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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >> Stones Forum >> What Lies Beneath Stonehenge?
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AuthorWhat Lies Beneath Stonehenge?
jackdaw1



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 Posted 31-08-2014 at 22:28   
Smithsonian Magazine

What Lies Beneath Stonehenge?

September 2014

We walked the Avenue, the ancient route along which the stones were first dragged from the River Avon. For centuries, this was the formal path to the great henge, but now the only hint of its existence was an indentation or two in the tall grass. It was a fine English summer’s day, with thin, fast clouds above, and as we passed through fields dotted with buttercups and daisies, cows and sheep, we could have been hikers anywhere, were it not for the ghostly monument in the near distance.

Faint as the Avenue was, Vince Gaffney hustled along as if it were illuminated by runway lights. A short, sprightly archaeologist of 56, from Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, he knows this landscape as well as anyone alive: has walked it, breathed it, studied it for uncounted hours. He has not lost his sense of wonder. Stopping to fix the monument in his eyeline, and reaching out toward the stones on the horizon, he said, “Look, it becomes cathedralesque.”

Gaffney’s latest research effort, the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, is a four-year collaboration between a British team and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria that has produced the first detailed underground survey of the area surrounding Stonehenge, totaling more than four square miles. The results are astonishing. The researchers have found buried evidence of more than 15 previously unknown or poorly understood late Neolithic monuments: henges, barrows, segmented ditches, pits. To Gaffney, these findings suggest a scale of activity around Stonehenge far beyond what was previously suspected. “There was sort of this idea that Stonehenge sat in the middle and around it was effectively an area where people were probably excluded,” Gaffney told me, “a ring of the dead around a special area—to which few people might ever have been admitted....Perhaps there were priests, big men, whatever they were, inside Stonehenge having processions up the Avenue, doing...something extremely mysterious. Of course that sort of analysis depends on not knowing what’s actually in the area around Stonehenge itself. It was terra incognita, really.”

More of this September, 2014 article
(written by Ed Caesar) is found on the top link,courtesy of Smithsonian magazine.



[ This message was edited by: jackdaw1 on 2014-08-31 22:29 ]




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AngieLake



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 Posted 03-09-2014 at 23:00   
I'll be watching this one.. and recording!

"8.00 [NEW] Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath (1 of 2)

Documentary revealing the results of a revolutionary five-year project that aims to uncover the secrets of one of the country's most enigmatic historical sites. Concludes next week. (S) (HD)"

Thursday, 11th September, on BBC 2.

(Copied from P.66 of TV Easy, 6 - 12 Sept 2014)

[ This message was edited by: AngieLake on 2014-09-03 23:01 ]




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ryszard



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 Posted 09-09-2014 at 14:44   
So????....

AngieLake, report please, for those of us who could not watch...






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davidmorgan



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 Posted 09-09-2014 at 17:12   
It will be broadcast this Thursday...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hc5v7




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Andy B



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 Posted 09-09-2014 at 23:07   
I see it has a German co-producer in Heinrich Mayer, which is interesting - real international collaboration

To quote Brian Mountainman:
Interestingly, this doesn't seem to involve National Geographic -- but Smithsonian is in there, and I think I am right in saying that in the past the Smithsonian has generally sponsored the work by the Darvill / Wainwright tribe rather than the MPP tribe. So it will be interesting to see which "international team of experts" has been involved in putting this latest extravaganza together.

[ This message was edited by: Andy B on 2014-09-09 23:08 ]




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AngieLake



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 Posted 10-09-2014 at 14:35   
More on the new discoveries at Stonehenge:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/10/stonehenge-teeming-chapels-shrines-archaeology-research

Teeming seems to be the new in-word. The other day Dartmoor was teeming with bears, now Stonehenge landscape is teeming with chapels, burial mounds and shrines!

Looking forward to the programme tomorrow night on BBC 2.




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ainsloch



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 Posted 10-09-2014 at 18:35   
The programme sounds good, looking forward to it. It would be interesting to see that ground surveying technology employed in the Boyne Valley




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Blingo_von_Trumpenstein



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 Posted 11-09-2014 at 21:40   
Pink flint !!!!
Pink !!!! Flint !!!!
Mind blown again...




