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<< News >> Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets

Submitted by PaulM on Sunday, 24 July 2005  Page Views: 18729

Stonehenge
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Stonehenge aerial 0435 submitted by JJ : Aerial photo copyright JJ Evendon (Vote or comment on this photo)
Stonehenge has always mystified. Julius Caesar thought it was the work of druids, medieval scholars believed it was the handiwork of Merlin, while local folk tales simply blamed the devil. Now scientists are demanding a full-scale research programme be launched to update our knowledge of the monument and discover precisely who built it and its burial barrow graves.

This is the key recommendation of Stonehenge: an Archaeological Research Framework, edited by Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University, soon to be published by English Heritage. It highlights serious flaws in our knowledge of the monument, which is now a World Heritage Site.

'Stonehenge has not been well served by archaeology,' admitted Dr David Miles, chief archaeology adviser to English Heritage. 'Much of the area was excavated in the 19th century, when gentleman amateurs - glorified treasure-hunters, really - would get their labourers to dig great trenches straight into its barrows and graves.

'Then they would ransack them, taking away the human remains and grave goods. It was Indiana Jones stuff. We need to get that material back.'

Even in the 20th century, archaeological work, although carried out by professionals, was generally poor, said Miles. For example, the long barrows - the most ancient of the communal graves built round Stonehenge - have never been properly excavated. Yet these could be the resting places of the people who first made this area sacred.

'It is over 50 years since substantial excavations have taken place at Stonehenge and more than two decades since the small-scale excavations,' the report notes. This research gap needs to be rectified.

Crucially, science can now reveal rich details about prehistoric people from their remains. This is demonstrated by the 'Amesbury Archer', recently found in a 4,000-year-old grave, one of Europe's richest, near Stonehenge.

He was surrounded by about 100 items, including golden hair ornaments - some of the earliest gold objects found in Britain.

But his teeth provided the real surprise. Tests on their enamel, formed in early childhood and which contains telltale chemical signatures from local soil and rocks, showed the archer came from the Alps while the ornaments found in his grave were traced to Spain and France.

This discovery suggests that metalworkers from the Continent had already begun to trade and work in tin, copper and other metals in Britain 4,000 years ago and may have played key roles in building Stonehenge. The monument appears to have been the centre of major activity by travellers roaming across Britain, Ireland and the Continent.

Archaeologists now want to hunt down the remains taken from barrows around Stonehenge: some may be in local museums, others in private hands. 'Some people probably have them under their beds,' said Miles.

Armed with these materials, scientists could then recreate much of our ancient past. It might even be possible to make facial reconstructions of some individuals.

Stonehenge took at least 1,000 years to build and its use clearly changed over the millennia. Recent studies suggest it may have been 'Christianised' in the first millennium AD and at one point was used as a place of execution by the Anglo-Saxons to judge from the primitive gallows, dated to around the 7th century, found there.

Some scientists have even argued that the great circles could have been used as an astronomical observatory or a computer. This idea is generally dismissed by the report, although the alignment of its stones to the rising midwinter sun, a date associated with the return of light and warmth, is widely accepted.

The great stone circles are therefore concerned with death and rebirth. Built mainly by Stone Age peoples, without the aid of metals, Stonehenge became the focus of intense interest a few centuries later when metal-working Bronze Age craftsmen from across Europe arrived in the neighbourhood. During this period Stonehenge appears to have become the fashionable place to be buried.

Indeed, it may be that the area was split into a Land of the Living, where ceremonial parties were held by relatives, and the Domain of the Dead, with Stonehenge at its centre, where people were buried.

'There is no site like this anywhere else and we badly need to improve our understanding of it,' said Miles. 'This is not a call for an autopsy of the place. We are not going to make a mess. It will be sensitive: more like targeted brain surgery.'

Source: The Observer - Sunday July 24, 2005




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"Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Re: Scientists seek fresh chance to dig up Stonehenge's secrets by Nisaba on Tuesday, 26 July 2005
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The TRUTH about Stonehenge or any of it's related megaliths, temples, tombs and shrines all around the world, will never be revealed to us. At least not while there are scientists at English Heritage, and elsewhere in the world, who are clearly torn between wanting to know the truth, but not allowing themselves to accept anything other than what we already know, or, at least what fits into their own realm of experience. The statement that "some scientists have even argued that the great circles could have been used as an astronomical observatory or a computer... [but this] is generally dismissed from the report," is very telling about the possible veracity of the report when it is published. In the "Earth Chronicles", written in 1993 by Zecharia Sitchin, Book Five is called, "When Time Began - The First New Age". He calls Stonehenge a "computer made of stone". He states that "Stonehenge was neither palace nor tomb, it was in essence a temple-*****-observatory, as the ziggurats (step pyramids) of Mesopotamia and ancient America were" and "astronomers continue to lead the research concerning Stonehenge". After comprehensively discussing the findings of the likes of Sir Norman Lockyer, Professor Gerald S. Hawkins of Boston University and Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer and mathmetician and his own researches, he came to the conclusion that it was a Temple of the Sun and a Lunar Observatory. Sir Fred Hoyle went further and called Stonehenge a "predictor" an instrument for foretelling celestial events! Unless we open our minds to the theory that stone-age man knew more than we give him credit for, or at least, had outside help and that this knowledge has all been forgotten until modern man started, once again, asking questions--then we will never know the truth. I urge everyone to read Sitchen's Earth Chronicles and form their own opinions if we can't leave it to the academics to inform us.
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