Feature: British Archaeology 102, September/October 2008

Confused by all the press stories, television films and web features about the new excavations at Stonehenge? Mike Pitts (who was confused too) read all the technical stuff so you don't have to.

"It was a dream start for the team at 9.30am", wrote Simon Mackie in his web diary for BBC Timewatch, "when archaeology student Chris Watkins spotted a finely patterned piece of Beaker pottery".

Welcome to the modern world of Stonehenge archaeology. In contrast to practice in the last century, archaeologists now encourage interest. Sponsors such as the BBC and the National Geographic Society take excavations to huge audiences. Search patterns on Google (below) confirm a strong public interest in excavation. And there really have been important new excavation and fieldwork: in a small way at Stonehenge itself, and on an unprecedented scale in the wider landscape. While analysis and writing up lie ahead (and digging is about to restart as this magazine is published), it is clear that the way we think about Stonehenge and the people who built it is changing.

THE PRESS EFFECT: Redrawn from a graph created at www.google.com/trends, this diagram shows relative search scores (upper line, 1 is average) and the number of times Stonehenge has appeared in Google News stories (lower, unscaled) since January 2004. Searches peak at the time of summer solstice (yellow discs). Three additional peaks, particularly clear in the news line, link to excavation press releases. The first, and strongest (at double the average search traffic: top line), occurred when the National Geographic Society launched the story of the Durrington Walls "village" on January 30 2007. The highest peak in 2008 was also caused by a NGS media push (May 29). The story was weaker (new dates for the Stonehenge cremations), but NGS also trailed a television film and a cover story in its magazine. The third peak (early April) occurred during excavation inside the stones, promoted by English Heritage and the BBC in advance of an autumn television broadcast.

Over two weeks this April, Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright (Bournemouth University) excavated a small trench between the sarsen circle and the ring of bluestones it encloses, where an earlier bluestone structure once stood. They were seeking to date the arrival of these Welsh stones at Stonehenge: one or more events that probably occurred between 3000 and 2500BC.

Chris Watkins found his sherd on the third day of the dig. Beakers are loaded artefacts for Stonehenge. During its main constructional history (c3000–1900BC) one of two distinctive types of pottery was in use, and for much of the time both. The earlier of these is known as Grooved Ware, a crudely decorated native ceramic in bucket shapes; it is found at late neolithic ritual and domestic sites. The other is Beaker pottery, a finer European-inspired ware in waisted forms, foundmost visibly in graves. The relative significance of these styles has long been debated, but whether for reasons of inferred chronology, ethnicity or activity, their presence at Stonehenge is critical. If it had come from a sealed ancient context, that Beaker sherd would have been a highly significant find.

It did not. It lay in earth replaced by Richard Atkinson in 1964, after his re-excavation of a trench first opened by William Hawley 40 years before. Stonehenge's two most important 20th century excavators disturbed the sherd, and threw it back unseen.

Our understanding of Stonehenge's complex history owes much to a framework created in the 1950s. It has been tinkered with, but key elements (such as the existence of three main phases) remain. It is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the details of this phasing and the structures it entails are questionable. In 1995, English Heritage published a superb study (Stonehenge in its Landscape: 20th Century Excavations), written mostly by Ros Cleal, Karen Walker and Rebecca Montague, that tardily brought all the 20th century Stonehenge excavations into the public domain. But the "official" monument history survived. There was pressure on all of us to conform. Darvill and Wainwright's dig, where it seems they may not have found what they had expected to see, may finally put to rest the old story and allow us tomove on. And Mackie's Beaker, the great find missed by the archaeologists who created the 20th century Stonehenge, will symbolise that moment of release. So what have we learnt since 1995?

The Riverside Project

Most – but not all – of the new information has come from the Stonehenge Riverside Project (the source of everything here unless otherwise stated). Probably the largest university-based archaeological field project ever seen in this country, it began in 2003 and culminates this summer with its most ambitious field season. Its directors, Mike Parker Pearson (Sheffield), Joshua Pollard (Bristol), Colin Richards and Julian Thomas (Manchester), Christopher Tilley (UCL) and Kate Welham (Bournemouth), each have their own interests. Aided by press stories spun by the different universities and sponsors, this has given the project a fragmented appearance. Yet such is the range of sites and ideas being investigated – all raised by the world heritage site research agenda prepared as the Riverside Project was shaping up – this is also a function of scale and ambition. Whether too much has been attempted too fast will be seen; the sheer quantity of reports already published encourages the belief that we will benefit from a unique body of high quality information and thought, to be valued for generations.

The Cursus

A key outcome of the 1995 study was a radiocarbon chronology for Stonehenge. It was a shock to see the monument's story extended to cover some 1,500 years (with the empty pits known as the Y and Z Holes loosely dated to 2000–1500BC) and move back fromthe bronze age into the neolithic; excitingly, this meant the stones could have been contemporary with the timber rings at nearby Durrington Walls. There were still major undated events, however, and the new dates now emerging from around the world heritage site, and most recently from Stonehenge itself, are highly significant. The oldest of these is from the larger Cursus.

