The Stonehenge Riverside Project
The Stonehenge Riverside Project
Directed by Mike Parker Pearson (Sheffield University), Joshua Pollard (Bristol University), Colin Richards (Manchester University), Julian Thomas (Manchester University, Chris Tilley (University College London) and Kate Welham (Bournemouth University).
The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a collaboration between five British universities, which is attempting to unravel the development of the prehistoric landscape of Stonehenge in central Wiltshire. Two of our staff, Dr Colin Richards and Professor Julian Thomas are amongst the six project directors, and large numbers of our students gain fieldwork experience each summer.
To date, much of the project's work has been concentrated on the huge henge enclosure of Durrington Walls, three kilometres from Stonehenge. This bank and ditch structure, half a kilometre across, encloses a dry valley, and is linked to the River Avon by a roadway, which is the counterpart of the avenue which connects Stonehenge with the river. Stonehenge, with its stone settings, and Durrington with its timber circles are thus the two complementary ends of a single routeway that encompasses the landscape. They are, effectively, parts of a single structure.
Excavations to date have uncovered the largest known Neolithic settlement on the British mainland, dating to around 2500 BC and clustered around the roadway. We have also re-examined the huge timber structure of the Southern Circle, originally investigated in 1967, and demonstrated that the post-holes were re-cut to insert ceremonial deposits, commemorating the structure long after it had rotted away. Finally, we have excavated a series of small buildings in the henge interior, each enclosed by its own ditch and palisade, and which may have represented places of ceremonial or cult activity, separate from the settlement.
In the summer of 2007, two new sites were investigated for the first time. Colin Richards dug at the Cuckoo Stone, a standing stone south-west of Durrington Walls, demonstrating that the stone had been quarried out of the chalk next to its standing place. Surrounding the stone was a group of Bronze Age cremation burials in large pottery urns, and nearby a Roman temple had been established, showing that this had been a special place whose significance had been maintained over many generations.
Julian Thomas excavated at the Stonehenge Cursus, a mysterious linear enclosure a mile and a half long. This structure has never been satisfactorily dated, although it was believed to Early Neolithic. Our work showed that there had been no internal structures, supporting the view that the cursus had represented a means of sanctifying part of the landscape, perhaps and established processional way, and rendering it inaccessible. The ditch seemed to have been partially re-dug in the Late Neolithic, and again in the Bronze Age. Here again, an important landscape feature seems to have retained its importance over hundreds of years. Although very few artefacts were present in the cursus ditches, we were lucky enough to recover a fragment of one of the antler picks that had been used to dig the ditch more than 5,000 years ago. This will provided the material for two radiocarbon determinations, giving us the first ever accurate date for the Stonehenge Cursus. The combined dates fall in the interval 3630-3375 BC. Project fieldwork will continue in the summer of 2008.
Fig. 1: Reconstruction of the building inside one of the Western Circles at Durrington Walls (Aaron Watson).
Fig. 2: Excavations at the Cuckoo Stone, 2007.
Fig. 3: Greater Stonehenge Cursus excavations seen from the air.
Fig. 4: Excavations in the terminal ditch of the Greater Stonehenge Cursus, 2007.
Fig. 5: Greater Stonehenge Cursus 2007: excavations in the cross-ditch.
The Stonehenge Research Report is available here