Archaeologists: Stonehenge a royal burial site

Radiocarbon dating of cremated bodies excavated from Britain's Stonehenge have solved part of the mystery surrounding the 5,000-year-old site: It was a burial ground for what might have been the country's first royal dynasty.

The new dates indicate burials began at least 500 years before the first massive stones were erected at the site and continued after it was completed, British archaeologists said Thursday.

The pattern and relatively small number of the graves suggest all were members of a single family.

The findings provide the first substantive evidence that a line of kings ruled at least the lower portion of the British island during this early period, exerting enough power to mobilize the manpower necessary to move the stones from as far as 150 miles away and maintaining that power for at least five centuries, said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, leader of the current excavations at the site.

"It was clearly a special place at that time," he said. "One has to assume that anyone buried there had some good credentials."

Parker Pearson presented the new data at a teleconference organized by the National Geographic Society. It also will appear in the June issue of National Geographic and in the television special "Stonehenge Decoded," to be shown Sunday.

Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain southwest of London, consists of concentric circles of massive stones — some weighing as much as 50 tons — surrounded by an earthen bank and a ditch.

Some of the stones were imported from Wales, about 150 miles away, and others were quarried about 24 miles away at Marlboro Downs. Construction began about 4,500 years ago, about the same time that the pharaohs were building the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The structure is aligned with sunrise at the summer solstice, and researchers have long viewed the monument as both an astronomical observatory and a cemetery, although they thought that the burials took place over only a relatively short period, perhaps a century.

But research over the past three years has provided a wealth of information indicating that Stonehenge is only a part of a larger ceremonial and religious complex.

Excavations at Durrington Walls, two miles northeast of Stonehenge, revealed a village that is now thought to contain as many as 1,000 houses and a wooden henge that is virtually identical in design to Stonehenge but is aligned with sunrise at the winter solstice. It was built at the same time as Stonehenge.

Parker Pearson now believes that Stonehenge was the "Domain of the Dead," where the ancient people whose identity is still unknown came together in somber ceremonies in summer to honor the dead. Durrington Walls, in contrast, was the "Domain of the Living," where they would adjourn to hold raucous parties to celebrate life and fertility.

At the winter solstice, he said, people would gather again to inter their dead, perhaps flinging their ashes off a 12-foot cliff into the nearby River Avon.

The cremated remains dated by Parker Pearson's team were excavated in the 1950s and have been stored since then in the nearby Salisbury Museum. Remains from an additional 49 burial sites were excavated in the 1920s but were reburied because researchers thought they were useless.

The remains had not been radiocarbon-dated until now because only recently has a new technique been devised for use on burned bones.

One set of remains, from the so-called Aubrey holes or pits surrounding Stonehenge, has been dated to 3030 B.C. to 2880 B.C., about the time when the ditch and bank monument was first cut into Salisbury Plain.

A second, taken from the ditch surrounding Stonehenge, dates from 2930 B.C. to 2870 B.C. A third, that of a woman about 25 years old, dates from 2570 B.C. to 2340 B.C., when the first stones were being raised at the site.

Few objects were buried with the remains, Parker Pearson said. One significant find, however, was a mace made out of stone. Such maces have long been a symbol of authority in Britain, and even now Parliament has its own mace.

The team believes that 150 to 240 burial sites are scattered around Stonehenge, with the largest number dating from the last stages of the site's use. Both the small number and its increase over the centuries — as the number of offspring would have multiplied — suggest that all came from a single family of rulers, said archaeologist Andrew Chamberlain of the University of Sheffield, who is part of the current excavation team.

Other new evidence also suggests that the site was funereal in purpose. On the cliff overlooking the river, researchers have discovered a series of postholes that are architecturally the same as those found in the houses at Durrington Walls but much larger.

These poles, the team believes, supported elevated platforms where the dead were placed so that their bones could be stripped of flesh by weathering, a common practice throughout much of the world.

Other new evidence involves the so-called cursus, a cigar-shaped enclosure near Stonehenge that is nearly two miles long. Discovered in the 1700s, it was originally thought to be a Roman-era racetrack.

But excavations last year revealed a red deer antler pick used for excavating the chalky soil. Radiocarbon dating indicates the pick was used around 3630 B.C. to 3375 B.C., about 500 years before the first burials at Stonehenge and 1,000 years before the first stones were erected, said archaeologist Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester.

Parker Pearson noted that henges are scattered throughout England, but Stonehenge is by far the most impressive. Later henges are much smaller, more suitable for an extended family rather than a royal dynasty, he noted.