The Secrets of Stonehenge: A Time Team Special
by Tim Taylor
Channel 4 (2009)
It’s Britain’s favourite monument and has been attributed to Phoenicians, Romans, Vikings and even visitors from other worlds. But a fascinating new programme by Channel 4’s Time Team claims to reveal the real secrets of Stonehenge for the first time.
A Special Team
The Secrets of Stonehenge: A Time Team Special is the televised culmination of six years of dedicated work by a huge team of archaeologists. They began digging not only the prehistoric focal point itself but, crucially, the surrounding landscape.
The hour-long programme is fronted by Time Team veteran Tony Robinson. Whether you know him from his political activities with the Labour party or as the affable Baldrick from the BBC show Blackadder, his name is now synonymous with British archaeology.
The Time Team series itself began in 1994 and is the longest-running TV show dedicated to archaeological exploration. It has hosted other popular ‘specials’ such as: Hadrian’s Wall and The Knights of the Round Table.
In their most ambitious project yet the show turns to the origins of the megalithic monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. Around one million people visit Stonehenge each year – not counting the thousands that descend on the site to celebrate the Summer Solstice each year – and that popularity is reflected in the sheer breadth of speculation surrounding its genesis and purpose. The only common thread in the varied hearsay is agreement upon its near-mythic status. With its strong association with the druids, some say it was built for ritual purposes, but this theory has been largely rejected among modern scholars. Then there are others, perfectly entitled to their opinion, like Geoffrey of Monmouth who said that the stones were brought from Ireland by the magic of Merlin himself. Those with their heads a little less in the clouds have accepted the explanation that it’s a construction completed over a very long time, in several phases, using wooden posts to complete its geometric intricacy c. 2950 BCE.
A New Dawn for Stonehenge Theories
This pre-recorded Time Team special informs us that this new dig, headed by Professor Mike Parker Pearson, can offer fresh evidence to refute everything that has gone before. Using re-enactments, hundreds of extras and nifty visual effects, the team posit the theory that Stonehenge is a monument to the ancestors, but not the only focal point of the area.
In typical Time Team fashion we are treated to aerial shots of the landscape that are highlighted using computer graphics to help paint a picture of what the geography was like thousands of years ago. Professor Pearson believes that the area was separated into two distinct sites, one for the living at Durrington Walls (three kilometres north east) and one for the dead at Stonehenge. The two areas would have been connected, and in use at the same time. What looks like indistinguishable grass fields to the naked eye soon becomes takes shape as a cursus is highlighted as a possible dividing line for the two areas.
Actors, extras and some CGI, all help us understand what might have been going on in the area around the time of Stonehenge’s creation. We get to see the homes and clothing of the ancient builders, and get a sense of the painstaking labour they went through. Evidence found at Durrington suggests that this ‘living’ side of the cursus was populated by around 4,000 people. By unearthing worked heads, arrow flints, and young animal teeth, the programme re-enacts a 1,000 strong settlement of homes where Neolithic sports like pig hunting are played out.
Time Team tells us how these 40ton Sarson stones were painstakingly shaped, but also how construction could have been completed in just 35 years.
In the final week of the dig the team re-open one of the 56 Aubrey holes surrounding the centre of Stonehenge, which the ‘official’ guidebook shows to contain wooden poles at one point. In doing so fresh discoveries are made. This hole was first excavated in the mid 1930s but the prehistoric bones found there were not recognised at the time to have scientific value.
It’s not so much the rediscovery of the bones that have the team excited but the new evidence to suggest that stones once stood there, and not the wooden poles. The possibility of smaller bluestones standing in these positions confirms that it was a stone monument from the beginning. This fits well with Professor Pearson’s theories, gleaned from a trip to Madagascar, that Stonehenge was indeed an early graveyard and subsequent monument to our ancestors.
The Team Need More Airtime
As is so often the case with the Time Team series, there is so much information to cram into an hour-long window. Theories and findings are peppered into the program without being properly explained or examined. This particular special will benefit from a DVD release with extra footage.
Interested viewers will want to see more of the objects found on site and in more intricate detail, perhaps through computer reconstructions showing them in contemporary action. The broadcast would also have benefited from more laboured explanations of exactly how the osteoarchaeologists were able to determine sex and age from miniscule bone fragments – instead of the supposition that they are simply expert guesses. But these are minimal gripes against what is enthralling TV framing new evidence on notions of Stonehenge.
The data suggests that people brought remains to Durrington before starting the journey to Stonehenge. This might only be a theory backed up with multifaceted evidence, but it’s the most complete picture any excavation has produced of the site so far. Stonehenge has been carelessly dug by the 16th century Duke of Buckingham, become a fevered symbol of the druids since the 18th century, and had its secrets hoarded by prehistorian Richard Atkinson. It’s been branded a stone-age calendar, a fertility symbol, religious temple, and even a Neolithic hospital. But in my opinion, no account has yet managed to sound as plausible and thorough as the theories broadcast in this special by archaeology’s favourite team.
