"Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul's haven to have felt."
-   George Meredith, Winter Heavens 

XXX
 


 





 

Why the Evergreen Trees Keep their Leaves in Winter

HUNTING THE WREN.

Stonehenge 3D model for Google Earth

Winter Solstice open access 22nd Dec.

Parking available on the drove (without official sanction) but not in the visitor centre car park.

Please be advised that vans and cars may only stay the night leading up to sunrise and must then depart as Salisbury Council are being unhelpful regarding the use of the drove.

Additional details on 'Bluestonehenge'

Thanks to Archaeo-News

As I reported last week, 33-foot-wide (10-meter-wide)  
'Bluestonehenge' was discovered just over a mile (1.6 km) from the  
original Stonehenge near Salisbury (England). The 5,000-year-old  
ceremonial site is thought to have been a key stop along an ancient  
route between a land of the living, several miles away, and a domain  
of the dead-Stonehenge. At least one archaeologist thinks  
Bluestonehenge may have been a sort of crematorium.

     Bluestonehenge was found in August along the banks of the River  
Avon during excavations led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University  
of Sheffield in the U.K. The circle of an estimated 25 bluestones was  
surrounded by a henge-an earthwork with a ditch and bank. The henge  
has been tentatively dated to 2400 BCE. But flint arrowheads found at  
the stone-circle site are of a type that suggests the rocks were  
erected as early as 3000 BCE. More precise dates will have to wait  
until prehistoric deer antlers-used as pickaxes at Bluestonehenge-have
been radiocarbon dated, the team said.

     Unlike Stonehenge, which aligns with the sun at the summer and  
winter solstices, Bluestonehenge shows no sign of a particular  
orientation, or even an entrance, the team reported. Nor is there any  
evidence that people lived at the site. There's no pottery, animal  
bones, ornaments, or relics such as those unearthed at the nearby  
Stone Age village of Durrington Walls, found near Stonehenge in 2007.  
However Bluestonehenge's empty stone holes were filled with charcoal,  
indicating that large amounts of wood were burned there-signifying,  
perhaps, a prehistoric crematorium. Perhaps not coincidentally, ashes  
have been found in holes at Stonehenge. "Maybe the bluestone circle is
where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at  
Stonehenge itself," Parker Pearson said in a statement.

     Parker Pearson proposes that Stonehenge represented a "domain of  
the dead" to ancestor-worshiping ancient Britons. "It could be that  
Bluestonehenge was where the dead began their final journey to  
Stonehenge," he added. "Not many people know that Stonehenge was  
Britain's largest burial ground at that time." Stonehenge expert Mike  
Pitts, editor of British Archaeology magazine, said, "Up to now we've  
really thought of Stonehenge as this [one] stone circle. ... Maybe we  
need to actually start thinking about Stonehenge as a series of stone  
structures that are not necessarily all contained within that circular
ditch [at Stonehenge proper]," added Pitts, who was not involved in  
the project.

     The excavation team now believes Stonehenge incorporates the 25  
bluestones that originally stood at Bluestonehenge. Only a few  
bluestone pieces were found at the new site, and "that is telling you  
that the stones are being taken out whole," said dig co-director  
Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester. Bluestonehenge's stones
were dragged along the avenue to Stonehenge during a major rebuilding  
phase around 2500 BCE, the archaeologists speculated (time line of the
stages of Stonehenge). If Bluestonehenge had been demolished much
later-in Roman times, when reverence for the stones would have been  
diminished, for example-"they'd be breaking them up and turning them  
into building stone," Thomas said. "I think it's very likely that the  
new stone circle is contemporary with the very earliest stages of  
Stonehenge," the archaeologist added.

     Previous excavations have drawn a picture of seasonal festivities
 at Durrington Walls, which some see as part of the "domain of the  
living" in the spiritual geography of the people of Stonehenge. The  
dead would be celebrated at Durrington, then carried along a short  
avenue to the River Avon, archaeologists speculate. The procession  
would continue down the river, then 'dock' at the foot of the avenue  
leading to Stonehenge - stopping, it's now thought, at Bluestonehenge,
perhaps for cremation, before continuing to Stonehenge for burial.  
Given the Bluestonehenge discovery, British Archaeology's Pitts said,  
"I'm sure there are very significant discoveries still to be made in  
this landscape."

Sources: National Geographic News (5 October 2009), Discovery News (7  
October 2009)

Peace...

Stonehenge...

XXX

Discovery sheds new light on Stonehenge

Archaeologists say the remains of another large henge near the River Avon offer clues to the building of Stonehenge and the significance of the river. They had sought the telltale holes for years.

Members of a British archaeological team stand in newly discovered holes that once held the stones of a circular monument connected to Stonehenge by an avenue. It may have served as a crematory. (Aerial-Cam)

• Related
Bluestonehenge
Bluestonehenge
Map

British archaeologists have found the remains of a massive stone henge, or ceremonial circle, that was part of the ancient and celebrated Stonehenge complex, a find that is shedding new light on how the monument was built and its religious uses.

The new henge, called Bluestonehenge because it was built with blue Preseli dolerite mined more than 150 miles away in Wales, was on the banks of the River Avon, where ancient pilgrims carrying the ashes of their dead relatives began the journey from the river to Stonehenge, nearly two miles away. Some are calling it the "little sister" of Stonehenge.

