Researchers 'may have found largest Neolithic site'

Another article on the matter;

Neolithic Monument Discovered Near the Stonehenge

What mystery could still be added to the Stonehenge? It is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England and was described as a ring of standing stones within earthworks. Recently, researchers have discovered a new monument near the Stonehenge that is also believed from the same Neolithic period and Bronze Age.

The Stonehenge has been around for thousands of years and has been a staple reminder of the mystery culture our ancestors had. One of the wonders of the world and the best know prehistoric monument in Europe, it is a perfect example of the Neolithic period. The Neolithic Period or New Stone Age was the cultural evolution of development by the use of stone tools.

The Stonehenge was believed to be built around 3000 BC to 2000 BC and through an archeological evidence found by Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 it could have been a burial ground as cremated remain and human bones were found dating 3000 BC.

This recent discovery of the monument near the Stonehenge would give us more insight on what really happened that time. The monument was believed to have been built around 4500 years ago. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Projects used radar technology that found the evidence consisting 90 monoliths three feet underground near the Durrington Walls about two miles from the Stonehenge site.

Even though none of the stones was excavated, due to it being hidden for millennia already, it was measured that some stones would have stood up to 4.5 meters before being toppled over by Neolithic builders themselves. The research team used "non-invasive geophysical prospection and remote sensing technologies" to see the stones underground. It could peer underground, equipped with penetrating radar, electromagnetic induction, magnetometer, electrical resistance mapping and lasers. This discovery could be the break through the mystery of the Stonehenge was waiting.

"We're looking at one of the largest stone monuments in Europe and it has been under our noses for something like 4,000 years. It's truly remarkable. We don't think there's anything quite like this anywhere else in the world. This is completely new and the scale is extraordinary." said Professor Vince Gaffney from University of Bradford and one of the archeologists of the research team.

(pic/source at: www.sciencetimes.com/articles/7317/20150910/neolithic-monument-discovered-near-stonehenge.htm )

Stonehenge: Temple near site shows evidence of a religious revolution - when Britons switched from worshipping landscape features to a solar cult
* Remains of buried temple may mark point of religious transformation when prehistoric society shifted from worshipping landscape to the Sun

The remains of a prehistoric temple a couple of miles from Stonehenge is yielding evidence of a prehistoric religious revolution, in which ancient Britons apparently switched from the worship of landscape features like hills to some form of solar cult.

Archaeologists are making remarkable new discoveries which help demonstrate how Stonehenge ushered in a period of religious transformation in which a previous religious system appears to have been overturned and replaced by a new one.

Almost exactly a year ago The Independent revealed how the archaeologists – from Britain and Austria - had used ground-penetrating radar to discover a previously unknown prehistoric temple two miles north-east of Stonehenge. Now research over recent months and additional ground-penetrating radar survey work, carried out just last week, has revealed that the temple was even more impressive than first thought.

Archaeologists now believe that the newly discovered temple – the massive stones of which are buried underneath a slightly later prehistoric monument - was deliberately decommissioned as part of a dramatic religious transformation. The burying of the stones may conceivably have represented a switch to a solar cult after generations in which a local topographical feature – a prominent nearby hill – had potentially been a major focus of reverence.

Initially – some time in the first half of the third millennium BC and potentially before the main phase of Stonehenge was built in c2600BC – a huge probably horseshoe-shaped temple was established near what is now the village of Durrington, in Wiltshire. The 800 metre long southern and western part of the ‘horseshoe’ appears to have been made of at least 200 large standing stones, most of them around 3 metres tall and 1.5 metres wide.

So far the archaeologists, through their ground-penetrating-radar imaging system, have ‘seen’ 40 complete buried stones, some 35 broken ones and around 50 buried ‘holes’ in which stones had once stood. However, the horseshoe temple’s northern perimeter appears not to have been marked by standing stones – but instead by a curved ridge of naturally high ground (defining the western and northern edge of the site) which had been artificially steepened at some stage, potentially when the stones were erected.

If so, this artificially-steepened four metre high scarp would have looked like a low chalk cliff at the back and northern side of the temple.

The entire horseshoe arrangement faced virtually due east and appears to have been aligned with a specific and very prominent natural landmark (now known as Beacon Hill) some three miles away. Significantly, this is the same hill that the western part of the 1.9 mile long pre-Stonehenge era sacred enclosure – the so-called ‘Stonehenge Cursus’ (potentially a place for Neolithic religious processions) – is also aligned with.

It therefore now appears that this major natural feature, Beacon Hill, may well have been of greater significance in prehistoric times than previously realized. Indeed, it is conceivable that it was revered as some sort of sacred landmark – perhaps embodying a now long forgotten nature spirit or deity. Identification of prominent topographical features with divine beings or nature spirits is common in many of the world’s most ancient indigenous religious traditions.

In around 2600 BC, the Beacon-Hill-aligned cursus was finally eclipsed by the construction of a new solar cult temple – the ‘giant stones’ main phase of Stonehenge – and, in around 2500 BC, the Durrington horseshoe was decommissioned and replaced with a second solar-oriented temple, a so-called ‘henge’ monument, today known as Durrington Walls.

It appears that the stones of the original horseshoe were deliberately pulled out of their sockets and were then pushed over on their sides and deliberately buried under the southern and western part of the newly constructed earthwork embankment which linked up with the natural (and potentially already artificially scarped) curved ridge to form the roughly circular Durrington Walls henge.

