Neolithic Burial Mound Uncovered Near Stonehenge

Ancient Origins

A Neolithic burial mound near Stonehenge that experts refer to as the “House of the Dead” has been discovered in Wiltshire, England. According to archaeologists, the newly found tumulus in the Vale of Pewsey could possibly contain human remains that are more than 5,000 years old.

 “House of the Dead”
Discovered A team of students and staff from the University of Reading’s Archaeology Field School, with the help of volunteers from the area, has examined the site of a Neolithic long tumulus in a location known as Cat’s Brain – the first to be fully explored in Wiltshire in more than fifty years. The Cat’s Brain long tumulus, discovered in the heart of a farmer’s field halfway between the legendary prehistoric monuments of Avebury and Stonehenge, consists of two trenches edging what seems to be a central building. Researchers speculated that this could have possibly been covered with a rounded mass created naturally by the earth dug from the ditches, but has been cultivated flat over the centuries. The monument that researchers have referred to as the “House of the Dead” dates to the early Neolithic period and is the first barrow to be fully examined in Wiltshire since the 1960s.

Possible Neolithic burial site in a wheat field near Stonehenge, UK. (Screenshot Credit: Andy Burns)

The research team believes that this memorial could possibly contain human remains – hence the nickname “House of the Dead – which were buried there around 3,600 BC. The memorial was first noticed by aerial photos of the location and followed up by geophysical survey imagery.

Dr. Jim Leary, Director of the Archaeology Field School, said as Heritage Daily reports, “Opportunities to fully investigate long barrows are virtually unknown in recent times, and this represents a fantastic chance to carefully excavate one using the very latest techniques and technology. Members of the public now have the chance to visit us and see prehistory being unearthed as we search for human remains on the site. Discovering the buried remains of what could be the ancestors of those who lived around Stonehenge would be the cherry on the cake of an amazing project.”

British Long Barrows Long barrow style burial mounds are found throughout the British Isles, with a high concentration being found in the Cotswolds, a hill range which rolls gently through the picturesque countryside of 5 counties in central England, including Wiltshire. The need for long barrow style burial sites was explained in an Ancient Origins article when a similar site was excavated near Cirencester last year.

According to Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum:
 “Faced with the problem of disposing of the remains of their dead, many Neolithic communities chose to inter the bodies (or sometimes the cremated remains) in chambered tombs constructed inside distinctively shaped stone and soil mounds. These burial chambers and the access passages to them from outside were built of large slabs of stone (orthostats) and dry-stone walling. The covering mound was usually pear-shaped or roughly trapezoidal, often with a shallow ‘horned’ forecourt at one end, the whole surrounded by a low dry-stone wall. It has been estimated that each barrow could have taken 10 men some 7 months to build.”

Entrance to the West Kennet Long Barrow, in the same region as the new excavation in Wiltshire. (CC BY SA 3.0)

 Long barrows were the earliest examples of monumental architecture to be found in Britain, some dating back six millennia, although the one being explored at Cat’s Brain is thought to be around 5,000 years old, the same age as Stonehenge. Previous such monuments have been found to contain as many as 50 men, women and children. For example, the West Kennet long barrow nearby the latest excavation, contained 46 persons from babies to the elderly.

 An interesting development in the county occurred in 2014 when a newly constructed long barrow was opened to be used as a tomb for modern use. It has the capacity to hold 1000 urns of cremated remains.

The modern, functioning long barrow at All Cannings in Wiltshire started its use in 2014 (CC BY SA 4.0)

Phenomenal Discovery
After clearing the surface of the monument, the clear outline of the long barrow ditches is visible, as well as the footprint of the building. Next step for the team is to conclude the three-year Archaeology Field School project by excavating the site and unearth artifacts, bones, and other objects, that will be later analyzed closely. Experts suggest that this analysis will offer very important information and evidence for the residents and society in Britain during this remote period. Furthermore, the University of Reading’s Archaeology Field School is working at Marden henge, the largest henge in the country, constructed around 2,400 BC, also within the Vale of Pewsey.

