizing or marking the occasion, rather than being the ritual focus itself, so it probably was not sun worship," added Pitts, who is author of the book "Hengeworld" and is one of the leading experts on British megaliths. This feasting was not just a meaningless pork party, and might have been more akin to a post-funeral wake today. 

Pitts believes the "solstice alignment phenomenon perhaps has something to do with death." As he explains it, the setting sun and shorter days of winter would have represented the passage into the darkness of the underworld, and the reverse as the days start to lengthen again.

"At Stonehenge," he continued, "the dark navy-colored bluestones may themselves represent ancestors or spirits from the underworld, while the big orangey-pink (before weathering) sarsens could reflect summer and light."

The Dartmoor megaliths are now lying flat. Their toppling has helped historians, however, since peat above and the below the stones permitted the carbon dating, extremely rare for such monuments.

Click here for the Discovery News article.

Bronze Age Timber Ritual Site Found in Ireland

Archaeologists unearth the remains of the timber circles.

Remains of a 4,000-year-old ritual circle in Tyrone County, Northern Ireland, are being deemed especially rare because the site was made of timber and not stone.

“The specific use of timber circles is not well understood but it is thought that they were used as ritual sites, perhaps for feasting or for commemorating the dead," archaeologist Kirsty Dingwall told the BBC. She said radiocarbon dating had confirmed that the site dates to the middle of the third millennium BC.

She said it was "made up of two concentric rings of timbers focussed on a central area, which appear to have replaced an earlier series of large pits".

“It had a large monumental porch on one side with a line of substantial timbers along the front, which would have formed an impressive façade for anyone approaching the circle,” she added. "The outer ring of the double circle comprised pits holding four posts in a square arrangement, which would themselves have pinned sections of wattle or planked walling in place."

"As a result, we can be fairly certain that it would not be possible to see into the centre of the circle from the outside, unlike other timber circles elsewhere in the British Isles, or at stone circles such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire or Callanish in Scotland, where an observer would have had glimpses of the activity.

“As timber circles are generally thought to have some form of ritual importance, the issue of restricting the views of what was happening inside the circle is an interesting one," Dingwall said.

Click here for the complete BBC article.

Crop Circle Pattern Reveals Huge Bronze Age Site

Underground remains of the Bronze Age burial complex are etched into the crops about 15 miles from Stonehenge.

A group of farmland patterns resembling crop circles in southern England have led to discovery of a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex a thousand years older than Stonehenge.

The site includes remains of wooden temples and two massive 6,000-year-old tombs that are among "Britain's first architecture," according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead of Kingston University in London. She said for such a site to have lain hidden for so long is "completely amazing."

Archaeologist Joshua Pollard agreed. The discovery is "remarkable," he said, given the decades of intense archaeological attention to the greater Stonehenge region. "I think everybody assumed such monument complexes were known about or had already been discovered," he told National Geographic.

At the 500-acre (200-hectare) site, outlines of the structures were spotted "etched" into farmland near the village of Damerham, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge. Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles" are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth.

The central features are two great tombs topped by massive mounds called long barrows. The larger of the two tombs is 70 meters (230 feet) long. Such oblong burial mounds are very rare finds, and are the country's earliest known architectural form, Wickstead said. The last full-scale long barrow excavation was in the 1950s.

Click here for the National Geographic article.

Click here for previous post on the finding.

Ancient Tombs Found Near Stonehenge

Archeologists have discovered two 6,000-year-old tombs near Stonehenge. The Neolithic site had gone unnoticed under farmland despite being just 15 miles from the famous monoliths.

The tombs already are considered to be among the oldest monuments to have been found in Britain. Archaeologists say they will hold valuable clues about how people lived at the time and what their environment was like.

“It’s one of the most famous prehistoric landscapes, a Mecca for prehistorians, and you would have thought the archaeological world would have gone over it with a fine tooth comb,” Helen Wickstead, the Kingston University archaeologist leading the project, told the London Times.

From examining similar sites, archaeologists know that complex burial rituals were common at the time. Typically bodies would be left in the open air until the flesh had decayed, leaving only a skeleton. Then bones were put in special arrangements in the tombs.

“The tombs were like bone homes for important people in the community,” Wickstead said.

Click here for the complete Times Online article.

Wooden Version of Stonehenge Found in Ireland

Artist's conception of the Stonehenge-like sacred monument in Ireland.

Archaeologists in Ireland have unearthed a mammoth wooden version of Stonehenge. It appears to have been a major structure at the ancient seat of the Irish high kings in the Hill of Tara in County Meath.

Archaeologist Joe Fenwick said a laser beam had been used to scan the ground surface to create a three-dimensional map of the site, revealing more than 30 monuments around Tara. Using another technique ~ described as taking an X-ray through the hillside ~ archaeologists discovered a ditch stretching six meters wide and three meters deep in the bedrock. The ditch, circling the Mound of the Hostages passage tomb, separated the outside world from the ceremonial center of Tara.

“The Hill of Tara had enormous ritual significance over the course of 5,000 to 6,000 years, so it's not surprising that you get monuments of the scale of the ditch pit circle," Fenwick says.

Click here for the Irish Independent article.

