Mini-Stonehenge found

Crematorium on Stonehenge road :

James Owen National Geographic News

Sorry, Spinal Tap fans, though a newfound stone circle in England is being called a mini-Stonehenge, it was never in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Perhaps a prehistoric crematorium, 33-foot-wide (10-meter-wide) ‘Bluestonehenge’ was discovered just over a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the original Stonehenge in Salisbury, United Kingdom, scientists announced a few days ago.

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.

Named for the color of its long-gone stones, Bluestonehenge, or Bluehenge, was dismantled thousands of years ago, and many of its standing stones were integrated into Stonehenge during a rebuilding of the larger monument, according to the archaeologists.

Mini-Stonehenge: Prehistoric 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 UK.

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 BC, but flint arrowheads found at the stone-circle site indicate the rocks were erected as early as 3000 BC.

More precise dates will have to wait until prehistoric deer antlers, used as pickaxes at Bluestonehenge, have been radiocarbon dated, the team said.

Made from a hard dolerite rock, the four-ton megaliths were hewn from ancient quarries in the Preseli Mountains of Wales, 150 miles (240 kilometers) away, Parker Pearson said. The manpower and logistics required to transport the stones suggests they had deep significance to ancient Britons, experts say.

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”.

The Bluestonehenge discovery was made as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a seven-year archaeological investigation of the Stonehenge area, supported by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration.

Key Piece in Stonehenge Puzzle

Bluestonehenge represents a vital part of the jigsaw as researchers slowly piece together the meaning of Stonehenge, Parker Pearson believes.

The 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 BC, 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.

Pit stop on route to afterlife

Parker Pearson sees Bluestonehenge’s location, on the river and at the beginning of a 1.75 mile (2.8 kilometer) earthen avenue leading to Stonehenge, as highly significant. 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.

Whatever Bluestonehenge’s role along the route was, ‘it emphasizes the connection with the whole monumental complex”, Thomas, of the University of Manchester, said.

“We tend to think of monuments as cultural, and a river or a mountain as something that’s natural”, he added. “What’s fascinating about the Stonehenge complex is that these different elements are being threaded together”.

“By constructing these monuments you’re not just adding a cultural veneer on the surface, you’re actually reengineering the world”.