Amanda Clarke, co-director of the Archaeology Field School, stated as Heritage Daily reports, “This incredible discovery of one of the UK’s first monuments offers a rare glimpse into this important period in history. We are setting foot inside a significant building that has lain forgotten and hidden for thousands of years.” Members of the public will be able to visit the site to see up close the archaeologists at work during an open day on Saturday 15 July.

Top image: Archaeologists looking at aerial photography found a hidden long barrow, or Neolithic burial chamber, hidden beneath a wheat field Credit: Archaeological Field School, University of Reading

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Prehistoric village people

History Extra

Houses of the Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae. (Photo by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Getty Images)

Packed with historic sites of all ages from prehistoric remains to World War II wrecks in Scapa Flow, there’s more than enough history on mainland Orkney and the outer islands to hold your interest for weeks.

It’s the prehistoric remains for which Orkney is most remarkable, particularly those of the Neolithic period (around 4000–2000BC). This was when agriculture first became established in Britain, and people began to start living in permanent settlements based around farms. This was a change from the mobile lifestyle of the Mesolithic period (10000–4000BC), when they moved following the seasonal round of hunting and gathering.

The Mesolithic people have left little evidence of their passing in these islands. Their settlements weren’t built to last, so the ephemeral remains of their homes can only be traced by careful archaeological excavation. With the onset of the Neolithic and the move from hunting to agriculture as the way of life, however, our ancestors began to make more of a dent on the landscape: their settlements, their monuments, and sometimes even their trackways and field systems survive.

It’s generally easier to see the remains of death, burial and ritual of our Neolithic forebears than it is to see their settlements. These were the people who built long barrows, such as the well-preserved example at West Kennet in Wiltshire, as tombs for their ancestors. They are also responsible for henges and stone circles, Stonehenge being the most obvious example, and even more enigmatic ritual monuments like the massive man-made mound of Silbury Hill, again in Wiltshire.

Large earthwork and stone monuments like these are easy to spot in the landscape, but it’s harder to find evidence of the places where the Neolithic people who built them lived. And that’s where Orkney comes into its own – here you can see both settlements and monuments in one place; that’s why much of the mainland island has been designated a World Heritage Site. Our voyage of discovery takes in the heart of Neolithic Orkney: Maeshowe is one of the finest examples of a prehistoric burial mound in Britain, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar are impressive examples of the ritual monuments of the time, whilst the villages of Skara Brae and Barnhouse are amongst the best-preserved Neolithic settlement sites in Britain. With this astonishing combination of archaeological sites, the area is one of the only places in the country where you can get a real feel for the way of life of Britain’s first farmers.

Orkney archaeologist Julie Gibson knows more than most about the islands’ heritage. She sums up what you can see; “If you go to Barnhouse, you are actually in a village lived in by the people who put up the Stones of Stenness next door.”

The reason you can still see Barnhouse and Skara Brae boils down to the availability of natural resources. High winds have been battering the islands for thousands of years, so trees have struggled to survive. On mainland Britain, excavations have shown that Neolithic settlements were of wood, which has since rotted away. The Orcadians lacked timber but did have a ready supply of a more permanent material: stone. Their villages survive because they are constructed of sandstone slabs, which lie ready-quarried by the sea all around the coast.

“Because they built in stone, so it leaves everything in 3D,” explains Julie. “In the rest of the country you’re dealing with wooden structures in prehistory, so archaeologists are left with negative evidence and have to play the game of join-the-dots. Here you’ve got positive evidence so the past is that much clearer.”

There aren’t many places in the world that can boast a practically intact 5,000-year-old village. Skara Brae was occupied from around 3100BC to 2500BC, and after that it was hidden under a sand dune until a wild storm revealed it in the winter of 1850. The village is unlike any you’ll see today. It’s a semi-subterranean place, built inside a huge mound of decomposed vegetable matter, dung, animal bones, stone and shell. The midden was built on the site first and then roundhouses and connecting passageways were dug into the massive compost heap. The homes were therefore cocooned from the excesses of Atlantic weather by a layer of insulating matter.

