Tag: Durrington walls

Marden Henge Excavations Reveal Prehistoric Building

ripple flaked arrowhead,

An Update on the dig at Marden Henge – Archaeologists have uncovered a 4,500 year old dwelling!

According to the BBC, English Heritage volunteer archaeologist Jim Leary was excited by the discovery, saying “It’s exceeded all of our expectations”. The dwelling appears to have been constructed between 2500BC-2400BC and appears to be different to a normal home, with Leary suggesting it may have been a priest’s quarters.

The finds echo those discovered a couple of years ago at Durrington Walls where several neolithic dwellings were also discovered. The newly discovered dwelling at Marden Henge, Wiltshire included an oven known as a hearth, which was regularly cleaned by the occupant. “Just outside the front door we can see this long spread of charcoal and general rubbish material”, Leary told the BBC.

Finds at the site’s archaeological dig also included a ripple flaked arrowhead, fresh flint flakes, pottery and bone pins, offering an insight into the history of the dwelling. On the 15th of July, EHArchaeology tweeted “Looks like we may have a Durrington Walls style neolithic building surface at #mardenhenge. Need to confirm that but looks promising.”

The henge definitely has plenty of features thatshould get experts excited. In the centre is a huge mound, similar to nearby Silbury Hill, which collapsed in 1806 and was completely flattened by 1817. The team is working on dating the material in its centre. A large circular feature, surrounded by a bank and gullies, is also being scoured as the mystery of Marden unravels.

EHArchaeology tweeted “Looks like we may have a Durrington Walls style neolithic building surface at #mardenhenge. Need to confirm that but looks promising.”

The archaeological excavations were accompanied by geophysical and topographical studies to understand and preserve what English Heritage archaeologist Jim Leary says is an ancient sleeping giant. “Marden Henge deserves to be understood more partly because of its size, but also due to its proximity to the more famous stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge,” he says. “The relationship between the latter two sites – chronology of their construction, whether it is built by the same people, how they were used, etc – is of immense interest” adds Leary.

During the 18th century a skeleton and deer antlers were found within the bank of Hatfield Earthworks, a key feature of the Marden Henge site.The archaeological dig uncovered Neolithic pottery, animal bones, antler picks, stone tools, and a human skeleton from the ditch. A Romano-British disc brooch made of bronze was also found. The nearby Hatfield Barrow are the remains of a large mound barrow which once stood 15 metres high, and 64 metres in diameter.

HD Video: Digital Digging – Marden Henge

Digital Digging recently created a fantastic video based on Google Earth using an illustration by Philip Crocker, from Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s “Ancient Wiltshire” (1812) and overlaying onto the site to show clearly the distinct features of the site, including Hatfield Barrow. You can check out more reconstructions by Digital Digging of Durrington and Avebury here.

The discovery comes hot off the heels of the announcement of the discovery of a henge at Stonehenge, hailed as the most significant find at the Salisbury Plains site in 50 years. Marden Henge finds itself sited between UNESCO World Heritage sites of Stonehenge and Avebury.

You can watch the sun rise over Stonehenge from your own home with Stonehenge Virtual. Meet Neolithic builders, wander through the stones and even try putting a trithlon up yourself.

Visit Stonehenge: Our Pick of the Guided Tours

Getting up close and personal with the inner circle of Stonehenge is no mean feat. Despite ongoing campaigns by Druids to open up the henge completely, the iconic Wiltshire monument is fenced off most of the year, and while access during the spring equinox and the summer and winter solstices might be much more free and easy, its so busy its difficult to get properly acquainted with the great and mysterious standing stones in any meaningful way.

But fear not there are a raft of Stonehenge tours to choose from, each of them offering something a little different.

Whether youre a stargazer eager to understand the ancient monument in its astrological context, a mystic keen to get in touch with your spiritual side beneath the triliths, or a denizen of Heritage VX looking to wander between the bluestones at your virtual reality leisure, theres an option here for everyone.

Luxury Tours

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Episode 10: Ancient Astronomy

A recent lecture given by astronomer Paul Murdin offered a fascinating insight into how ancient Britons studied the stars, Sun and Moon to understand what it was they saw in the night sky.

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Perfect for the Stonehenge fanatic with more than a few quid in their pocket, Tour Stonehenge offer private tours of the standing stones and the surrounding historical landscape led by specially-trained Blue Badge driver-guides, in your choice of private vehicle. They’ll pick you up from your accomodation locally or in London and be knowledgeable and flexible enough to create a bespoke experience catered specifically for you be it investigating burial chambers, learning about the building of Stonehenge or discovering the culture of the enigmatic people who erected the megaliths so many centuries ago.

