New Stonehenge Postholes Revealed

Excavations have been ongoing on the ridge to the south of the A303 near the Stonehenge Cottages to the east of Stonehenge and elsewhere where the proposed tunnel works may affect.

The Guardian has now made it public about the postholes that have been found:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/21/stonehenge-tunnel-survey-reveals-new-sites-and-mysteries

Some 3,400 years before the roaring torrent of the A303 road sliced the Stonehenge landscape in half, some people cut a beautiful pit a metre deep into the chalk with no tools except picks made of red deer antlers.

They may have had primitive tools, but there was nothing primitive about their skills: the bottom of the pit was so neatly levelled that you could balance a beaker of mead on it without spilling a drop. 

As druids and tourists head towards Stonehenge for the winter solstice, which falls this year on 22 December, when the midwinter sun should set framed perfectly by the giant stones, Historic England archaeologists are hard at work teasing ancient secrets out of the landscape. 

The newly discovered pit was immaculately cut to hold a huge wooden post. A neat trench links to a second equally impressive pit for another massive post: in the rolling chalk downland, they would have been visible for miles. The line of the trench seems to lead on towards the neighbouring field full of curious Waitrose pigs, under a later bank but carefully jinking to avoid an earlier long barrow. 

But what is it? Phil McMahon, Historic England archaeologist, and his opposite number at the National Trust, Nick Snashall, laughed and shrugged. 

“A gateway? A boundary marker? A palisade? The truth is we just don’t know,” Snashall said. “We won’t even have a date [that it was created] until we get the lab results back.”

The Position of Stone Hole 97

English Heritage have marked the position of Stone Hole 97 with a very handsome marker.

Stone hole 97 was discovered by Mike Pitts in 1979 and is alongside the Heel Stone, it may be where a companion stone to the Heel Stone stood, or where the Heel Stone was moved from. The centre of it is abut 2m from the nearest point of the heel stone and is "cut through by the ditch around the Heelstone", with it mainly lying within the ditch enclosure.

Unfortunately the marker is about 5m from the Heel Stone and entirely without the ditch enclosure. If it marks where the second of a pair of stone stood the effect of two pillars bracketing the solstitial sunrise is now not obvious.

Before the marker was installed I wrote a bog post about getting the position correct. :( 

A quick photoshop of what a duplicate Heelstone would look like in Stonehole 97 (you will notice the marker to the right of "Stone 97"

ORIGINAL POST from May 2013

One of the improvements that is planned for Stonehenge is the marking of Stone Hole 97 and the Solstitial Alignment on the ground. But the plans seem to have 97 marked in the wrong place. 

UPDATE - EH say the mistake has been noted and will be corrected.

April 2012 EH plans for after the A344 is closed and grassed over from http://southplanning.wiltshire.gov.uk/public-planning-application-documents/00543000/00542853_Amended_Plan.pdf

Mike Pitts' plan at the same orientation taken from:

Mike Pitts' plan (and he discovered Stonehole 97) from http://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/stonehenge-in-five-easy-stages-or-perhaps-six/


A more detailed plan of the Heel Stone area, though I haven't located the original source.

Heelstone, Stonehenge - Refraction Seismic (1984) from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/58474363 by Gary Denke

Click any to embiggen

The Stonehenge New Visitor Centre prebuild opinions

Stonehenge visitor centre looks 'cheap and nasty'
11 September 2009 | By Elizabeth Hopkirk
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/

"...Paul Sample, a former mayor of Salisbury, has attacked the scheme as a “cheap and nasty” addition to the World Heritage Site; while Peter Alexander-Fitzgerald, a member of the International Council on Monuments & Sites, claimed the centre resembled “a derelict aircraft hangar”.

Sample said: “It’s cheap and nasty and isn’t going to do justice to the site. It looks like an immigration detention centre. It’s not something that makes you feel part of something ancient and mystic.

“We should be building something to last. We should have had an international competition.”

Alexander-Fitzgerald commented: “This looks like an IT student’s first attempt at rendered graphics. It’s amateurish and causes one to wonder about the quality of the finished product."

West Kennet Long Barrow Restoration

English Heritage have just finished a modest restoration of West Kennet Long Barrow - new drained floor, restored worn areas and replacement of the skylights with a more sympathetic arrangements of simple circular lightwells.

They seem to have done a very good job as my poor photos taken in the dusk of a murky day show.

A Buried Sarsen at Durrington Walls

I was told that a sarsen stone had been spotted in a hole at Durrington Walls, and especially with the interest in the “Superhenge” idea of a row of buried stones under the bank there I thought a walk round was in order.

The reported stone is on the north side whereas the “Superhenge” row is on the other side, under the southern bank. And whereas they are believed to be large monoliths (or not stones at all in the competing hypothesis) this stone is quite small.

It is stuck fast in the ground but moves slightly on touch and I would estimate from the angle of movement it is about 60 cm in length at most. It is dark reddish colour, rounded and unworked as far as can be seen and is typical of the smaller local sarsens.

I have indicated its position with a circle on the photo and plan.

This area of the scarp seems quite free of modern debris but because of badger and rabbit damage the stone could easily have been deposited there at any time and then buried. It is the sort of stone a ploughman would have carried to the edge of a field and tipped onto the waste ground of the scarp.

(The bank of the henge is badly ploughed out on the flatter surface above the scarp.)

Further to the west there is a disputed entrance to the henge at the head of the valley up though the monument. As you walk round the scarp to this area the scarp becomes increasingly contaminated with what looks like early 20th Century rubbish, bottles, ash, some metal etc. Where the entrance might be there is a War Department concrete marker, marked with an arrow. It is obvious that this area was used as a rubbish dump and the shape of the scarp is altered by the accumulation of the rubbish. At the top of the entrance there seems to be a shallow hollow way towards Larkhill though the ground is very disturbed with animal holes and other field marks.

It would be great if the original features could be recovered from under the rubbish.

"Rhosyfelin - Not A Quarry" Press Release

"Earth scientists who have worked at a "bluestone monolith quarry" site at Craig Rhosyfelin in Pembrokeshire have suggested that the archaeologists have got it all wrong, and that the so-called "engineering features" on the flank of the crag are entirely natural. Further, it is suggested that members of the digging team have unconsciously created the very features that they have cited in support of their quarrying hypothesis.

In a peer-reviewed paper published on 14th December 2015 in the peer-reviewed journal "Archaeology in Wales" journal Dr Brian John, Dr Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes have described a set of Ice Age deposits and landforms at the site of an archaeological dig that was started in 2011, and have determined that there are no traces of human intervention in any of the features that have made the archaeologists so excited.... "


This research can be freely downloaded from Researchgate, and is also available from the journal office in hard copy.

JOHN, B.S., ELIS-GRUFFYDD, D. & DOWNES, J. (2015b). Observations on the supposed ‘Neolithic Bluestone Quarry’ at Craig Rhosyfelin, Pembrokeshire. Archaeology in Wales 54, pp 139-148.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_OBSERVATIONS_ON_THE_SUPPOSED_NEOLITHIC_BLUESTONE_QUARRY_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE

Reused Stones at Stonehenge

Mike Parker Pearson talks about the possible reuse of the Bluestones at Stonehenge from another monument and how other neolithic monuments show this property : http://theconversation.com/stonehenge-isnt-the-only-prehistoric-monument-thats-been-moved-but-its-still-unique-51962

Another archaeologist, and I can't be sure who it wa, mused to me about whether Stone 56, the tallest sarsen stone at Stonehenge was a reused stone some time ago. The fact what is now the buried portion of the stone is as finely worked as the rest was a factor in his suspicions.