Stonehenge proves to be a massive burial site

Legends about the origin of Stonehenge’s 4 500-year-old stone pillars and speculation about their meaning has fascinated generations of visitors to the site in Wiltshire, England.

However, archaeologist and head of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, Mike Parker Pearson – who has spent the past seven years excavating Stonehenge – has established beyond doubt that the site is, in fact, a massive cemetery.

In his book on the topic, Stonehenge – A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument, Pearson tells of the discovery of 60 cremation burials inside Stonehenge.

One of Pearson’s peers suggested that Stonehenge, with its eternal stone structures, could be representative of a place for the ancestors, while similar wooden structures were used by the living.

Years of excavation and research have proved the theory to be true, with large timber circles located at Durrington Walls, described by Pearson as “a bit like Stonehenge in wood”, marking the middle of a village where thousands are believed to have once lived.

Said Pearson: “We discovered that they’d been feasting there on a very large scale. We estimate that about four to five thousand people may have gathered there at the time they were building Stonehenge.”

The summer and midwinter solstices have long been associated with Stonehenge, as Pearson explains: “As you are moving along the avenue away from Stonehenge, you are looking toward where the sun rises on the midsummer solstice. If you turn 180 degrees and look back toward Stonehenge, that’s where the sun sets on the midwinter solstice.”

Beneath the avenue Pearson and his team discovered grooves and ridges along a natural landform, formed in a previous ice age that coincidentally align with the solstitial axis.

Adjacent to the landform, the researchers found pits dug to hold posts erected around 10 000 years ago, pre-dating Stonehenge.

The revelation that Stonehenge is a cemetery is unlikely to make it any less appealing, and the ancient attraction is expected to continue to attract visitors from across the globe for thousands of years to come.

Rachel Hartigan Shea interviewed Pearson for National Geographic in June 2013. Read her account here.