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