Stonehenge a New Understanding by Mike Parker Pearson Page A
Authors: Mike Parker Pearson
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
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180 people, equivalent to one Neolithic ditch-digging work gang. Keeping the team functioning was a huge undertaking: We had six directors, a team of supervisors and their assistants (they called themselves “middle management”), a back-up crew running domestic affairs and finds analysis at our campsite, and a public-outreach team. Imagine another twenty such teams all involved in the same project.
One of the mysteries of Durrington Walls has always been where everybody lived while they constructed the henge ditch and bank. Although we discovered a previously unknown village, all the settlement areas that we’ve found were in use before the ditch was dug. Perhaps the ditch-diggers lived somewhere else entirely, or perhaps they set up camp further out, beyond the perimeter of the old village. A few years ago archaeologists found a number of Neolithic pits while monitoring the installation of a water pipe along the modern road north of Durrington Walls. 8 Perhaps these pits were part of this later, henge-builders’ settlement.
Although the enclosure of the henge covered the houses of the old village under the new ditch and bank, the central enclosed area was still used after the ditch and bank had been built. Although the new bank partly blocked the old avenue, encroaching onto its southern edge, there was continued use of this routeway too, even as its flint surface became overgrown and buried under a thin layer of soil. Around 2400 BC orlater, new styles of pottery—known as Beakers—were deposited at the front of the decaying Southern Circle and in the nearby hollow where the large D-shaped building had once stood. We know from scientific analysis that Beakers in many parts of western Europe, including Britain, were used for alcoholic drinks, such as mead or ale. Research by chemist Anna Mukherjee has shown that the Durrington Walls Beakers contained lipids (fatty acids) deriving from dairy products. 9 These could have been milk, butter, or curds and whey; we cannot rule out the possibility that they were fermented to make an alcoholic drink.
Beakers were first used in Britain about fifty to a hundred years after the Southern Circle was erected, but Grooved Ware remained in use. In about 2300 BC—at least 150 years after the posts were erected—the holes of the Southern Circle’s decayed posts were dug out so that special deposits of Grooved Ware pottery (together with a few Beaker shards), worked flints, bone tools, and animal bones could be put in each of them. Some of these new pits were quickly filled in but others, such as the one with two human skulls, took hundreds of years to fill.
A Beaker pot from a site called Naboth’s Vineyard near Cowbridge in Wales. In both shape and decoration, it is like those found at Durrington Walls.
The radiocarbon dating results show that Durrington Walls in its various stages was in use for three centuries, from about 2600–2300 BC (notincluding some ephemeral traces of activity in the area during the previous millennium). What particularly interested us was the brief period of probably less than forty years (within 2500–2460 BC) during which it was the largest settlement anywhere in northwest Europe. Why did so many people come here? Where did they come from? Did they live here full time or did they come just for short stays at different seasons of the year?
We knew we could answer these questions if our excavations produced the right materials to analyze. The bones and teeth of the human skeleton, for example, preserve a record of our lives. Our diet can be reconstructed from microscopic wear-marks on our teeth, and from levels of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in our bones. 10 Our tooth enamel forms in childhood: For the rest of our lives we carry in our teeth (until they all fall out) the traces of the geology and environment in which we lived when we were very young. By measuring levels of strontium, sulphur, and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel, we can find out
One of the mysteries of Durrington Walls has always been where everybody lived while they constructed the henge ditch and bank. Although we discovered a previously unknown village, all the settlement areas that we’ve found were in use before the ditch was dug. Perhaps the ditch-diggers lived somewhere else entirely, or perhaps they set up camp further out, beyond the perimeter of the old village. A few years ago archaeologists found a number of Neolithic pits while monitoring the installation of a water pipe along the modern road north of Durrington Walls. 8 Perhaps these pits were part of this later, henge-builders’ settlement.
Although the enclosure of the henge covered the houses of the old village under the new ditch and bank, the central enclosed area was still used after the ditch and bank had been built. Although the new bank partly blocked the old avenue, encroaching onto its southern edge, there was continued use of this routeway too, even as its flint surface became overgrown and buried under a thin layer of soil. Around 2400 BC orlater, new styles of pottery—known as Beakers—were deposited at the front of the decaying Southern Circle and in the nearby hollow where the large D-shaped building had once stood. We know from scientific analysis that Beakers in many parts of western Europe, including Britain, were used for alcoholic drinks, such as mead or ale. Research by chemist Anna Mukherjee has shown that the Durrington Walls Beakers contained lipids (fatty acids) deriving from dairy products. 9 These could have been milk, butter, or curds and whey; we cannot rule out the possibility that they were fermented to make an alcoholic drink.
Beakers were first used in Britain about fifty to a hundred years after the Southern Circle was erected, but Grooved Ware remained in use. In about 2300 BC—at least 150 years after the posts were erected—the holes of the Southern Circle’s decayed posts were dug out so that special deposits of Grooved Ware pottery (together with a few Beaker shards), worked flints, bone tools, and animal bones could be put in each of them. Some of these new pits were quickly filled in but others, such as the one with two human skulls, took hundreds of years to fill.
A Beaker pot from a site called Naboth’s Vineyard near Cowbridge in Wales. In both shape and decoration, it is like those found at Durrington Walls.
The radiocarbon dating results show that Durrington Walls in its various stages was in use for three centuries, from about 2600–2300 BC (notincluding some ephemeral traces of activity in the area during the previous millennium). What particularly interested us was the brief period of probably less than forty years (within 2500–2460 BC) during which it was the largest settlement anywhere in northwest Europe. Why did so many people come here? Where did they come from? Did they live here full time or did they come just for short stays at different seasons of the year?
We knew we could answer these questions if our excavations produced the right materials to analyze. The bones and teeth of the human skeleton, for example, preserve a record of our lives. Our diet can be reconstructed from microscopic wear-marks on our teeth, and from levels of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in our bones. 10 Our tooth enamel forms in childhood: For the rest of our lives we carry in our teeth (until they all fall out) the traces of the geology and environment in which we lived when we were very young. By measuring levels of strontium, sulphur, and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel, we can find out
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