Stonehenge Village Found

Pretty interesting.

www.cnn.com...

Sorry if posted already

Do you have anything about that article to discuss?

www.cnn.com...
and is also the location of a wooden version of the stone circle.

Fascinating. Why would they have a wooden circle in their area and then feel the need to build a stone one some distance away?
Was it to provide motivation for them, an inspiration of what the result of their labour will be?
Also, wasn't the stone circle itself built in long stages, and there were previous non-giant stones there initially? I wonder what came first then, the wooden circle in this town, or the premilinary use of the stonehenge site, which they later desided to up-build.

The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge -- where several cremated remains have been found -- was a cemetery and memorial.

Indeed, stones are often associated with the dead, even today modern cemetaries have stone monumnets for each individual. I also recall reading about a large sacred stone that was worshipped in greece and associated with a dead muslim saint, (with the implication of the study that this was a far more ancient tradition that had been carried over into more modern times). Maybe that had built a living city, and a dead city.

I wonder why the village becomes unoccpied? Was it solely a temporary camp for the purpose of building stonehenge, or did the society fall apart?

Remains of pigs indicated they were about nine months old when killed, which would mark a midwinter festival, he said.

Parker Pearson said Stonehenge was oriented to face the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the wooden circle at Durrington Walls faced the midwinter sunrise and midsummer sunset.

Wow, how fortunate! So the people may have been observing as a festival the midwinter sunrise. I wonder if then the two sites are intended to work in conjuction, one celebrating the living sunrise, the other the death of sunset. Fascinating!

[edit on 30-1-2007 by Nygdan]

No not much to discuss just a bit of news. I'm not that educated when it comes to stuff like this, just fascinated. I was wondering though if the wooden version of the stones was found before or just now? I never heard about that either and would have thought the village would have been found if they found that already. Also it is pretty interesting that the houses are about the same time in the Orkney Islands.

[edit on 30-1-2007 by StinkyDerSon]

They probably have post holes as evidence of the wooden structure, rather than remains of the structure itself.

It would be interesting if there was some place online where you could see the sorts of finds they had found at the site...I was brought up on the outskirts of Salisbury in a farming area close to Porton Down but not far from Stonehenge. On the farm where i was brought up on i found an aweful lot of archaeology there, ranging from very prehistoric stuff right into recent times like the victorian times (its like the place has been more or less constantly occupied for thousands upon thousands of years, even pre-ice age finds have been found).

But i'm particularly interested in archaelogy dating back to times like the neolithic up until the end of the roman occupation. I think we'd all like to know though what exactly stone henge looked like during the various stages of its building and what were the beliefs of the people that built it. It makes sense that it would be a place of dead due to the large abundance of so many barrows and general burials there, but i'm sure there is more to it than just that.

here's another decent link.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

it does seem like they were builders homes.

I wonder how much those builders were paid to construct such a monster rock circle. And what would their lives have been like after? where they heroes?

Was the architect one of the builders or a religious chief of some kind? Probably the latter.

Wow. They should make a film about the building of Stonehenge. I bet those builders were interesting characters. They must have been revered in some way. cool

Wonderful find and thanks for the link!

As far as I know, what they found of the houses included post holes as well as other artifacts. The texture of soil in a house (usually packed down dirt) is actually fairly distinctive when you're carefully digging through a site. A very experienced archaeologist could tell it at a glance (or as it was uncovered).

I wonder if there are other paired henges like this. My first thought when I saw the recontsruction of the wooden henge was that it reminded me of other megalith stone henges. Stonehenge has fewer stones than most of these constructions.

Originally posted by Byrd
Wonderful find and thanks for the link!

As far as I know, what they found of the houses included post holes as well as other artifacts. The texture of soil in a house (usually packed down dirt) is actually fairly distinctive when you're carefully digging through a site. A very experienced archaeologist could tell it at a glance (or as it was uncovered).

I wonder if there are other paired henges like this. My first thought when I saw the recontsruction of the wooden henge was that it reminded me of other megalith stone henges. Stonehenge has fewer stones than most of these constructions.

Indeed, there are many other stone henges in the country, for example the Avebury stone henge is massive but unfortunately a lot of the stones have been stolen over the years;

www.stonehenge-avebury.net...

Stonehenge is more famous for its completeness than anything else.

I was very exited also, can not believe the luck of this archeologies, that has been looking for links to this ancient ruins for so long and it was so close, I imagine that they will finally fine a link between the people that live in the area and the ruins.

I can not wait to hear more of their discoveries.

Funny that it took his long when ti was so close I guess now is the right time.

I didn't see this tread, which was posted before my tread.

Moderator can close my tread, here is c/p from it...

Excavations also offer new evidence that a timber circle and a vast earthwork where the village once stood were linked to Stonehenge—via road, river, and ritual. Together, the sites were part of a much larger religious complex, the archaeologists suggest.

I wonder if they will find evidence how Stonehenge was built.

Sources:
NGM-1
NGM-2

[edit on 1/31/07 by vietifulJoe]