A huge winter solstice feast might have taken place around Stonehenge some 4,500 years ago.
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Located in the county of Wiltshire, at the center of England's densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, Stonehenge consists of the remnants of a mysterious circle of large standing stones built between 3000 and 1600 B.C. The prehistoric monument has long baffled archaeologists, who still argue over its original purpose, with two main theories taking shape in recent years. According to archaeologists Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill, Stonehenge was a "Neolithic Lourdes" to which the sick travelled from around Europe to be healed by its magical powers. According to Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge was a place of the dead -- a cemetery or memorial. Durrington Walls, on the other hand, was the land of the living, with Neolithic people gathering there for massive feasts and parties. The sites seem complementary. 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. Both monuments have avenues connecting them to the Avon River, indicating a pattern of movement between the sites. |
Abundant cattle and pig bones recently unearthed a few miles from the megalithic site suggest that prehistoric people celebrated the connection between the stone circle and the sky with hundreds of roasts.
According to initial research led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, U.K., the animals were walked from different places and for hundreds of miles to be slaughtered immediately after arrival at Durrington Walls, a massive circular earthwork, or henge, two miles northeast of Stonehenge.
Parker Pearson's research has shown that this site attracted people in droves as far back as Neolithic times.
"The considerable quantities of pig and cattle bones, pottery, flint arrowheads and lithic debris indicate that occupation and consumption were intense," wrote Parker Pearson, who has just been awarded a grant of USD 1.290.000 to analyse a range of materials found at the site.
So far, the archaeologist has found no evidence that Durrington was permanently inhabited. He believes that the intense human activity was linked to feasting during the solstices.
"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. The midsummer and midwinter solstice alignments of the Durrington and Stonehenge architecture suggest seasonal occupation," Parker Pearson said.
This year the winter solstice will be celebrated at Stonehenge on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 22.
Stonehenge will open at 7.45 a.m. for people who brave the cold to watch the sun rise shortly after 8 a.m.
Tags: Archaeoastronomy, Archaeology, Food and Culture, History, Religion and Spirituality
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