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Episode 8: Spring Equinox at Stonehenge

Nicole Favish heads to Stonehenge to experience the Spring Equinox – the point in the year where the day and the night are of equal length.

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You’ll cruise the Wiltshire countryside in a Mercedes limousine, sedan, people carrier or mini-van depending on the size of your party and stop-off at your own choice of destinations from Avebury and its surrounding ancient burial chambers to Salisbury Cathedral and Bath or Winchester and Corfe Castle. Most importantly, you’ll get beyond the rope and past the bouncers into a VIP area where anybody who’s anybody in the world of ancient history wants to go the Stonehenge inner circle.

Cost: You need to contact for a quote, but a guide price for two people is 595.
Set off from: Pick-up from your accomodation, locally or in London.
We like: VIP treatment.
Not sure: A bit lazy, isn’t it?
Book it: Tour Stonehenge

Tours for Astronomers

Astronomer and Stonehenge expert David Rowan offers a limited number of lucky punters (maximum 24 per group) all-day lecture tours that incorporate not just one but two visits to the henge first at sunset, then after nightfall a couple of hours later. Also included in the package is a guided yomp down the ley line and around the historic landscape that surrounds the site on Salisbury Plain, plus a two-course pub meal. It’s a long day at 13 hours, but Rowan’s tour promises to be a unique experience brimming with both useful information and eccentric personality.

As the sun dips behind the massive megaliths, Stonehenge is transformed into what Rowan describes as an enigmatic temple. Hell explain theories of how the ancients built the massive structure in accordance with events taking place in the heavens. It’s well known that Stonehenge has lunar alignments but there are important solar alignments too, and Rowan will highlight both. On a clear night its possible to see Venus setting behind an ancient trilithon definitely not an experience you have every day.

Cost: 150 pp.
Set off from: Avebury.
We like: Great chance to get photos of the stones by starlight.
Not sure: Thirteen hours?
Book it: David Rowan’s website

Tours for Mystics

Knight will encourage participants to touch and feel the stones, experience natural energy forces and ley lines and really get into the mindset of our ancestors.

If you really want to connect with Stonehenge then you need Peter Knight‘s help. Hes a speaker and author specialising in earth mysteries, earth energies, ley lines and astronomical alignments, and he offers a package experience that promises to bring you spiritually closer to the ancient, enigmatic megaliths, and with it nature, man.

Knight’s tour shares some broad similarities with David Rowan’s (above), but it would appear to differ in the fact that it’s an experience for body and soul, as well as the mind. Knight will encourage participants to touch and feel the stones, experience natural energy forces and ley lines and really get into the mindset of our ancestors who over 3,000 years ago were creating this astounding environment. He even ~~threatens~~ promises optional meditations and drumming inside a 5,500-year-old tomb. Both hardened skeptics and enthusiastic spiritualists alike will by the end, believes Knight, be forced to admit to the merit of this hands-on close encounter with ancient history and Mother Earth .

Cost: 100 per group (max three per group).
Set off from: Salisbury train station.
We like: Small tours with a personal touch.
Not sure: May contain bongo drums.
Book it:Stone Seeker Tours

Tours for Archaeology Buffs

Maybe you think all this astrological and mystical stuff is mumbo-jumbo? In that case, you need a privately-guided sojourn around the Stonehenge landscape with Expert Tours who promose a level of expertise no other tour company can match. There’s no stone-touching or stargazing on this trip, no sir. Youll be led by a pro-archaeologist, who will give a sober and authoritative account of the latest cold, hard facts about the monument, plus a definitive description of who dug what, wear and when.

There has been lots of archaeological activity at Stonehenge and the surrounding historic landscape over the last few years, with major excavations by the Stonehenge Riverside Project at Durrington Walls representing the latest big dig. So theres always loads of new information to discover and plenty of fresh holes in the ground to see. The tours are totally bespoke, so you can do as little or as much walking as you fancy.

Cost: From 39 pp.
Set off from: Pick-up from your local accomodation or arrival point.
We like: A great chance to sort Stonehenge myths from facts.
Not sure: Possibly not as much fun as other tours.
Book it:Expert Tours

Tours for Avatars

If you havent done so already, get set-up for access to Heritage Key VX, and you can travel to Stonehenge at your virtual leisure. There, our trusty bot Owain in his natty white robes will be your guide on a unique tour that allows you to visit the monument throughout the ages, from 2400 BC to the present day.

Stonehenge has changed dramatically over its 4,500 year history. A virtual visit illustrates its shifting make-up, by showing how the Salisbury Plain landscape might have looked before a single stone was raised. Next jump forward through the ages to 2300 BC when the Sarsen stone was put in place then 1500 BC, when Stonehenge was at its peak. By the final stop in the 21st century, youll be able to appreciate how the megaliths have decayed dramatically, yet remain a striking sight.