It is the most dramatic example yet discovered of the precise moment a site changed from a pre ‘Stonehenge main phase’ tradition to a ‘Stonehenge solar phase’ one.

Normally, in Britain and around the world, such religious changes are only known from much later periods when historical records were kept – such as the change-over from Roman sun worship to Christianity or from Arabian paganism to Islam or from Catholicism to Protestantism in Reformation Europe.

(source & pics: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/stonehenge-temple-near-site-shows-evidence-of-a-religious-revolution-when-britons-switched-from-10488928.html )

How Do Archaeologists Use Technology to Discover Forgotten Ancient Monuments?

The popular image of an archaeologist is someone who spends most of their time on their knees painstakingly excavating sites. Although excavation is still one of archaeology’s principal research methods, it is not without problems: it is slow, expensive and can cover only relatively small areas of a site. Most problematic of all, it destroys much of the very evidence we rely upon.

In reality, archaeologists use a wide variety of other techniques to investigate both individual sites and whole landscapes. For example, aerial photography of a farmed field can reveal hidden details because crops ripen differently in areas above buried walls or ditches. Meanwhile the systematic collection of artefacts from the surface of ploughed fields can provide valuable artefactual evidence.

How can archaeologists see what’s underground?

One suite of techniques available to archaeologists is geophysical survey (or “geofizz” to fans of the TV show Time Team). Of the many geophysical techniques that exist, archaeologists generally make use of four: magnetic gradiometry, earth resistance, ground penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic susceptibility. Each technique measures some aspect of the ground below the surface. By taking many readings on a regular grid and plotting the results, information about the archaeological site can be gained without having to dig it up.

The basic techniques were largely developed in the late 1950s–60s but their use has been revolutionised by the power of modern computing which enables us to collect and process huge amounts of data quickly, and by modern surveying techniques.

High-accuracy differential GPS is able to provide coordinates accurate to about 10mm. As a result, we are now able to build towed arrays that can survey large landscapes quickly and accurately. This is what recently enabled archaeologists to discover the huge line of stones at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge, revealing them to be part of the largest surviving stone monument underneath a bank ever discovered in Britain.

But many surveys are still conducted using hand-operated machines, and still provide exciting results such as those obtained this summer at Verulamium, Hertfordshire, by the Community Archaeology Geophysics Group. The survey has revealed rich town houses and more modest dwellings, roads, a temple and possibly even the aqueduct which supplied some of the town’s water.

What are the techniques they use?

Magnetic gradiometry measures local variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. There are two sources of magnetism of interest to archaeologists: thermoremanence and magnetic susceptibility. In the former case, weakly magnetic materials that have been subjected to intense heat become permanently magnetised due to the influence of Earth’s magnetic field as they cool, and then can be more easily detected. Good examples include features such as pottery kilns.

In the latter case, archaeologists can measure the magnetic response of a sample to the Earth’s magnetic field. Soils and sediments in particular can be magnetically enhanced through low-temperature firing, organic fermentation and other processes. Often, negative features such as pits and ditches contain such magnetically enhanced soils and are detectable with a magnetometer.

In an earth resistance survey, an electric current is passed through the ground and the resistance is measured. In order to conduct an electric current, the soil must contain water and salt. In practice, the technique allows archaeologists to measure variations in the water present in the ground. Features such as solid walls and surfaced roads will usually have low moisture content and thus a high resistance. Subsurface features that trap moisture, such as ditches and pits, will usually have low resistance, although these are less easily detected.

GPR works by transmitting a very-high frequency radio pulse into the ground. Some of the pulse will be reflected back from surfaces of different layers of material in the ground such as wall tops or floors. By measuring the time taken for the pulse to return, it is possible to estimate the depth of the change and so of the feature.

Some of the pulse will continue deeper into the ground and be reflected by other changes. By moving the antenna across the ground surface in a linear transect, it is possible to build-up a radargram, essentially an image of the reflections along the line of the transect. By taking multiple closely spaced transects and stacking them into a cube in the software, we can create horizontal “time slices” images of the pattern of reflections at different depths.

Magnetic susceptibility survey subjects a relatively small volume of soil to a magnetic field and measures the induced magnetic response. Whereas in gradiometry we rely on the Earth’s magnetic field to induce the response, this type of survey actively creates the response and provides an absolute value for the soil sampled. It is useful in determining areas of magnetically enhanced soils caused by burning and intense occupation and can provide useful extra data in interpreting broad zones of land-use.

If time and money allows, using multiple techniques can create an even more nuanced appraisal of the surviving archaeological deposits. For example, stone buildings may show clearly on a GPR survey whereas pits and ditches may not appear at all but be obvious in a magnetometry survey.

The weakness of these techniques is that the interpretation of the results often relies on analogy with other known sites, and the techniques cannot provide secure dates. Using the results, however, enables archaeologists to accurately place their excavation trenches to answer specific questions whilst minimising the destruction of the archaeological record.

Kris Lockyear is Senior lecturer in Archaeology at UCL.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-archaeologists-discover-forgotten-ancient-monuments-47317 .

(pics & source at: gizmodo.com/how-do-archaeologists-use-technology-to-discover-forgot-1730009231 )