Ten houses are visible at Skara Brae (though they were not all built and occupied at the same time). They are single-room affairs revetted with dry stone walling and each one would have had a roof supported either by timber, if it was available, or whalebone. The roofs are gone now so you look down into the houses from above, and what you see inside is amazing. All the furniture was of stone, so beds, cupboards, dressers, stone boxes, hearths and doors all survive.

_{The interior of a Neolithic house at Skara Brae, Orkney. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)}

Each house has about 36 square metres of floor space, more than half the average floor space of a modern two-bed house (61.5 square metres), so an estate agent would probably describe them as spacious studio apartments. Their low doorways and the winding passages prevented the wind rushing in, and with a fire in the central hearth, you can imagine a picture of cosy domesticity you wouldn’t normally associate with prehistory. As all the houses are similar in size and fittings without anything that looks like a chief’s dwelling, Skara Brae is generally thought to have been an egalitarian society where all members were roughly equal in status.

Life wasn’t idyllic for the people of Skara Brae, however, as Julie explains. “If you look at the skeletal material, you became very aware of the humanity of the people you’re dealing with. Terrible arthritis, heads grooved by carrying baskets round their heads. These were people only marginally shorter than us, people who are clearly us – only a long time ago – whose thought processes you have to reach through analogy – that’s what makes it difficult to understand them.”

We may not know what they thought  but we do have a fair idea of what they did during the day. Archaeologists have concluded the villagers were fishermen and farmers who grew barley and wheat, kept cattle, sheep and pigs, and supplemented their diet with seafood and sea-birds. The 20 or so families that lived in the village seem to have had peaceful relations with their neighbours around the islands as Skara Brae wasn’t built for defence and no weaponry has been found. Several similar villages have been discovered in the Orkneys, including the nearby one at Barnhouse.

Instead of fighting one another, the villagers appear to have devoted their spare time to building tombs and monuments. And they must have had a fair bit of time to spare; it’s estimated that it would have taken 150,000 hours to build the two stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar. The Stones of Stenness are thought to have been in existence by 3000BC, so it was contemporary with the occupation of Skara Brae (3100–2500BC). Brodgar is thought to be a little later, probably dating to the middle of the third millennium BC. The huge circular tomb of Maeshowe is also thought to be roughly contemporary – built some time after 3000BC and possibly used for centuries thereafter.

The two stone circles sit on narrow promontories of land looking out over the lochs of Harray and Stenness. Brodgar is the bigger, but both occupy dramatically scenic locations. The sheer scale of Brodgar can’t fail to impress and bring home the amount of work that went into it.

Maeshowe is an entirely different sort of monument. You can see its mound from the Stones of Stenness, and though it’s not much to look at on the outside, when you get inside you know you’re in a very special place.

You have to shuffle through a low narrow slab-lined passage to get inside. Consider as you do that your shoulders are rubbing on the same stones that the Neolithic builders touched 5,000 years ago. Once inside, you’re standing in one of the best examples of a chambered tomb in Britain.

These sorts of tombs are numerous in the Orkneys and archaeologists conjecture, from what’s been found in the others, that each of the side cells at Maeshowe would have held the bones of many members of the local population. In similar monuments, the bones of many people have been discovered, jumbled together in a pattern not comprehensible to modern eyes.

We don’t know for sure what was in Maeshowe because the tomb was raided by Vikings 1,000 years ago (you can see their runic graffiti on the walls) and the place contained only a single skull fragment when excavated in the 19th century. Nevertheless, it’s a uniquely atmospheric place to visit and a supreme example of the Neolithic stonemason’s skill.

Given that all these mighty monuments were built at around the same time as Skara Brae was occupied, and lie only a few miles from the settlement, it’s an obvious conclusion to make that the villagers were involved in the construction and use of the stones and tomb. To add weight to the argument, a specific type of pottery, grooved ware, has been found in excavations at all these places.

 As you wander round the stones at Stenness and Brodgar, or crouch down at the entrance of Maeshowe, there’s one question that springs to mind: ‘Why did the villagers of Skara Brae go to all the trouble of constructing these places?’ We’ll never know for certain. Without written records, all we can do is theorise. It is likely some ritual was carried out inside the circles, perhaps based on astronomical calculations, or on some sort of religion, but that’s as much as we can say without delving into mere conjecture.