Cost: Free!
Set off from: Your desktop.
We like: See Stonehenge through the ages, interact, undertake challenges what’s not to like?
Not sure: Doesn’t quite beat seeing the real thing.
Book it:Heritage Key VX

Stonehenge Winter Solstice Turnout Reduced by Weather-related Traffic Chaos

Most of you wont have relished venturing out from under the duvet at all on this snowy Tuesday morning, let alone doing it before the break of dawn. But around 600 intrepid souls were up before the birds today, and wrapped in the their woollens in time to trudge out into the middle of a frozen Wiltshire field for the rising of the sun shortly after 8am, and the celebration of the winter solstice at Stonehenge.

Attendance at the event a chilled-out, smaller-scale alternative to the much headier summer solstice is usually a lot higher (2000 people turned out in 2008), but weather-related travel chaos in the south of England must have prevented many from making the journey. Spirits were high nonetheless, as the first rays broke through the icy mist, and were greeted with customary chanting and dancing.

Pagans in full bonkers regalia were, as ever, out in force for what represents one of the key dates on their calendar, an occasion which according to archaeologists currently researching at nearby related site Durrington Walls was thousands of years ago marked by the sacrificing and roasting of hundreds of cattle and pigs. Also in attendance at the 2009 Stonehenge winter solstice was a healthy swathe of much more normal-looking observers regulars note that the event has become an increasingly popular public spectacle in recent years.

Pagans Have More Fun

Guardian journalist Steven Morriss quizzing of some of the non-Druidic element of the assembled throng revealed a plethora of reasons for the winter solstice piquing peoples interest. Among them seemed to be a desire to experience something rootsy and traditional, yet also out-of-the-ordinary, in the ever-more-commercial festive season.

Pagans seem to have more fun so wed thought wed give it a go.”

We’re here for an anti-religious reason, if any, said Alison Marcetic from Birmingham, who had travelled to Stonehenge with her husband and her two young children. Pagans seem to have more fun so wed thought wed give it a go. Well be celebrating Christmas but this is about showing the children that this season isnt just about getting presents. What goes on here is more basic, more tangible.

Jill, a Stonehenge regular, visited the winter solstice with her 10-year-old daughter Jasmine. For us this time of year is about starting to come out of the dark, she commented. Its a very positive time of year. I think people who arent pagans come here to enjoy that feeling too. As a mum and gran, shell be celebrating Christmas as well, albeit reluctantly. I dont have much choice, she added, but we do it as modestly as possible.

Seasonal Feasting, Prehistoric-Style

Its turkeys that traditionally get carved-up on the Christmas dinner tables of families such as Alisons and Jills around this time of year in Britain. But it seems that there were once other animals that had reason to fear December coming round too.

Stonehenge Riverside Project director Mike Parker Pearson who spoke to Heritage Key a while back about progress at the ongoing and thus-far remarkably successful archaeological investigation he leads recently revealed that large quantities of pig and cattle bones have been discovered among other remains at Durrington Walls, an inter-linking companion site to Stonehenge.

4,500 years back the Stonehenge landscape was apparently a scene of heady celebration and ritual feasting at the solstices.

Occupation and consumption were intense, Parker Pearson wrote in a report, quoted by Discovery News. The animal remains were found alongside pottery, flint arrowheads and lithic debris. It seems that Durrington Walls and Stonehenge were the scenes of pockets of intense activity, as prehistoric people celebrated and gorged at very specific times of year. The small quantities of stone tools other than arrowheads, the absence of grinding querns and the lack of carbonised grain indicate that this was a consumer site, Parker Pearson continued. The midsummer and midwinter solstice alignments of the Durrington and Stonehenge architecture suggest seasonal occupation.

The animals were apparently driven from hundreds of miles around to be slaughtered immediately at Durrington Walls in time for the winter solstice. Considering the treacherous travel conditions currently thwarting transport up and down the UK, the pagans of 2009 can be thankful that tradition has long since died out.

Bluehenge – Mini Stonehenge Discovered on the River Avon

Prof. Andrew Chamberlain (University of Sheffield) uses a laser scanner to record a stonehole. Aerial-Cam About a mile away from Stonehenge, at the end of the ‘Avenue’ that connects it to the River Avon, archaeologists have discovered a smaller prehistoric site, named – appropriately, after the colour of the 27 Welsh stones it was made of – Bluehenge. The newly discovered stone circle is thought to have been put up 5,000 years ago – which is around the same time work on Stonehenge began – and appears to be a miniature version of it. The two circles stood together for hundreds of years before Bluehenge was dismantled. Researchers believe its stones were used to enlarge Stonehenge during one of a number of redevelopments.

