Marden Henge Dwarfs Stonehenge

English Heritage archaeologists have uncovered a ceremonial building, thought to be 4,500 years old during a recent 6-week archaeological excavation at one of Britain’s most important but least understood prehistoric monuments, Marden Henge in Wiltshire, south west England.
Excavated Neolithic ceremonial structure at Marden Henge. Photo: English Heritage

The structure has been discovered on the site of a previously unknown smaller henge within the banks of the much larger Marden Henge and is one of the best preserved Neolithic buildings in Britain outside the Orkneys.
Balanced precariously on top of a bank, and with an opening straight out onto the slope of the internal ditch, it seems an unlikely choice for a dwelling. However, it would have been in a prime location overlooking the interior of the henge, to observe activities in the centre of it, or across to the River Avon below.

the floor plan is not large enough to function as a dwelling and the unusually large hearth had generated an intense heat
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Jim Leary, an English Heritage archaeologist working at the site suggests that the building may have been used as a sweat lodge, remarking that ” the floor plan is not large enough to function as a dwelling and the unusually large hearth had generated an intense heat.”


Mr Leary further remarked, “Just outside and on either side of the building were areas containing artefacts such as bone needles, pins, awls, and flint tools. The eastern spread was charcoal rich, representing possible rake-out from the hearth, and the western portion contained a large number of pig bones, which may be evidence of feasting.”


The lack of substantial postholes around the surface prompts the archaeology team to think that this may have been a temporary structure, used for a single event.
Mr Leary believes that the likelihood of finding more Neolithic buildings on the site are high and thinks there may be a series of temporary structures sitting on top of the henge bank, each with an associated midden. He added that there could also be earlier buildings preserved within the layers of the bank.

Henge monuments are enigmatic features of late Neolithic Britain (between 2400 BC and 2000 BC). They are enclosures formed of banks and ditches and most experts now believe that significant ceremonial or ritual activity occurred within them. Few, such as Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire and Castlerigg in Cumbria, have impressive upright stone settings still standing.


Aerial view of Marden Henge


[/INDENT] Unlike Stonehenge and Avebury, Marden Henge no longer has any surviving stone settings, although it may once have had, but its sheer size is astounding. Comprising a substantial and well-preserved bank with an internal ditch that defines and encloses an area of some 10.5 hectares (approximately equivalent to 10 football pitches), it is one the largest Neolithic henges in Britain but has now been almost completely destroyed due to ploughing and erosion.


All that has remained is the evidence of a huge mound similar to a smaller version of Silbury Hill at the centre of the henge, which collapsed in 1806 and was completely levelled by 1817. English Heritage hopes to find out more about this feature by obtaining dating material from any surviving features within its centre.

Read more >> Marden Henge excavations opens window on Neolithic ritual | Past Horizons
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A 2007 story, but interesting:

Huge Settlement Unearthed At Stonehenge Complex

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\tScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2007) - Excavations supported by National Geographic at Durrington Walls in the Stonehenge World Heritage site have revealed an enormous ancient settlement that once housed hundreds of people. Archaeologists believe the houses were constructed and occupied by the builders of nearby Stonehenge, the legendary monument on England's Salisbury Plain.

"English Heritage's magnetometry survey had detected dozens of hearths -- the whole valley appears full of houses," said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the U.K.'s Sheffield University. "In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards."



The houses have been radiocarbon dated to 2600-2500 B.C., the same period Stonehenge was built -- one of the facts that leads the archaeologists to conclude that the people who lived in the Durrington Walls houses were responsible for constructing Stonehenge. The houses form the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain; a few similar Neolithic houses have been found in the Orkney Islands off Scotland.



Parker Pearson said the discoveries this season help confirm a theory that Stonehenge did not stand in isolation but was part of a much larger religious complex used for funerary ritual.


The complex's Durrington Walls is the world's largest known henge -- an enclosure with a bank outside it and a ditch inside, usually thought to be ceremonial. It is some 1,400 feet across and encloses a series of concentric rings of huge timber posts. Only small areas of Durrington Walls, located less than two miles from better-known Stonehenge, have been investigated by archaeologists.


Eight of the houses' remains were excavated in September 2006 in the Stonehenge Riverside Project, led by Parker Pearson and five other archaeologists from Britain. Six of the floors were found well-preserved. Each house once measured about 16 feet square and had a clay floor and central hearth. The team found 4,600-year-old debris strewn across floors, postholes and slots that once anchored wooden furniture that had disintegrated long ago.


