Stonehenge and Nearby Stone Circles Were Newcomers to Landscape worked by Ice Age hunters

Ancient Origins

About 5,000 years ago, not far from Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in England, some people built a stone circle smaller than its more famous counterpart. But for some reason, sometime after they built it, they dismantled the circle of bluestones and removed them.

Stonehenge and “Bluestonehenge,” as researchers have dubbed it, and other manmade features within a mile or two of the famous site were newcomers among some very ancient human-worked features in the landscape, a group of researchers says.
The archaeologists published an article this month about Bluestonehenge in the journal Antiquity (closed access) that says it and Stonehenge, a third stone circle several hundred meters away known as Amesbury henge and another at Durrington Walls came much later than when Stone Age hunter-gatherers began building features in wood in the area.

A digital reconstruction of Bluestonehenge by Henry Rothwell (Wikimedia Commons)

About 9,000 years ago, some people built wooden features that may have been ceremonial or ritual in nature—possibly aligned to solstice sunsets. Chemical traces of the pinewood are still detectable in the postholes in the soil near Stonehenge.

Prehistoric people built Bluestonehenge out of bluestones that came from far away and later removed those stones to Stonehenge, the researchers think. The smaller Bluestonehenge monument was connected to its more famous counterpart by a feature called the Avenue—a broad road leading from Stonehenge to the River Avon about 500 meters (1640.4 feet) away.
“Stonehenge has long been known to form part of a larger prehistoric landscape,” write archaeologist Michael J. Allen and his colleagues. “In particular, it is part of a composite monument that includes the Stonehenge Avenue and the newly discovered West Amesbury henge, which is situated at the eastern end of the Avenue beside the River Avon. Inside that henge lies an earlier circle of stoneholes, formerly holding small standing stones; this is known as ‘Bluestonehenge’.”

Features of the immediate landscape of Stonehenge include three stone circles, at Stonehenge itself, at the Neolithic village of Durrington Walls, which are still standing, and another that was taken down—Bluestonehenge. (Drawn by Joshua Pollard for Antiquity)

The researchers said the Avenue has been known for centuries, but in 2008 and 2009 the Stonehenge Riverside Project did more explorations and dug new trenches and ascertained that the road reached the River Avon.
“The aim was to establish whether the Avenue was built in more than one phase, and whether it actually reached the river, thereby addressing the theory that Stonehenge was part of a larger complex linked by the river to Durrington Walls henge and its newly discovered avenue, two miles upstream,” they wrote.
All along from 1719 AD through to the present day, researchers have been analyzing the Avenue and digging in it to determine its parameters and purposes. Scholars have proposed theories about the prehistoric banks, ruts, ditches and ridges and stripes in the soil of the Avenue. There has been speculation that the ancient people dug the ditches of the Avenue and built other monuments in the area to align with the winter and summer solstice sunsets.

The Avenue, a road leading from Stonehenge to Bluestonehenge at the River Avon, was part of a larger network of monuments in the area, including stone circles at West Amesbury and Durrington Walls. (Photograph by Adam Stanford in Antiquity)

Stonehenge is near three Early Mesolithic postholes that held pine posts 1 meter (3.1 feet) in diameter. These postholes are 250 meters (820.2 feet) west of the Avenue and hint “at the possibility that this unusual solstitial alignment, formed by the ridges and stripes, was recognised long before the Neolithic. These vertical pine posts or tree-trunks were erected, probably one after the other, in the centuries around 7000 BC by hunter-gatherers, three millennia before the beginning of agriculture in Britain. Monuments built by hunter-gatherers are generally rare; although large pits are known from this period, the Stonehenge postholes are unparalleled anywhere for the Early Mesolithic of Northern Europe.”
Also, along the River Avon researchers have found activity from the 8^th millennium BC through the 5^th millennium BC, “making it, potentially, an unusually ‘persistent place’ within the early Holocene,” the authors wrote. The Holocene was the most recent Ice Age that began around 10,000 years ago.