The new circle, unearthed over the summer by researchers from Sheffield University, represents an important find, researchers said Saturday. Although Bluehenge’s monoliths have disappeared, the circle of holes remains. It’s about 60 foot wide, has 27 holes, and the chips of blue stone found in the holes appear to be identical to the blue stones used in Stonehenge.

This henge is very important because it forms part of the picture of ceremonial monuments in the area and puts Stonehenge into context. – Geoffrey Wainwright

This new find might just change our view on Stonehenge’s history; it suggests that the creators of Stonehenge originally built two prehistoric stone circles – one with 56 stones at Stonehenge, and another with 27 at Bluehenge. The stones of the smaller circle were eventually worked into the bigger one.

Professor Geoffrey Wainwright, who found the source of the Stonehenge stones in Wales with Professor Darvill, told the DailyMail: ‘This henge is very important because it forms part of the picture of ceremonial monuments in the area and puts Stonehenge into context.” The area surrounding Stonehenge is sometimes dubbed a ‘ritual landscape’ which would include the Durrington Walls Henge (a place for the living), Stonehenge (a place for the dead) and their respective avenues. But no need to say many think that as Stonehenge evolved over thousands of years, it must have had different destinations of use during those differen eras (sometimes known as the three phases of Stonehenge) and that the storyline is more complicated than just a life/death juxtaposition.

More information about the newly discovered Bluehenge should be published in February 2010. And err.. I guess Wessex Archaeology will need to adjust their superb Stonehenge Landscape 3D now?

Digital Digging – Virtual Reconstructions of Avebury’s Sanctuary and the Durrington Walls using Google Earth

Aerial View of Woodhenge Reconstruction - Google Earth .kmz file by Digital Digging Digital Digging – run by Henry Rothwell – is a resource for anyone with an interest in archaeology, history, cartography and … digital reconstructions! Digital Digging’s ‘Model Room’ is where they store their virtual reconstructions, created especially for you to explore yourself using Google Earth. It holds a selection of the timber and stone circles of Wessex and Somerset, including Durrington Walls South Circle, Woodhenge, Stanton Drew and the Sanctuary at Avebury. You can look at the image page of each reconstruction or download the associated .kmz file and download the model into Google Earth, where you can get inside it, and look at it from any angle you choose.

There is something fascinating about Digital Digging’s Google Earth-based reconstructions, besides the fact that you can ‘fly’ through them: they are overlayed on satellite images of how the historical sites look nowadays, so you can see wooden posts stick out of concrete roads, cars included. The benefit of having a 3Dmodel finished, is that you can easily create videos out of it, and this is exactly what Henry Rothwell has done:

The Sanctuary at Avebury

The Sanctuary Timber and Stone Circle at Avebury is a prehistoric site on Overton Hill located around 5 miles west of Marlborough in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of a wider Neolithic landscape which includes the nearby sites of Silbury Hill, West Kennet Long Barrow and Avebury, to which The Sanctuary was linked by the 25m wide and 2.5km long Kennet Avenue. It also lies close to the route of the prehistoric Ridgeway and near several Bronze Age barrows.

The Durrington Walls Timber Circles

Durrington Walls is the site of a Neolithic village and later henge enclosure located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. It is 2 miles north east of Stonehenge in the parish of Durrington, just north of Amesbury. At 500m in diameter it is the largest henge in Britain, and recent evidence suggests that it was a complementary monument to Stonehenge. What visibly remains of Durrington Walls today is the walls of the henge monument in fact the eroded remains of the inner slope of the bank and the outer slope of the internal ditch.

Digital Digging’s model room is full of timber circles at the moment. There is a reconstruction of Stanton Drew, another of the ‘cricket stumps’ in the Stonehenge car park, one of Woodhenge and the Durrington Walls and the Avebury Sanctuary shown above. If you wish to ‘explore’ these ancient monuments for yourself, can you do so by loading the .kmz files Digital Digging provides into Google Earth. Give it a try, it’s not as scary as it sounds (and instructions are provided)! 😉

And most of all, keep an eye on Digital Digging, as there are more virtual models upcoming: “Reconstructions are the next big project, and although the two sites so far included consist of posts (not massively taxing when all is said and done), I will shortly be trotting off into the Roman Period, and, all going well, putting up the odd Saxon hall or two a few hundred years later.” We’re looking forward to those! (Whilst in the mean while keeping ourselves content with Ancient Rome 3D, Virtual Karnak and of course our very own King Tut Virtual.)