<< News >> New light shed on Stonehenge cremated remains
Submitted by Andy B on Wednesday, 15 August 2018 Page Views: 2311
StonehengeCountry: England
[Yes that's really about the size of what you can say without getting into speculation - see the comments below for more]
The accompanying archive view shows the Aubrey Holes quite nicely.
Conducted in partnership with colleagues at the UCL, Université Libre de Bruxelles & Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, France, the research combined radiocarbon-dating with new developments in archaeological analysis, pioneered by lead author Christophe Snoeck during his doctoral research in the School of Archaeology at Oxford.
While there has been much speculation as to how and why Stonehenge was built, the question of the origins of the people buried there has received far less attention. Part of the reason for this neglect is that many of the human remains were cremated, and so it was difficult to extract much useful information from them. Snoeck demonstrated that that cremated bone faithfully retains its strontium isotope composition, opening the way to use this technique to investigate where these people had lived during the last decade or so of their lives.
With permission from Historic England and English Heritage, the team analysed skull bones from 25 individuals to better understand the lives of those buried at the iconic monument. These remains were originally excavated from a network of 56 pits in the 1920s, placed around the inner circumference and ditch of Stonehenge, known as ‘Aubrey Holes’. They were later reburied in Aubrey Hole 7, and bone samples from this collection have been analysed in the new study.
The small fragments of cremated human bone date from an early phase of the site’s history around 3000 BC, when it was mainly used as a cemetery. Analyses showed that 15 of the 25 people probably came from Salisbury Plain or from other chalklands in eastern England; but the others probably did not live near Stonehenge prior to their death. Instead, the researchers found that the highest strontium isotope ratios in the remains were consistent with living to the west or north, in areas underlain by older rocks. Although strontium isotope ratios alone cannot distinguish between places with similar values, this connection suggests that at least some of these people might have come from western Wiltshire or eastern Somerset. Others might have come from further afield.
Lead author Christophe Snoeck said: ‘The recent discovery that some biological information survives the high temperatures reached during cremation (up to 1000 degrees Celsius) offered us the exciting possibility to finally study the origin of those buried at Stonehenge.’
John Pouncett, a lead author on the paper and Spatial Technology Officer at Oxford’s School of Archaeology, said: ‘The powerful combination of stable isotopes and spatial technology gives us a new insight into the people buried at Stonehenge. The cremated remains from the enigmatic Aubrey Holes and updated mapping of the biosphere also suggest that some people from well-wooded environments moved onto the Wiltshire Downs before they died.’ There are also suggestions in the research that some people were cremated in well-wooded environments away from the chalk downs, and that their remains were later carried to Stonehenge for interment. That supports other research which has suggested that Stonehenge was a burial place of more than local significance.
Rick Schulting, a lead author on the research and Associate Professor in Scientific and Prehistoric Archaeology at Oxford, explained: ‘To me the really remarkable thing about our study is the ability of new developments in archaeological science to extract so much new information from such small and unpromising fragments of burnt bone.'
Commenting on how they came to develop the innovative technique, Prof Julia Lee-Thorp, Head of Oxford’s School of Archaeology and an author on the paper, said: ‘This new development has come about as the serendipitous result of Dr Snoeck’s interest in the effects of intense heat on bones, and our realization that that heating effectively “sealed in” some isotopic signatures.’
The technique could be used to improve our understanding of the past using previously excavated ancient collections, Dr Schulting said: ‘Our results highlight the importance of revisiting old collections. The cremated remains from Stonehenge were first excavated by Colonel William Hawley in the 1920s, and while they were not put into a museum, Col Hawley did have the foresight to rebury them in a known location on the site, so that it was possible for Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Institute of Archaeology) and his team to re-excavate them, allowing various analytical methods to be applied.’
Compare with the original press release.
Have a read of the actual paper - it's Open Access
Note: Apologies this is bit late, however to cut through some of the hype surrounding this new paper and the accompanying media coverage, we have reworked the press release to remove the speculation and 'come-ones' to the media that were in the original.
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