Stonehenge is situated among a number of nearby prehistoric monuments, including the newly discovered Bluestonehenge, a smaller circle that was 500 meters away at the end of a road leading to the River Avon. (Wikimedia Commons photo/Michael Osmenda)

As for the bluestones of Bluestonehenge, which are missing, the researchers speculate they were taken to Stonehenge. They say they are uncertain of the date of construction of Bluestonehenge, but it occurred about the same time the people were digging the ditches of the Avenue, building West Amesbury henge and rearranging some other bluestones at Stonehenge.
These works were possibly carried out by people of the Beakers culture, the authors wrote.
“The arrival of Beakers and accompanying continental European styles of mortuary practice and material culture signalled a major social and cultural transition in Britain, including the decline of large-scale labour mobilisation for megalith-building,” their paper states.
One of the authors, archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, has speculated that stone henges were meant for the dead, and wood henges found in the vicinity were features meant for living people.
Top image: Stonehenge  England (public domain)
By Mark Miller

Britain’s prehistoric stone circles

History Extra

Stonehenge. © Dreamstime

Stonehenge is, for many of us, the one place that represents Britain’s prehistory. The celebrated stone circle standing proud on Salisbury Plain with its trademark lintel-topped sarsens has been an enduring source of fascination for millennia. The first monument there, a circular ditch and bank, was dug in c2900 BC, and a timber or stone circle erected inside it. Then, much later, in c2400 BC, the first monoliths of local rock were brought in. Over the course of the next several hundred years, stones were put up, taken down, moved around, added to, and then finally re-erected to the shape we see today.
Stonehenge is undeniably a stone circle, but it’s not a henge, even though it has lent its name to the group of monuments that go under that title. The concept of the ‘henge’ was introduced by a man called Thomas Kendrick in 1932 and technically, a henge is a circular earthen bank with a ditch inside it and one or more entrances through the bank. At Stonehenge, there is a circular bank, but it is inside a ditch, so these elements are the wrong way round. Nevertheless, stone circles and henges do appear to be connected parts of a tradition that developed in Britain from around 3000 to 2000 BC – in other words, during the later Neolithic period (when agriculture began here) and moving into the earlier Bronze Age (when we see the first use of metals, from about 2400 BC).
Stone circles are often positioned within henges, sometimes in replacement for earlier timber circles, so there is a link between the two types of monument, though it’s not an absolutely clear one, as Richard Bradley explains: “Henges and stone circles are separate things that often coalesce. You’ve got plenty of stone circles that don’t have henges, and plenty of henges that don’t have stone circles. They each can pursue an independent existence but they are both different expressions of a more basic idea that special places ought to be circular, which seems quite natural to us, but large parts of Europe don’t have circular monuments in prehistory.”

10 facts about Stonehenge

It’s possible that the tradition has its origins in northern Britain, perhaps in Orkney, and spread south from there. Stone circles number 1,000 across the country, while there are
around 120 henges known. Given the large size of some of these places, the construction of these monuments would have required a considerable number of people to build them. They indicate a “massive control of labour” in the view of Richard Bradley, and what’s particularly odd is that we don’t know where these labourers lived. Their monuments survive, but their houses (rare exceptions aside, particularly in Orkney) are lost to us, so in the later Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age, these henges and stones circles seem to have been the prime concerns of the people who built them.
What we do know is people were coming from a distance to these places. Settlements are not always found in their immediate vicinity. Combined with finds of exotic objects in and around the circles, the evidence from isotope analysis of the bones of animals eaten at these sites points to the fact that people were travelling to get to them. “I think we can start to talk about pilgrimage,” says Richard Bradley. What were they coming to do? Well, eating seems to have been a big thing. Feasting, particularly on pork, is attested by excavated remains of animal bones.
Similarly, archaeological finds indicate that burial and commemoration of the dead also appears to have been going on. There was the deliberate deposition of unusual objects in the ground. Also, the observation of basic astronomical events would appear to have been practised, as many of the monuments have alignments that lend themselves to the solstices. Those are the main things that we can talk about with any sense of certainty, but of course that hasn’t stopped archaeologists and others from coming up with a multitude of theories about the purpose of these places.

Stonehenge: a prehistoric tourist trap

What’s interesting is that their role seems to shift over time, notes Richard Bradley: “There’s a gradual change from public buildings – big houses I call them – where we see wooden structures with a lot of animal bone and a lot of debris, to stone settings usually with cremation burials. Then there’s a very last phase of use at stone circles which is perhaps more northern than southern. They were used all over again in the late Bronze Age (1200–800 BC) as cremation cemeteries and cremation pyres.”
So these circular monuments have had a long life and no doubt have meant different things to different people. That’s an attribute they maintain to this day, as anyone passing Stonehenge on a solstice will be able to confirm.

