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There are many mysteries surrounding the ancient
monuments at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. Researchers in Britain, working
with experts at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection
and Virtual Archaeology in Austria have...on.aol.com
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September 10, 2014
It may sound a bit cliche, but in this case it’s true.
Following a multi-year survey of the landscape around Stonehenge, one of Britain’s most famous (and mysterious)
monuments, scientists have discovered that there’s much more than meets the eye
sitting below the surface of Salisbury Plain.
The survey, the results of which were revealed at the
BritishScience Festival
this week after a study spanning four years, was done by a team from the UK’s
University of Birmingham and Austria’s Ludwig Boltzmann Institute as part of
The StonehengeHidden Landscapes Project. Using non-invasive
techniques such as ground-penetrating radar that don’t affect the 10-square
kilometer site’s physical landscape, the archaeologists have found that
Stonehenge was actually part of a large complex of Neolithic shrines and
monuments.
17 new underground shrines were “uncovered” in the
survey, including several burial mounds. Inside one burial monument known as a
long barrow is what looks like a timber structure, which is suspected to have
been used for the ritual of removing flesh and organs, leaving only bones
(known as “defleshing”), and burying the dead. Researchers also studied the
Stonehenge Cursus, a nearby large enclosure thought to date back to about 3500
B.C., and found a large pit on either end. Project leader Vincent Gaffney says
each pit lines up with a particular spot at Stonehenge and that the paths
created each line up with the sunrise or sunset during the mid-summer solstice.
Over at the Durrington Walls site, meanwhile, the
radar detected about 60 holes set roughly two meters (about six and a half
feet) apart that appear to have held stone or timber pillars. Since the holes
are set in a large circle, the team is calling the previously-unseen structure
a “super henge.” A few of the stones are still buried and look as though
they’ve been pushed over, which Gaffney says may support evidence that people
in some ancient cultures sometimes pushed over or rearranged monuments.
“It’s extraordinary to think that there have been so
many investigations of this landscape and of the land that we’re standing on
now and nobody before has previously suspected all of these pits,” Dr. Nicola
Snashall of the National Trust told BBC News.
From here, the team will process all of the
information it collected, which could reportedly take about a year to sift
through. LiveScience notes Wednesday that the governmental body
English Heritage will likely then decide what parts of the complex should be
excavated. The findings will also be featured in the TV special "Operation
Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath," scheduled to air Thursday on Britain’s BBC
Two.
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