The Lost Solstice Monument That Predates Stonehenge By 500 Years
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What discovery near Stonehenge did archaeologists announce?
Now it's almost the summer solstice and we love stories that combine archaeology, astronomy and indigenous knowledge. So what does those three things put them in a pot and what do we get?
Stonehenge!
We get Stonehenge.
We love Stonehenge. For those who don't know, for some reason, Stonehenge was built 4,000, 5,000 years ago It's a ring of massive standing stones surrounded by an earth bank and ditch in the southwest of England. And it's associated with the summer solstice, as you say, also the winter solstice, because the stones align with the sun setting and rising at these times.
Yeah, so there's been loads of theories about what it is. And I think the current one is that it's this ancient solar calendar. But this week, archaeologists have discovered evidence of an even older structure that might have served as a prototype for Stonehenge. From New Scientist, this is The World, The Universe and Us. I'm Dr Rowan Hooper.
And I'm Dr Penny Sarche. To discuss this new discovery, we're joined by archaeologist Phil Harding. Welcome, Phil. What have you found? And this is not actually at Stonehenge, is it? But it's nearby.
No, it's at a site called Bulford. Bulford is a small village on the southern limits of the Salisbury Plain training area, a military area. It's about five kilometres east, northeast of Stonehenge itself. So it's more or less within the Stonehenge landscape. And we were commissioned to do some excavations there in advance of a new development to create a larger garrison for the army because we were closing down the garrison in Germany. So there was a massive archaeological program in the southern part of Salisbury Plain. And of course, being that close to Stonehenge, it had to have some archaeology. And that's where I come in.
There's so much archaeology in that part of the country, the southwest and the Salisbury Plain specifically. What was happening at this site then that you've now been uncovering?
Well, the area that we excavated, it covered an area of 13 hectares. So it was a big area. And there are four phases. And they basically divide into brackets of 500 years. So the first phase is about 3,500 BC. That's an early Neolithic phase. And then our phase two comes in about 3,000 BC. And that is at the beginning of the late Neolithic. And of course, the point about this 3000 B.C. phase is that it is where they're doing the groundwork. They're cutting the ditch that would be later on is the embryonic Stonehenge. And then our stage three is 2500 B.C., which we have at Bulford two henge monuments, these circular ceremonial monuments. But that coincides with what we all know and love about Stonehenge, the introduction of the big sarsen stones and that solstitial alignment, which you were talking about earlier on.
And then our last prehistoric phase at Bulford is about 2000 BC, when we have a Bronze Age monument.
So what were they doing here? What have you found there and what do we think they were using it for?
Our phase two, which is, like I say, the beginning of the late Neolithic, we found close on 50 pits. And those pits were all full up with, well, rubbish. Animal bone, pottery, work flints. It's the sort of debris that we would get from domestic life, but also some of the bones that we were finding there suggesting that this was a ceremonial feasting episode. And 50 pits of that date is almost unheard of. But what was really, really impressive was that we also found two pits that were different to all the others. The rubbish pits were what I call cylindrical. They were circular, about a metre in diameter and about 50 to 60 centimetres deep with circular flat bases. And these two extra ones were like what I call a truncated cone.
So they didn't have vertical sides. They had tapering sides that came down to quite narrow bases, about 50 centimeters across. The fillings were totally different. The fillings were chalk rubble. There was not the amount of rubbish that we had in the other pits.
Where is Bulford and why was it excavated for the army garrison project?
When I looked at those, some of the artifacts, some of the pieces of pottery,
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What discovery near Stonehenge did archaeologists announce?
0:00–4:39
2
Where is Bulford and why was it excavated for the army garrison project?
4:39–11:07
3
Which time periods and phases did the Bulford excavation reveal?
11:07–17:23
4
What kinds of pits and artefacts were found that suggest ritual feasting?
17:23–19:10
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The World, the Universe and Us
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