The approximately 25 massive bluestones were erected in a circle about 5,000 years ago, and eventually were encircled by a ditch and an earthen embankment.

About 500 years later, however, the stones were moved and incorporated into Stonehenge itself.

All that is left of the circle are the holes where the stones sat in the ground and a few chips of dolerite.

The fact that the monument was found at the beginning of an avenue leading to Stonehenge and near the river "not only solidifies the view that Stonehenge covers the entire landscape, but also the sacred importance of the river itself," said archaeologist Christine Hastorf of UC Berkeley, who was not involved in the research.

"It means that there was a link between Stonehenge and the water, out to the ocean," she said.

Stonehenge is made up of concentric circles of massive stones, some weighing as much as 50 tons, surrounded by a ditch and an earthen bank. The structure is aligned with sunrise on the summer solstice, and researchers have long viewed it as both an astronomical observatory and a cemetery.

A team led by archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield made the discovery while excavating in the area of Stonehenge during the last several years.

Its findings have suggested that the entire site, which stretched from the river to Stonehenge, was a religious complex where ancient peoples gathered at certain times of the year to celebrate life and bury their dead.

Some of their discoveries have also suggested that Stonehenge was a burial site for early kings.

The team had long suspected there was some kind of monument near the river at the beginning of the avenue leading to Stonehenge, but it had great difficulty finding it, Parker Pearson said in a telephone interview Monday.

"We tried every method we could to prospect for the circle -- radar, magnetic signals, electrical resistance in the Earth -- but we couldn't see anything there at all."

Only when they began digging in August and September did they find what they were looking for.

So far, they have found nine holes that they believe were part of a 30-foot-wide circle of about 25 standing stones.

The holes are too wide and shallow for them to have contained wooden posts.

The holes are also too small to have held sarsen stones, the larger limestone rocks that form part of Stonehenge and that were mined at Marlborough Downs 25 miles to the north.

But the dimensions correlate precisely with those of bluestones in the inner circle of Stonehenge.

The stone circle at Bluestonehenge was eventually replaced by a henge, a circular ditch nearly 74 feet across with an external bank.

Little trace of the bank remains except at one place where it was pushed back into the ditch. Elsewhere, the ditch filled with silt and sediment over thousands of years.

Traces of a stone circle discovered near Stonehenge

Archaeologists may have discovered Stonehenge's little sister - just a  
mile from the famous monument. The traces of a prehistoric stone  
circle, discovered in secret over the summer, are one of the most  
important finds in decades. Some researchers have called it  
'Bluehenge' after the colour of the 27 giant Welsh stones it once  
incorporated - but are now missing. The find is already challenging  
conventional wisdom about how Stonehenge was built - and what it was  
used for.
      The recently discovered stone circle was put up 5,000 years ago  
- around the same time as work began on Stonehenge - and appears to  
have been a miniature version of it. The two circles stood together  
for hundreds of years before Bluehenge was dismantled. Researchers  
believe its stones were used to enlarge Stonehenge during one of a  
number of redevelopments.
      Professor Tim Darvill, Stonehenge expert at Bournemouth  
University, said: "This adds to the richness of the story of  
Stonehenge. We thought we knew it all, but over the last few years we  
have discovered that something as familiar as Stonehenge is still a  
challenge to explore and understand. It wouldn't surprise me if there  
weren't more circles."
      All that remains of the 60ft wide Bluehenge are the holes of 27  
giant stones set on a ramped mount. Chips of blue stone found in the  
holes appear to be identical to the blue stones used in Stonehenge.  
The four-ton monsters, made of Preseli Spotted Dolerite - a chemically  
altered igneous rock harder than granite - were mined in the Preseli  
Mountains in Pembrokeshire and then rolled, dragged and floated the  
200 miles to the site on the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire. Once  
installed, the stones would have been polished to a dark blue with  
silver flecks resembling the night sky. Bluehenge lies at the end of  
the 'Avenue' - a ritual pathway that connected Stonehenge to the Avon.
      The new find suggests that the creators of Stonehenge originally  
built two circles - one with 56 stones at Stonehenge, and another with  
27 at Bluehenge. The stones of the smaller circle were eventually  
incorporated into the bigger one. Bluehenge was discovered by  
Professor Mike Parker Pearson, of Sheffield University, who argues the  
monuments were linked to rituals of life and death. Julian Richards,  
archaeologist and presenter of BBC2 TV series Meet The Ancestors,  
believes, however, that such certainty is beyond our reach. "Any one  
person who says they have the answer is being a bit over-confident,"  
he said. "If you think that Stonehenge was created, used and modified  
over 1,400 years then it probably was used for many different things."  
Professor Geoffrey Wainwright, who found the source of the Stonehenge  
stones in Wales with Professor Darvill, said: "This [new] henge is  
very important because it forms part of the picture of ceremonial  
monuments in the area and puts Stonehenge into context. It's no longer  
Stonehenge standing alone, but it has to be seen in context with the  
landscape."
      Lovers of prehistoric sites will have to wait until February  
before the full details of Bluehenge are published.

Source: Mail Online (2 October 2009)
http://...com/ycws6po
[1 drawing, 1 map, 2 images