 

Places to visit

1) The Hurlers, Cornwall

Where you can see how stone circles sat within ritual landscapes

One of the interesting points about henges and stone circles is that they don’t exist in isolation. They are often surrounded by burial mounds, to create wider ritual landscapes. At The Hurlers, on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, there are three well-preserved stone circles arranged over open ground in a line, a grouping which is unusual in itself.
As with many of these sites, we don’t have definite dates for their construction, but they are assumed to be late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. Not far away at Rillaton was an early Bronze Age burial mound, which was dug into in the 19th century. It turned out to be one of the richest early Bronze Age burials discovered.
A skeleton was found along with a fabulous gold cup, the Rillaton Cup, and numerous other objects. Curiously this cup found its way into the royal household where it was used to store the collar studs of King George V, before it was passed on to the British Museum, where it can still be seen today.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

2) Stanton Drew, Bath & NE Somerset

Where stones replaced timber circles

In and around this small village south of Bristol, there are three stone circles grouped together, along with a three-stone cove (a cove being a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of stones) in a pub garden, plus some bits of avenues of paired stones leading into the circles. It adds up to one of the largest collections of prehistoric standing stones in the country.
There doesn’t seem to have been a substantial earthwork here, but geophysical survey
has suggested that the stones replaced timber structures, one of which is probably the biggest timber setting that we know of from the Neolithic. The process of replacing timber with stone is repeated elsewhere across the country and might be associated with the idea of moving away from the use of public places linked with the living to more private sites of the dead. Interestingly, the stones used here come from a number of different local sources, so it may be that different groups of people were contributing labour and materials.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

3) The Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, Orkney

Where the tradition of henge building may have begun

Orkney is a paradise for Neolithic enthusiasts, so much so that a large part of it has been designated as a World Heritage Site. Aside from the astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic village at Skara Brae and the magnificently atmospheric chambered tomb of Maes Howe, there’s a stunning pair of stone circles – the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness – opposing each other across an isthmus. The sharp, sometimes triangular, standing stones are set in breathtaking scenery and are worth visiting for that alone.
Their significance in this story is great. The radiocarbon dates from excavated material at the Stones of Stenness suggest that it’s towards the beginnings of both the henge and stone circle traditions. The site is also associated with a style of pottery – grooved ware - that seems to originate in Orkney and travel south with henges and stone circles. As Richard Bradley notes: “The odds are that the henge idea originates in the north and the west.” Even more interesting however is that these henges and circles lie within a much larger Neolithic landscape including several Neolithic settlements (they survive here because the paucity of timber meant that house construction was in stone rather than wood).
The late Neolithic village of Barnhouse is completely contemporary with the nearby Stones of Stenness, and another settlement near the Ring of Brodgar is under excavation now. It’s very unusual to see settlements so close to these types of monuments and the fact that the evidence survives in Orkney adds an extra dimension to the stone circles and henges here.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk

4) Avebury, Wiltshire

Where you can consider how a henge might have altered reality

One of the largest, and most famous, henge and stone circles in Britain, Avebury has one major circle, with a horseshoe-shaped cove setting inside it, and two further circles as well. There is also likely evidence of a timber circle. It had two avenues of paired stones, one of which leads to another stone circle known as The Sanctuary. The dating is not good but the site was probably created around 2400 BC.
The henge is a very substantial earthwork and there’s a great day to be had wandering around the place, being towered over by the great lumpen stones in their settings.
It’s an excellent place to consider just how much labour the creation of some of these sites would have consumed, and of course to ponder why they were built. The huge size of the henge earthworks here might get you thinking about one of Richard Bradley’s theories:
“These earthworks of henges are great screens: they make a completely excluded space, you can’t see in if you’re not a participant and you can’t see out if you are a participant. One of the things that’s very odd with henges is the internal ditch. One argument is that it’s a defence in reverse to stop something powerful escaping. Another is that in most societies, in social anthropology, rites of passage involve a phase of seclusion where the norms of normal existence are explicitly reversed, and I do wonder if we’re talking about something like that.”
The village of Avebury is not an inversion of reality – though it is partly encompassed by the stone circle – and there you’ll find the Alexander Keiller Museum, which displays finds from excavations at this World Heritage Site.
Visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk

5) Arbor, Low Derbyshire

Where the prehistoric builders seem to be leading you on a journey

This is a large henge monument boasting a substantial bank and ditch with two entrances, inside which is a circle of some 50 white limestone slabs, now lying on their sides, and a central horseshoe-shaped cove. The setting is in the high moorland of the Peak District, and Richard Bradley describes how Arbor Low might be designed with the power of the Peaks in mind: “It has one narrow entrance and one wide one. If you go in through the narrow entrance, you enter from a fairly undifferentiated landscape; then if you go across the monument you get to the wide entrance on the other side which affords you a spectacular view of a large part of the Peak District.” Whether that’s a journey the prehistoric builders wanted you to take, we cannot know, but it’s interesting to speculate on the mental voyage that might have lain behind this apparently leading layout.
The henge is, in the view of Richard Bradley, later than the stone circle, and he suspects that the recumbent position of the stones is due to later Christian iconoclasm rather than incompetence on the part of the prehistoric builders in setting them originally.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

