Archaeologists Discover a Stone Age “Cult” Henge Site and 4,000 Year-old Human Remains

Ancient Origins

A team of archaeologists has discovered a Stone Age “cult” henge site and human remains that are estimated to be nearly 4,000 years old. Experts suggest that the human remains, found near Stratford, could belong to some of south Warwickshire’s earliest residents.

 Henge was Most Likely Used for Rituals
 A group of archaeologists recently discovered a Stone Age “cult” henge site and ancient human remains at a real estate development of residential buildings in Newbold-on-Stour, on fields at Mansell Farm in Stratford. Unlike Stonehenge, the newly found henge is a plain design consisting of a ditch dug into segments and a bank made up of material thrown up from the ditch.

 Archaeology Warwickshire Business Manager Stuart Palmer couldn’t hide his excitement about the discovery and stated as Stratford Observer reports , “This exciting discovery is of national importance as it provides tangible evidence for cult or religious belief in late Stone Age Warwickshire. Amazingly it is the second such find by the team. In 2015 a group of four henges was excavated in Bidford although the burials at this site were all cremated. Prior to this there were no known henges in Warwickshire leading some archaeologists to believe that a different kind of cult was prevalent in the region.”

Excavations at Mansell Farm, Newbold-on-Stour (Credit: Archaeology Warwickshire)

Furthermore, archaeology Warwickshire Project Officer Nigel Page, who excavated the site added as Stratford Observer always reports , “Exactly what the henge was used for is not certain, but it is likely to be have been used for rituals, some of which may have been associated with cosmological events over 4000 years ago. Originally it would have been surrounded by a bank which would probably have been on the outside of the ditch. Unlike other types of site the ditch and bank were not for defense, but were intended to close off the interior of the henge and make it an arena for whatever festivals or rituals were taking place within.”

Human Remains Could Belong to the Earliest Residents of South Warwickshire
As we already mentioned, the findings also included the buried remains of five individuals which survived as complete skeletons, a very peculiar and unusual phenomenon for the area, archaeologists stated. The individuals were buried very carefully as none of the bodies was found to be positioned on top of another. Experts suggest that the buried individuals could be some of the earliest residents in the area and they estimate that the remains are ancient, somewhere around 4,000 years old. Nigel Page tells Stratford Observer “The rare survival of the skeletons will provide an important opportunity to gain a unique insight into the lives of the people who not only knew the henge and its landscape, but who were probably some of the region’s earliest residents”.

Henge burial detail (Credit: Archaeology Warwickshire)

The three middle burials were facing west, out from the henge, while the two in the two opposite corners were facing east, into the henge. The seemingly calculated positioning of the bodies, indicates that the buried individuals possibly belonged to the same group (most likely were members of the same family), while the people who buried them obviously knew that the grave was owned by the specific group or family.

Further Analysis and Examination Will Reveal More Information
The skeletons have now been unearthed from the site and researchers are getting ready to conduct detailed testing and further analysis, in order to discover more details about who those individuals were.

 Nigel Page told Stratford Observer , “The skeletons have been recovered from the site and will undergo scientific analysis to try to answer the many questions that their presence on the site has raised. For example, it is hoped that the sex and age of the people can be established and it may also be possible to determine if there was a family connection between them,” clearly implying that there's more to come from this intriguing discovery.

Top image: Aerial view of circular henge remains and burials (Credit: Archaeology Warwickshire)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Why Would You Cremate and Bury Your Home? A Bizarre Viking Ritual Explained

Ancient Origins

The Vikings had a very bizarre tradition that might be totally unique: they buried their own homes. From the Bronze Age until the Viking Age, historians have noted that burial mounds were placed on top of the remains of Viking longhouses. The internal posts that served as roof-supporting beams were usually taken off before the house was set on fire and once the house had burned to the ground, one or more burial mounds were positioned on top of its remnants.