There are two of these enigmatic monuments near Stonehenge, earthworks found throughout Britain that mark out long, rectangular spaces, perhaps processional or ritual ways. The smaller Stonehenge cursus has radiocarbon dates placing it before the appearance of Stonehenge, at around 3650–2900BC. But despite its significance, and its being the first to have been recognised (by William Stukeley, coining the name in the early 18th century), the larger had never been satisfactorily dated. Last year a tine from an antler pick was found by Julian Thomas at the bottom of the ditch in the west terminal: it has been dated to 3630–3370BC.

Monoliths

West of Woodhenge is a lone, recumbent sarsen known as the Cuckoo Stone. Excavation revealed a hole in the chalkmatching the stone's shape, suggesting it had been removed from its natural position, and stood on end. Colin Richards had previously identified the same sequence across the river Avon at Bulford, where the Torstone (identified in 2005, now dragged to the field edge) had been taken from its natural hollow and made into a standing stone.

The size and quantity of these natural sarsens on Salisbury Plain seem inadequate to the provision of most of the Stonehenge sarsens, which likely came from the Marlborough Downs 30kmto the north. But it may be that some of those megaliths – the only undressed ones, perhaps, the four Station Stones and the Heelstone – were also local. The huge size of the pit beside the Heelstone (partially excavated by both myself and Atkinson), which once held a large standing stone, could be accounted for in that way. The most economic explanation would be that a large sarsen lay part buried in the chalk (the Heelstone). The presence of a uniquely large natural stone at this point could have been one factor in the original siting of the Stonehenge monument, and perhaps even of the row of mesolithic tree boles erected thousands of years before, 100m to the north-west.

Dating Stonehenge

Published stratigraphy from earlier excavations at Stonehenge has been reinterpreted to offer alternative contexts for two 1995 radiocarbon dates. The sarsen monument – circle pit's apparently elongated form lies parallel to natural stripes); was excavated and stood on end (stone 97), and later moved to the east (the and trilithons – is dated to 2600–2400BC (with only two samples), rather than the previously accepted c2400–2200BC (Antiquity, Sep 2007).

Eight human bone items from earlier Stonehenge excavations have been newly radiocarbon dated. Previously only the two surviving complete skeletons from the site had been dated: a flint-tipped arrow-felled man in the ditch (2400–2140BC), and the beheaded Anglo-Saxon man I relocated in the Natural History Museum in 1999 (recently revised to AD660–890).

Three of the new dates – corroborating the evidence for continuing interest in the monument for many generations after the last stone was erected – are middle bronze age, iron age and late Roman. Two pieces of human skull were dated to 2890–2620BC and 2880–2570BC: the first apparent indication that any unburnt human remains were buried at the site before the sarsens were erected.

Since the 1920s excavations, it has been known that groups of ash and cremated bone were buried at the site. About 50 have been recorded, making Stonehenge the largest known prehistoric cremation cemetery. Yet concerned that we were all missing the significance of these burials, I made a guess in Hengeworld (Century, 2nd ed 2001) that there might have been a total of 240 (much of the site remains unexcavated); and I noted that though conventionally dated to phase 2 (between the early earthwork and Aubrey Holes, and the appearance of the first stones), there was no direct evidence for their age.

Now we have three dates that seem to imply cremation burial occurring through much of Stonehenge's history: one from an Aubrey Hole (3030–2890BC, supporting the assumption that this ring of undated pits is contemporary with the ditch, well-dated to 3005–2925BC); and two from the ditch (2930–2870BC and 2470–2300BC). If those 240 burials occurred over at least five centuries, then most people living nearby were not buried there. In a return to Colin Renfrew's 35-year-old and long unfashionable idea of a "hierarchically ordered" society behind Stonehenge, Parker Pearson has suggested an "elite dynasty of rulers".

Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls (blue dots) in 2007, looking north. Red boxes highlight excavations. Most of the houses were found beyond the east entrance (far right). Stumps at Woodhenge (foreground) mark postholes found in the 1920s; five stoneholes are now known to lie within the shaded area reexcavated in 2006.
Image © Aerial-Cam/SRP 2007. Image used with permission and adapted by Mike Pitts.

Three kilometres from Stonehenge is the largest henge monument known, a once massive earthwork consisting of an irregular ring ditch nearly 6m deep, surrounded by a chalk bank. Rescue excavation in the 1960s, directed by Wainwright, dated this henge to c2600–2300BC, and found the remains of two groups of concentric rings of large oak posts. The better preserved, known as the Southern Circle, is one of the most debated constructions in prehistoric Britain.