6) Gors Fawr, Pembrokeshire

Where you can think about how stones were transported

This is a very small stone circle, which is nevertheless impressive and handily just beside the road. Its location is interesting as it sits just below the Preseli Mountains, which is where the famous bluestones of Stonehenge come from. Gors Fawr is also made of bluestones and while you’re looking at this site, you might well be drawn to dwelling on the much-discussed question of how the 80 or so stones were moved the 150 miles or so east, from this part of Pembrokeshire to Wiltshire.
Henges and stone circles tend to be sited in places that were easily accessible, often in river valleys. Richard Bradley notes that this “may be metaphysical but it’s probably more to do with access”, as waterways would have served as useful transport arteries for people, and perhaps stones, in prehistory.
Visit www.megalithic.co.uk

7) Castlerigg, Cumbria

Where the circular landscape perhaps inspired the builders

This is a very well-preserved stone circle, probably of an early date, with a peculiar inner enclosure that has never been convincingly explained, and no surrounding henge. It occupies a spectacular location, completely surrounded by a circular landscape of Lake District hills. Richard Bradley thinks this is significant: “Henges and early stone circles tend to be located in basins so that you have the optical illusion that you’ve got a circle which is built within a circle taken from nature.”
Castlerigg stands at one of the entrances to the uplands of the Lake District and it’s noteworthy this area was the biggest supplier of stone axes in Neolithic Britain, which, along with the circular landscape theory, might go some way to explaining the location of this stone circle. It certainly makes it one of the most photogenic of monuments to visit today.
Visit www.english-heritage.org.uk

8) Cairnpapple, West Lothian

Where you can track the changing purpose of a circular monument

This henge is similar to Arbor Low, in that it’s on a hill and has a narrow and wide entrance, providing the same effect of a dramatic view from the wide entrance. The place has a long history – there was some sort of stone setting before 3000 BC – and the interior is complicated. Along with the henge, it had either a stone or timber circle, and it also had a cove. What is interesting is that increasingly the interior was taken up by a burial cairn. It was begun in the early Bronze Age and, as time went by, it got bigger and bigger until it occupied quite a lot of the interior, changing it from an open area to something that’s congested.
Richard Bradley sees that as an indication that here “people are taking over and appropriating a monument that was originally conceived as communal”. This is something that seems to happen elsewhere too, perhaps in association with the arrival of metal technology. If you visit today, you can see the henge, and the burial chamber of the cairn (it has been removed), which is now displayed under a concrete dome (summer opening only). Guided tours are offered and you’ll also get good views over central Scotland, assuming you’ve come on a day when the weather is kind.
Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk

9) Tomnaverie, Aberdeenshire

Where a stone circle has been raised up once more

This is a stone circle that Richard Bradley excavated, and it’s one of the rare places where we have a good date. It’s a rubble platform on a low hilltop, which was enclosed by a stone circle about 2300 BC. There is no henge and it’s got a tremendous all-round view, with an illusion of an entrance on the south-west side. It’s illusory as it is blocked by a huge stone. This false entrance is aligned exactly on a mountaintop some 20 miles away. The circle was reused in the late Bronze Age as a cremation site.
In the early part of the 20th century, the site was threatened by quarrying. Alexander Keiller, who went on to dig at Avebury, stopped its destruction, but not before the quarry workers had taken most of the stones out of their sockets and laid them flat. Following Richard Bradley’s excavations, the stones were refitted back into their sockets. Apparently it was quite obvious which hole each stone should go in as they had a very snug fit.

Visit www.historic-scotland.gov.uk
Richard Bradley is professor of archaeology at Reading University and author of The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland (Cambridge UP, 2007).