Archaeologists suggest that monuments like Maeshowe were required in the Neolithic period, because people needed, in a way they’d never felt before, to associate themselves with the land they had started to farm so others couldn’t take it away. One way to create a sense of ownership was to develop an ancestor cult, burying their forefathers’ bones near the land they considered theirs and performing ceremonies to strengthen their age-old claim to their territory.

One thing is certain; it took a massive community effort to build these structures. It was certainly more than a job that just the small population of Skara Brae could have managed, and this has led to another theory; that the building of Maeshowe suggests a move from self-governing villages to a regional authority which organised people throughout the Orkneys to build the tomb.

The social bonds of close-knit settlements like Skara Brae would have broken down as people began to associate more with the regional power than the old independent village structure, perhaps leaving the village to live in smaller farmsteads. It’s a reasonable explanation for why Skara Brae was abandoned; another more prosaic possibility is that the place was overwhelmed by a huge sandstorm.

Either way, the magnificent remains are there to see today. If you want to get a first-hand impression of the way of life, and death, of the first farmers in the British Isles, Orkney is the closest place you’ll get to experiencing it.

Britons were eating frogs' legs 8,000 years before the French

History Extra

They’ve long been considered a French delicacy, but a new archeological dig in Wiltshire suggests frogs' legs may have been first enjoyed in Britain.
Among evidence of life in the eighth millennia BC, found at the Blick Mead site at Amesbury, researchers from the University of Buckingham discovered the burnt leg bone of a toad.
The team also found small bones of trout or salmon, and burnt Aurochs bones (the predecessor of cows).
The finds date to between 6250BC and 7600BC, making the discovery the earliest evidence of a cooked toad or frog’s leg found in the world, and around eight millennia before the French.
David Jacques, senior research fellow in archaeology at the University of Buckingham, said: “It would appear that thousands of years ago people were eating a Heston Blumenthal-style menu on this site, one and a quarter miles from Stonehenge, consisting of toads’ legs, aurochs, wild boar and red deer with hazelnuts for main, another course of salmon and trout, and finishing off with blackberries.
“This is significant for our understanding of the way people were living around 5,000 years before the building of Stonehenge and it begs the question – where are the frogs now?”
The latest information is based on a report by fossil mammal specialist Simon Parfitt, of the Natural History Museum, who looked at the find.

The site already boasts one of the biggest collections of flints and cooked animal bones in northwestern Europe. It has resulted in 12,000 finds, all from the Mesolithic era, which fell between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic.
The team hopes to confirm Amesbury as the UK's oldest continuous settlement. The dig, which will run until 25 October, is being filmed and made into a documentary by the BBC, to be screened at a later date.
Andy Rhind-Tutt, chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust and co-ordinator of the community involvement on the dig, said the site at Blick Mead could help to explain why Stonehenge is where it is.
“No one would have built Stonehenge without there being something unique and really special about the area,” he said.
“There must have been something significant here beforehand and Blick Mead, with its constant temperature spring sitting alongside the river Avon, may well be it.
“I believe that as we uncover more about the site over the coming days and weeks, we will discover it to be the greatest, oldest and most significant Mesolithic home base ever found in Britain.”

Major Discovery: 4,500-year-old megalithic super-henge found buried one mile from Stonehenge

Ancient Origins

An enormous row of 90 megalithic stones has been found buried beneath the prehistoric super-henge of Durrington Walls earthworks, only one mile from the world-famous site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.  The huge line of megalithic stones lies 3 feet underground and has just been discovered through the use of sophisticated radar equipment. The finding is believed to have been a huge ritual monument.
“We’re looking at one of the largest stone monuments in Europe and it has been under our noses for something like 4,000 years… It’s truly remarkable.” said Professor Vince Gaffney, from the University of Bradford and co-director of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which made the discovery. “We don’t think there’s anything quite like this anywhere else in the world. This is completely new and the scale is extraordinary,” he added. 
The discovery was announced at the opening of the British Science Festival in Bradford, and has been described as the most exciting finding of Neolithic Britain for many years.
The Irish Times, which has been reporting live from the Science Festival, reports that the giant monoliths are up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall, and are believed to be sarsen stones – sandstone blocks which were also used for the heelstone and circle uprights at Stonehenge. The stones are lying horizontally and archaeologists believe they were deliberately pushed over and covered with earth.
“Not only does the new evidence demonstrate a completely unexpected phase of monumental architecture at one of the greatest ceremonial sites in prehistoric Europe, the new stone row could well be contemporary with the famous Stonehenge sarsen circle or even earlier,” said Professor Gaffney.