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sem



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 Posted 11-09-2014 at 21:44   
Well, Pt1 is over let's see what Pt2 brings.
My interest will be in the pre-Stonehenge pits at either end of the Cursus. They have already shown that SH aligns with these on midsummer sunrise and sunset (or conversely SH is where the alignments converge). This means that the mid summer sunrise throws a line from the East pit to SH that includes the famous Avenue, an often quoted reason for the placement of SH.
As the Avenue is a natural geological feature are they going to suggest that people who had been hunting in the area for millennia were unaware of such a feature?
Too much graphic based TV and too little factual history/archaeology but the final view could prove interesting.







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cropredy



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 Posted 11-09-2014 at 22:03   
Ritual,
Ritual.
Ritual.
Fell asleep.

WHY do they have to add in the garbage which is assumption , and INDOCTRINATE it in a fact like manner????

Lets go and dig up them pits and see if some RITUAL implements are buried there.

It's LOCATION, location, location.....very very precise location that is exactly the same now as it was then.


kevin

[ This message was edited by: cropredy on 2014-09-14 07:26 ]




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megalith6



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 00:31   
Tee-hee,

if Vince is correct ... the mysterious posts in the car park then may appear to define the western terminal of the cursus!




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cropredy



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 07:35   
As per usual,
It is deemed that I should not set foot up here on hallowed ground.
Do remove My post Sem, it adds nothing as You say.
Sort of ironic when posts are missing from about stonehenge, nes pas?
Kevin.
Who will never dare to venture up here again.





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Andy B



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 08:43   
> chapels, burial mounds and shrines

Where on earth did they get 'chapels' from - bizarre...




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davidmorgan



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 10:43   
I'm with Blingo, mind blowing pink flint!






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Andy B



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 12:56   
It's not in the press release but according to New Scientist the 'chapels' thing has come from Vince Gaffney:

"The survey turned up 17 small ritual monuments, many of them circular, thought to be contemporary with Stonehenge's busiest period. Gaffney suggests they were the equivalents of small "chapels"."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26183-stonehenge-surrounded-by-mysterious-buried-monuments.html




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ainsloch



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 13:04   
The segment on the cursus was the most interesting part for me too. Since the pits represent the angle of the summer solstice rise and set, it reminds me of the Nebra Sky Disk only on a monumental scale.



[ This message was edited by: ainsloch on 2014-09-12 13:06 ]




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megalith6



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 Posted 12-09-2014 at 23:43   
good observation - that bit on the right even looks a bit like a cursus




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megalith6



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 Posted 13-09-2014 at 00:06   
what irritated me about the programme was a) the long, rambling digression on Grimes Graves and b) the 'Hollywood' battle scenes at Crickley Hill causewayed enclosure. This was a causewayed enclosure it was not an Iron Age hill fort being besieged by proto Roman legions. Many of these enclosures were turned into forts in the Iron Age, but this was not their original function, they appear to have been precursors to the stone circles, they were primarily ritual spaces. Crickley was fenced, that doesn't make it a stockade.

http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=1539263

Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure was the forerunner of the Avebury henge complex for example

http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=216413&sort=4&search=all&criteria=windmill%20hill%20Avebury&rational=q&recordsperpage=10






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AngieLake



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 Posted 13-09-2014 at 00:12   
I'm curious about the pink flint.
They said that rare algae in the spring water caused the flint to turn pink as it dried off. Does that mean that all those years ago the algae would still have been the same type, or could it possibly have changed over the millennia?

(I re-watched my recording from TV this afternoon, but haven't played the link David M put on at 10.43 on 12th Sept. as I haven't yet downloaded Flash Player. I've got XP still and being v.careful what I'm using til I get the computer chappie to update me.)






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davidmorgan



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 Posted 13-09-2014 at 08:44   
I haven't seen the programme either, I had to look up "pink flint".

So, it's algae? Not really pink stone like this modern arrowhead by a Puget Sounds Knapper made from Ouachita Novaculite.




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