Credit: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute
An archaeological project utilizing new technology has revealed new monuments belonging to the ancient ritualistic landscape that is home to the famous Stonehenge. Perhaps the most startling of these new monuments is a "super henge" several times larger than Stonehenge itself.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, a joint venture by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute and the University of Birmingham, took four years to complete its surveys. The impressive results were described in a press release on the project's website:
"The startling results of the survey include 17 previously unknown ritual monuments dating to the period when Stonehenge achieved its iconic shape. Dozens of burial mounds have been mapped in minute detail, including a long barrow (a burial mound dating to before Stonehenge) which revealed a massive timber building, probably used for the ritual inhumation of the dead following a complicated sequence of exposure and excarnation (defleshing), and which was finally covered by an earthen mound.
"The project has also revealed exciting new - and completely unexpected - information on previously known monuments. Among the most significant relate to the Durrington Walls 'super henge', situated a short distance from Stonehenge. This immense ritual monument, probably the largest of its type in the world, has a circumference of more than 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles).
"A new survey reveals that this had an early phase when the monument was flanked with a row of massive posts or stones, perhaps up to three metres high and up to 60 in number - some of which may still survive beneath the massive banks surrounding the monument. Only revealed by the cutting-edge technology used in the project, the survey has added yet another dimension to this vast and enigmatic structure.
"Work also revealed novel types of monument including massive prehistoric pits, some of which appear to form astronomic alignments, plus new information on hundreds of burial mounds, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman settlements and fields at a level of detail never previously seen."