Vikings Burnt and Buried Their Own Houses
As Heritage Daily reports, Marianne Hem Eriksen, a postdoc at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo has investigated these uncommon “deaths” and burials of Scandinavian longhouses for quite some time now. She says, “I studied seven different house burials from the Iron Age in Scandinavia, in five different locations: Högom in Sweden; Ullandhaug in Rogaland; Brista in Uppland, Sweden; Jarlsberg in Vestfold; and Engelaug in Hedmark.”

Eriksen believes that the burial mounds were not always tied with human death, but instead they could possibly mark the cremation and burial of a house within Viking society. She explained to Heritage Daily, “In some cases we have been unable to find human remains, even in places where we could expect such remains to have been preserved. Nevertheless, archaeologists have more or less implicitly assumed that somewhere or other, there must be a deceased individual.

Artist’s interpretation of a ‘Viking Village.’ (Lukasz Wiktorzak/ArtStation)

Living in a Typical Viking Longhouse
As Robin Whitlock suggests in a previous Ancient Origins article, a typical longhouse was a long and probably very chaotic structure, plagued by noise and dirt. This was primarily because a number of families tended to live in the same house along with their animals (that were kept at one end of the structure.) This area would also be where the crops were stored and it would have been separated into stalls for animals and crops. The fire was a source of heat and light, but there was no chimney and that meant the longhouse would have been very smoky. Sometimes, additional lighting was provided in the form of stone lamps with fish liver oil or whale oil as the fuel. Seating was either in the form of wooden benches along the walls or an available spot on the floor.

The walls of a longhouse were commonly made from a structure of wooden poles with wattle and daub infilling. In Denmark, some longhouses had forges inside them, although more commonly the forge was housed in a separate building. The size of the longhouse depended on the wealth of the owner and in some areas of Denmark royal longhouses were located in settlements within round earthen embankments consisting of four longhouses. Each longhouse accommodated the crew of a ship and their families. The roof was made of thatch or wooden shingles.

Reconstruction of a Viking house from the ring castle Fyrkat near Hobro, Denmark. (Malene Thyssen/CC BY SA 3.0)

Can a House Die?
The question popping up from such practices is simple: Can a house (or any object for that matter) die? Marianne Hem Eriksen had to dig deep into anthropology’s mysteries to find more sources about people’s attachment to their houses in various cultures. She told Heritage Daily,

“To people in Madagascar, a house has its own life cycle. It is born, lives, grows old and dies. The Batammaliba people of West Africa perform rituals during the construction of houses, the same rites of passage that they perform for newborn babies, adolescents and adults. When the house is completed, they perform a ritual where they ‘kill’ the house. The house has been alive during the building process, and must be killed to make it habitable for people. Many cultures believe that the house is metaphorically linked to the human body.”

 The Link Between Human Bodies and Objects in Viking Culture
After years of research and study on the topic, Eriksen is pretty convinced that the Vikings saw a link between the human body and the house they were living in during their lifetime. As she told Heritage Daily:

“Many of the Norse words that are related to houses are derived from the human body. The word window comes from wind and eye and refers to openings in the walls where the wind comes in. The word gable, i.e. the top of the end wall of the house, means head or skull. This connection between bodies and houses may have led them to think that a house has some kind of essence, some kind of soul.”

‘Viking Long house door. Norway, Epcot Center.’ (One Lucky Guy/CC BY NC SA 2.0)

This possibly explains why Norse people during that period would often give their house a proper funeral when it had completed its circle of life. As Eriksen explained:

“By burning down the house they may have had a wish to cremate it, to liberate the life force of the house. If houses and people could be part of a network that had ‘agency’ – vitality and personality – this could at least be part of the explanation for the longevity of longhouses in Scandinavia.”

 Eriksen is currently continuing her study on the topic and has published an article on the same in the European Journal of Archaeology.

Viking Longhouse – Reconstruction. (Eric Gross/CC BY 2.0)

Top Image: ‘Light and Structure’ - Reconstruction of Viking Longhouse: Central Jutland, Denmark. Source: Eric Gross/CC BY 2.0

By Theodoros Karasavvas