In a separate area inside the western part of Durrington henge, team member Julian Thomas of Manchester University discovered two other Neolithic houses, each surrounded by a timber fence and a substantial ditch; at least three other such structures probably exist in the same area. Isolated from the others, these houses may have been dwellings of community leaders, chiefs or priests living separately from the rest of the community, Thomas theorized. Or, because of the nearly complete lack of household trash typically found in such houses, he speculates that they may have been shrines or cult houses used for ritual, unoccupied except for a fire kept burning inside.


The rest of the houses are clustered on both sides of an imposing stone-surfaced avenue some 90 feet wide and 560 feet long, found in 2005 and further excavated by the team in 2006. The avenue connects remains of a colossal timber circle with the River Avon. Existence of the avenue, which mirrors one at nearby Stonehenge, indicates people once moved between the two monuments via the river. Discovery of the avenue has helped the team piece together the purpose of the entire Stonehenge complex.


Parker Pearson now believes that Stonehenge and Durrington Walls were intimately connected: Durrington's purpose was to celebrate life and deposit the dead in the river for transport to the afterlife, while Stonehenge was a memorial and even final resting place for some of the dead. Stonehenge's avenue, discovered in the 18th century, is aligned on the midsummer solstice sunrise, while the Durrington avenue lines up with midsummer solstice sunset. Similarly, the Durrington timber circle was aligned with midwinter solstice sunrise, while Stonehenge's giant stone trilithon framed the midwinter solstice sunset.



Durrington, he believes, drew Neolithic people from all over the region, who came for massive midwinter feasts, where prodigious quantities of food were consumed. Abundant animal bones and pottery, in quantities unparalleled elsewhere in Britain at the time, are testament to this idea. Examination of pig teeth from the site showed the animals to be about nine months old when they were killed, suggesting that the feasts took place in midwinter.



After feasting, Parker Pearson theorizes, the people traveled down the avenue to deposit their dead in the River Avon flowing towards Stonehenge. They then moved along Stonehenge Avenue to the monument, where they would cremate and bury a selected few of their dead. Stonehenge was a place for these people, who worshipped their ancestors, to commune with the spirits of those who had died.
The Durrington avenue leads to a cliff over the river. "My guess is that they were throwing ashes, human bones and perhaps even whole bodies into the water, a practice seen in other river settings," Parker Pearson said.



Parker Pearson and Thomas believe Durrington Walls was built in wood because, both symbolically and practically, it was deliberately intended to gradually rot away. Stone was chosen for Stonehenge, however, as a lasting monument to the ancestors.
Durrington appears "very much a place of the living," Parker Pearson said. In contrast, no one ever lived at the stone circle at Stonehenge, which was the largest cemetery in Britain of its time: Stonehenge is thought to contain 250 cremations.
Work in 2006 at nearby Woodhenge, immediately south of Durrington Walls, by team member Joshua Pollard of Bristol University, revealed that original wood posts within the henge had been replaced by stone after the posts decayed. Simultaneous investigations by Colin Richards of Manchester University into stoneworking debris northwest of Stonehenge helped pave the way for future work there.

 

It's a great site, have you been to Sarum, the old town of Salisbury? Not as massive as Maiden, but really interesting. I'm currently trying to find a lost early medieval castle and tithe barn in Gloucester, it's surprising how churches, cathedrals and even towns can disappear without trace and be lost from memory. Love the subject

MelT

 

Hmmm. any more details? I try to watch the TT back-to-backs on saturdays mornings, but I'm getting to a point now where I've seen so many that a lot of the episodes are becoming one in my mind, so I'm losing track. There are two sites that sound like that, one they did in Norfolk, or another on the fosse way, which was once the briton/welsh/saxon border. But I think it's more likely the fist one...I'll have a think.

Whereabouts in Yorkshire are you?

MelT

 

No worries, I'll have a dig around Funnily enough I saw Tony R near my place last week, and Mick used to teach here, but I hadn't seenhim around recently, I just found out why:

"...I've always had poor health. I have had this farmer's lung condition (aspergillosis) for 30 years, and I sometimes wonder that I manage to do as much as I do. But in March 2003 I had a brain haemorrhage. I was in hospital for about a fortnight and could not drive for five months. I had about 18 months of being really, really depressed which apparently is one of the side effects that one often gets. Then round about March this year, it was like a cloud lifting and I found that a lot of my energy and enthusiasm returning. Jane Lapotaire, the actress, had the same thing happen to her and wrote a book about it which I read whilst I was recovering, and it was the most helpful thing that I found.
I am now almost back to normal, but I retired from the university in August last year though I still do a bit of teaching, at Exeter and Durham as well as Bristol..."

MelT

 

AHHHH!!! I remember Good ep'. And thanks a lot for the google maps link, it really helps put the site in perspective.

I normally post mainly about science and have avoided too many historical topics in the past. If nobody minds I'll post more like the above.

+rep Jay

MelT