Ancient Stone Circles in Mideast Baffle Archaeologists

by Owen Jarus

The Big Circle called J1 is about 390 meters (1,280 feet) in diameter, with an open area created by bulldozing in its interior. Credit: David L. Kennedy, copyright is retained by the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East imageAPAAME_20040601_DLK-0041

Huge stone circles in the Middle East have been imaged from above, revealing details of structures that have been shrouded in mystery for decades.
Archaeologists in Jordan have taken high-resolution aerial images of 11 ancient "Big Circles," all but one of which are around 400 meters (1,312 feet) in diameter. Why they are so similar is unknown but the similarity seems “too close to be a coincidence" said researcher David Kennedy.
The Big Circles (as archaeologists call them) were built with low stone walls that are no more than a few feet high. The circles originally contained no openings, and people would have had to hop over the walls in order to get inside. [See Aerial Images of the Mysterious Big Circles in the Mideast]

Their purpose is unknown, and archaeologists are unsure when these structures were built. Analysis of the photographs, as well as artifacts found on the ground, suggest the circles date back at least 2,000 years, but they may be much older. They could even have been constructed in prehistoric times, before writing was invented, scientists say.

A mysterious stone circle, called a Big Circle as seen from above in Jordan. This circle has been labeled J3.
Credit: David L. Kennedy, copyright is retained by the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East image APAAME_20040601_DLK-0107

View full size image

Though the Big Circles were first spotted by aircraft in the 1920s, little research has focused on these structures, and many scientists are not even aware of their existence, something these archaeologists hope the new aerial images will help to change.
The "most important contribution is simply to collect and make known a large group of rather remarkable sites," writes Kennedy, a professor at the University of Western Australia, in an article published recently in the journal Zeitschrift für Orient Archäologie.
In addition to the 11 photographed circles, researchers have identified another similar circle in Jordan, which appears to have been only partially completed, Kennedy noted. Old satellite imagery also reveals  two circles, one in Jordan and another in Syria, which have both been destroyed. The circle in Syria was destroyed within the last decade and the one in Jordan a few decades ago. A separate research team, from Durham University, investigated the Syria circle before it was completely gone.
While there are many smaller stone circles in the Middle East, what makes these 11 Big Circles stand out is their large size and ancient age, Kennedy said.
Kennedy has been leading the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project (AAJ) since 1997 and also co-directs the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME).
Building the Big Circles
The circles would not have been hard to build, Kennedy said. They were constructed mainly with local rocks, and a dozen people working hard could potentially complete a Big Circle in a week, Kennedy told Live Science in an email. [Gallery: Aerial Photos Reveal Mysterious Stone Structures]
However, building the circles in a precise shape would have taken some planning. "In the case of those circles that [are] near-precise circles, it would have required at least one person as 'architect,'" Kennedy said, adding that this architect could simply have tied a long rope to a post and walked in a circle, marking the ground as he or she moved around. "That would also explain the glitches [in the circles] where the land was uneven," as the architect wouldn't have been able to keep walking in a perfect circle at those spots.
The purpose of the Big Circles is a mystery, Kennedy said. It seems unlikely that they were originally used as corrals, as the walls were no more than a few feet high, the circles contain no structures that would have helped maintain an animal herd and there's no need for animal corrals to have such a precise shape, he said.
One of the circles contains three cairns, or rock piles, on its edges that may have been used for burial. However, Kennedy said, "my inference is that the cairns [were built] later, when the enclosure was no longer significant."
Solving the circle mystery
In order to solve the mystery, archaeologists must conduct more actual fieldwork, Kennedy said, noting that aerial images are helpful but can't replace excavation.
Archaeologists Graham Philip and Jennie Bradbury, both with Durham University in England, have examined a Big Circle they found near Homs in Syria. While the circle was "badly damaged" when the researchers found it, they completed their fieldwork before land development completely destroyed the structure.
This Big Circle was positioned in such a way that it could give someone standing inside it a "panoramic" view of a basin that would have held crops and settlements, the researchers reported in a 2010 paper in the journal Levant. This "may have played an important part in the location of the enclosure," the two archaeologists wrote in the Levant article.
Recent satellite imagery shows that the circle near Homs is now virtually destroyed, Kennedy wrote.
Megalithic landscape
While the purpose of the Big Circles remains unknown, the research by Kennedy and his team shows that the creations were part of a landscape rich in stone structures.
His team has found thousands of stone structures in Jordan and the broader Middle East. They come in a variety of shapes, including "Wheels" (circular structures with spokes radiating out); Kites (stone structures that forced animals to run into a kill zone); Pendants (lines of stone cairns that run from burials); and walls (mysterious structures that meander across the landscape for more than a mile — or up to several thousand meters — and have no apparent practical use).
The aerial photography program his team is conducting, combined with satellite imagery from sites like Google Earth, has led to many discoveries, Kennedy said. "As soon as you get up a few hundred feet, it all comes into focus. You can suddenly see the shape of what you've been looking at," Kennedy said in a YouTube video made by Google as part of their Search Stories series.
Live Science