It is here that the most spectacular new discoveries have been made. A 100m long "avenue" bounded by low banks, its 15m-wide surface packed with flint, animal bone and Grooved Ware, led down to the river Avon. In this area have been excavated the floors of seven square-shaped houses, all older than the henge. The largest is 5.5m×5.5m, and each had a central hearth and walls supported by wattles (most were daubed, but one has the base of a chalk cob wall). A few have beam slots for beds and furniture. Two houses stood on the avenue banks, implying that the Southern Circle (to which the avenue seems to be leading) also pre-dates the enclosure. An eighth possible house was found near a newly-identified south entrance.

Nothing comparable or as well-preserved as these houses had before been found outside Orkney, where houses built with stone slabs, also associated with Grooved Ware, had been buried by sand. The extensive neolithic ground surface at Durrington Walls, covered in ash, artefacts and animal bones, adds to the huge significance of these finds.

So what of the media's 300 houses (or as the 2006 Riverside report put it, "hundreds or even thousands of small dwellings")? Parker Pearson argues that evidence fromnew and earlier excavations implies the presence of house floors around the entire henge circuit. "The largest village known in northwest Europe" is envisaged as a ring of houses looking down on the small deep valley later enclosed by the henge.

Yet, argues Parker Pearson, it was occupied only in winter: there is no evidence for grain processing; there are no very young pigs or cattle, so birthing occurred elsewhere; and pig growth patterns point to midwinter culling. Strontium isotope analysis of six cattle teeth suggests that none of these animals was reared on the chalk: two, it has been claimed, came from outside England.

At the South Circle itself, new excavation has added to the perceived complexity of the site. One outcome has been the suggestion that one ring of large posts was not circular, but oval, echoing the bluestone oval at Stonehenge.

A line of five ring ditches spans the western half of the henge, visible in grassmarks and geophysics. Excavation at two of these revealed a house within each, 4m square with a hearth and an enclosing fence. Two substantial posts had stood in front of the larger, which was surrounded by a 40m diameter ditch with an internal bank; the other was within a 12m ditch with external bank. Julian Thomas thinks these structures may have been shrines, or houses for exceptional people (News, Nov/Dec 2006).

Woodhenge

Excavating Woodhenge in 1926, Maud Cunnington found pits for two small megaliths on the south side, the only ones amongst a forest of concentric rings of oak posts. Re-excavation there has revealed three further stone holes. Josh Pollard suggests the stones replaced posts, and Cunnington's two were themselves replaced by three arranged on the sides of a square, or cove.

Excavation to the south has added to a line of at least six timber structures along the ridge overlooking the river, which Pollard and Helen Wickstead have called "highly symbolised houses... mortuary platforms, or commemorative monuments". These "houses of the newly dead", consisting of four large posts within an enclosing fence some 10-15m across, were probably not roofed.

Bluestones

Beyond the Riverside Project, Darvill and Wainwright have been excavating and surveying in the Preseli hills, Pembrokeshire. Work by several geologists had confirmed south-west Wales as the source of almost all the bluestones, pinpointing potential quarry outcrops (though a study by Rob Ixer and Peter Turner of the Altar stone, previously thought to have come from the coast at Milford Haven, suggests a different provenance, perhaps inland in the Brecon Beacons). Yet astonishingly this is the first time the Preselis have been archaeologically studied with Stonehenge in mind. "A number of discarded pillar-stones" have been found, and the concentration of neolithic monuments in the area emphasised, one of which – Bedd Arthur – consists of a bluestone oval the archaeologists compare directly to the oval at Stonehenge (see feature, Jul/Aug 2005).

Conclusions

Putting Stonehenge yet more firmly into the late neolithic emphasises its synchronicity with Durrington Walls and Woodhenge, and its remoteness from the area's famous, and more recent, barrow cemeteries, once thought contemporary. It also highlights the cremations there, for burials of any kind from that time are rare (making Darvill's hypothesis that the bluestones were brought to the site for their healing properties presently untestable). The extraordinary Beaker associated graves at Amesbury (features Jul/Aug 2008, Sep 2004), dated to c2470–2200BC, are now also seen to post-date the arrival of megaliths.

It is early days. Not only have some key excavations still to take place (for example at a potential stone-dressing area close to Stonehenge), but none of the material described here has yet been fully analysed or published. It is clear, however, that it will be impossible to understand Stonehenge in isolation. The highly complex, changing world that many of us imagined must have lain behind the unique monument is now being revealed. The quality of this evidence has surprised, and thrilled, us all. There is still a great deal more to learn.

This summer's is the last field season for the Riverside Project. As in previous years there will be guided tours for visitors – watch the media from English Heritage.

British

Archaeology

The voice of archaeology in Britain and beyond

Issue 102

Sept / Oct 2008

Contents

news

features

on the web

letters

spoilheap

science

CBA correspondent

features

THE BIG DIG: Stonehenge

The Riverside Project

The Cursus

Monoliths

Dating Stonehenge

Durrington Walls

Woodhenge

Bluestones

Conclusions

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

CBA homepage