A reconstruction depicting how the row of megalithic stones would have looked. Credit: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute.

The row of megalithic stones formed the southern arm of a c-shaped ritual enclosure, which faced directly towards the River Avon, the rest of which was made up of an artificially scarped natural elevation in the ground. The monument was later converted from a c-shaped to a roughly circular enclosure, now known as Durrington Walls – Britain’s largest pre-historic henge, roughly 12 times the size of Stonehenge itself.
Durrington Walls measures around 1,640 feet (500 meters) in diameter and is surrounded by a ditch of up to 54ft (16 meters) wide and a bank of more than three foot (1 meter) high.  It is built on the same summer solstice alignment as Stonehenge. The enormous structure is believed to have formed a gigantic ceremonial complex in the Stonehenge landscape.
 “It was probably for a ritual of some sort or it could have marked out an arena,” said Professor Gaffney. “These monuments were very theatrical. This a design to impress and empower.”
One theory is that the row of megaliths marked a ritual procession route.

• Fifteen previously unknown monuments discovered underground in Stonehenge landscape
• Body of 4,000-year-old teenager near Stonehenge may give clues about Bronze Age lives
• Radar finds HUNDREDS more megalithic monuments, chapels, and shrines around Stonehenge

The c-shaped structure of Durrington Walls with the line of newly-discovered megaliths along the southern arm. Credit: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute.

The completed super-henge after the stones were toppled over and buried. Credit: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute.

“These latest results have produced tantalising evidence of what lies beneath the ancient earthworks at Durrington Walls,” Dr Nick Snashall, National Trust Archaeologist for the Avebury and Stonehenge World Heritage Site, told The Telegraph. “The presence of what appear to be stones, surrounding the site of one of the largest Neolithic settlements in Europe adds a whole new chapter to the Stonehenge story.”
Featured image: The earliest phase of Durrington Walls with its line of megaliths. Credit: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute.
By April Holloway

Oldest Twin Remains Found in Siberia

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News

A team of Canadian and Russian researchers investigating an early Neolithic cemetery in Siberia have identified the world’s oldest set of human twins, buried with their young mother.
The skeleton of the woman was exhumed in 1997 from a hunter-gatherer cemetery in south-eastern Siberia. Found with 15 marmot teeth — decorative accessories which were probably attached to clothing — the remains were photographed and labelled, but were not investigated by anthropologists.
Now Angela Lieverse, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and colleagues Andrzej Weber from the University of Alberta, Canada, and Vladimir Bazaliiskii from Irkutsk University, Russia, have examined the skeleton and found remains of twin fetuses nestled between the pelvis and upper legs.
Ancient Images of a Mother Giving Birth Found
The twins, about 36 to 40 weeks old, probably suffocated during their mother’s troubled labor nearly 8,000 years ago.
“This is not only one of the oldest archaeologically documented cases of death during childbirth, but also the earliest confirmed set of human twins in the world,” Lieverse said.
Radiocarbon dating on small samples of the mother’s and twins’ bones confirmed the skeletal remains are about 7,700 years old.
Death from childbirth was quite common in prehistoric and pre-modern societies, but it has rarely been documented.
Video: How Twins Advance Science
This could be because women and their children were rarely buried together or simply because the delicate remains of the unborn didn’t survive.
Evidence of twins is exceptionally rare.
“They are basically invisible from the archaeological record,” Lieverse told Discovery News.
She noted that only one other case of confirmed human twins has been reported in the archaeological literature. The case involved 400-year-old twin remains, aged about 24 week gestation, which were excavated from a burial in South Dakota. However, death for the twins and their mother did not appear to have resulted from complications related to premature childbirth.
Twins Born 87 Days Apart
According to Lieverse, the skeleton of the Siberian woman, who lived with her Neolithic community near the shore of Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest, tells “a compelling story and very personal window into life—and death—almost 8,000 years ago.”
The researcher estimates the woman was in her early twenties when she went into labor. She likely didn’t know she was having twins.
The location of the fetal remains suggests the first baby was breech — coming out feet first — a dangerous condition complicated by the presence of the twin.
While the first baby was partially delivered, at some point labor was obstructed, either by interlocked twins, head entrapment or some other condition such as the infant’s arms beside or behind its head.
Supermom Primates Raise Twins
There was nothing her community could do for her.
“Without the skills, experience and technology of modern medical practictioners, this case of dystocia [obstructed labor] would have been a virtual death sentence for all three individuals,” Lieverse and colleagues wrote in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.
Obstructed labor accounted for as many as 70 percent of maternal deaths worldwide even in the late 20th century.
In the end, the mother would have succumbed to infection, bleeding or exhaustion, taking her suffocated twins with her to the grave.
Image: The skeleton of the mother in her grave pit. The small bones in her pelvic-abdominal area and between her thighs are the remains of the infants. Credit: Angela Lieverse.