Burial Site Intent Again Confirmed

Digital depiction of Stoneghenge showing monoliths' configuration.

With all of the recent archaeological activity ~ including new theories ~ regarding England’s famed Stonehenge, TIME magazine on Friday published a brief compendium of the various beliefs regarding the site’s origins and purpose. Here is TIME’s conclusion:

The current consensus (if such a thing even exists) is that Stonehenge was used as a burial site. Archaeologists have found skeletal remains at the site dated to a 500-year period beginning in 3000 B.C. One dubbed the site a "domain of the dead" and say the bodies found likely belong to a select group of elite ancient people. It's the most solid evidence yet, but it doesn't preclude Stonehenge having a dual purpose as an astrological calendar or as a religious site. The only thing certain is that as the sun rises and sets to mark another equinox, another day will pass with the complete answer of the site's origins still firmly lodged in the past. Perhaps that's how it's meant to be.

Click here for the complete TIME magazine article.

Stonehenge Link to Armenia?

A section of a circle of monoliths at Carahunge.

There are possible Neolithic connections between Carahunge ~ a large collection of uprighted stones near Sisan, Armenia ~ and England’s famed Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain.

Carahunge ~ meaning "speaking stones" ~ is located 200 km from the Armenian capital Yerevan, near a town called Sisian. There are over 200 stones on the seven-hectare site and many have smooth angled holes in them, directed at different points in the sky, leading scientists to believe it may be the world’s oldest observatory, dating back 7,500 years.

A carving found on rocks near Lake Sevan shows that Neolithic Armenians knew the world was round, they could accurately measure latitude and were already skilled in astronomy, archaeology and engineering. One theory is that the earliest population of Britain, who perhaps came from Armenia, brought the ideas of Carahunge with them and played a role in the creation of Stonehenge and other European sites.

Click here for the complete Salisbury Journal article.

Mystery Surrounds 1,000-Year Lapse in Rites

Some of the standing stones marking Kilmartin Glen's ancient ceremonial site.

Archaeologists are having trouble accounting for a mysterious millennium-long absence of activity at an ancient Scots religious site.

Kilmartin Glen is one of the most important Neolithic sites in Europe, predating both the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Hunter-gatherer tribes practiced sacred rites there from 3700 BC or even earlier, to about 1100 BC. It contains at least 350 ancient monuments, including burial cairns, rock carvings and standing stones in addition to the spectacular remains of the fortress at Dunadd, capital of the kingdom of Dalriada.

But archaeologists have identified a period of almost 1,000 years in which no monuments were erected and the population virtually disappeared. There is some speculation that a dramatic climate change may have affected the area’s inhabitants.

“Kilmartin Glen is one of the richest archaeological areas in Scotland, with a very high concentration of ritual sites.” Alison Sheridan, head of early prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, told the Times of London this week. “It was a place for ceremony, for burying people, and observing the movements of the Sun and the Moon.”

“We are not too certain what happened between 1100 BC and 200 BC,” Sheridan told the Times. “A hoard of swords has been found and a few artifacts buried as gifts to the gods in the late Bronze Age between 1000 and 750 BC. But there are few structures and no settlements. When you start getting settlements again around 200BC they are in little fortified settlements.

“It was no longer a happy valley, and people raided each other,” she said.

Click here for the London Times Online article.

Photo above shows Neolithic carvings at Kilmartin Glen.

Findings Point to Stonehenge as Healing Center

Stonehenge, with its huge monoliths erected in a mysterious circle, was a Lourdes-style Stone Age healing center revered for its ability to cure the sick, according to new archaeological findings.

"It could have been a temple, even as it was a healing center," archaeologist Timothy Darvill said today as he and fellow archaeologist Geoffrey Wainwright disclosed some findings of recent investigations in and around Stonehenge.

The archaeologists managed to date the construction of the stone monument to about 2300 BC, a couple of centuries younger than was previously thought, according to the Associated Press. It was at that time that bluestones — a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite — were shipped by hand or by raft from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, to create the inner circle of Stonehenge.

Wainwright and Darvill said the content of graves scattered around the monument and the ancient chipping of its rocks to produce amulets indicated that Stonehenge was the primeval equivalent of Lourdes, the French shrine venerated for its supposed ability to cure the sick.
An unusual number of skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury. Analysis of their teeth showed that about half were from outside the Stonehenge area.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries. He pointed out that experts near Stonehenge have found two skulls that showed evidence of primitive surgery, some of just a few known cases of operations in prehistoric Britain.

Also found near Stonehenge was the body of a man known as the Amesbury Archer, who had a damaged skull and badly hurt knee and died around the time the stones were being installed. Analysis of the Archer's bones showed he was from the Alps.

The scientists announced their findings Monday, ahead of a documentary due to air on the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel on Saturday, September 27.

Click here for the Associated Press article.

Click here for a BBC article and 2-minute video on the findings.

For more details, click here for The Guardian article.

Archaeology students sift through earth at Stonehenge to find fragments of bluestone.

Archaeologists Tim Darvill, left, and Geoffrey Wainwright with fragments of bluestones at their press conference today at the Society of Antiquaries of in London.