Discovery Of Neolithic Gift Shop Suggests Stonehenge Always Meant As Tourist Attraction

The Onion

WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND—In a significant finding that sheds new light on the mysterious monument’s past, a team of archaeologists working near Stonehenge this week unearthed the remnants of a primitive gift shop, suggesting that the site had always served as a tourist attraction. “After uncovering piles of Stone Age goblets, deer-hide tunics, and animal-bone bracelets all etched with images of Stonehenge, we realized that this was not an ancient Celtic ritual site or Druidic pilgrimage destination as previously thought, but instead a popular attraction for Neolithic vacationers,” said lead researcher Amelia Stroud of Oxford University, who explained that preserved footprints found at the site indicated that ancient visitors had to walk through the gift area on their way out of the circular stone structure. “We also found a wide array of ancient coins at the site, clear evidence that large bands of Romans and Anglo-Saxon tribesmen came from far away to visit the attraction and were charged exorbitant prices while there.” Stroud went on to speculate that numerous small rocks found scattered around the site were most likely the remains of prehistoric “Make Your Own Stonehenge” kits

World's largest solar boat on odyssey to find ancient inhabited site in Greece

Scientists on catamaran PlanetSolar will search for village built by Neothlithic Europeans and also survey Aegean Sea

The world's largest solar-powered boat, the PlanetSolar catamaran, passes the Corinth Canal in central Greece on its way to hunt for a Neolithic village. Photograph: Vasilis Psomas/EPA

The world's largest solar boat, the catamaran PlanetSolar, is to embark on a Greek mission to find one of the oldest sites inhabited by man in Europe, an organiser said on Monday.
Starting on 11 August, a team of Swiss and Greek scientists will seek a "prehistoric countryside" in the south-eastern Peloponnese peninsula, University of Geneva researcher Julien Beck told AFP. The month-long mission, jointly organised with the Swiss school of archaeology and the Greek culture ministry, will search around the Franchthi cave in the Argolic gulf, where early Europeans lived between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods.
The cave was eventually abandoned around 3,000 BC but scientists assume the inhabitants must have built a village nearby.
"This cave was inhabited continuously for around 35,000 years... and we have reason to believe that towards the end of the Neolithic era, the inhabitants moved to a neighbouring site that is now underwater," Beck said.
"If we could find this village, it would be among the oldest in Greece and Europe," he said.
PlanetSolar, built in Germany, is 31 metres (100 feet) long and is powered by over 500 square metres of solar panels.
In 2012, the catamaran became the first vessel to circumnavigate the globe purely on solar energy. It has an average speed of 7.5 knots, or 14 kilometres (8.6 miles) per hour.
Whilst in Greece it will also conduct geophysical research and assist underwater archaeologists in Aegean Sea surveys.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/28/solar-boat-catamaran-search-ancient-inhabited-site-greece