The Stonehenge Riverside Project> exploring the Neolithic ...

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UDK 903.7(410)"634"Documenta Praehistorica XXXV (2008)

The Stonehenge Riverside Project>exploring the Neolithic landscape of Stonehenge

Mike Parker Pearson1, Joshua Pollard2, Colin Richards3, Julian Thomas3,Chris Tilley4 and Kate Welham5

1 Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield< 2 Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,University of Bristol, [email protected]< 3 School of Arts, Histories and Cultures,

University of Manchester< 4 Department of Anthropology, University College London<5 School of Conservation Sciences, University of Bournemouth

Introduction: the landscape of Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a national symbol, recognised through-out the world, and interpreted in different ways bya wide variety of constituencies, from Druids to NewAge enthusiasts (Chippindale 1990) (Fig. 1). It hasserved as a focus for contemporary cultural and polit-ical struggles, and has a special place in popular cul-ture and the public imagination (Bender 1998;Worthington 2004; 2005). Yet the attention thatStonehenge attracts sometimes occludes its placewithin a broader landscape, a World Heritage Sitecomposed of a great many structures and depositsthat built up over dozens of generations (Darvill2005) (Fig. 2). This process arguably began with theconstruction of an arrangement of huge post-holesdating to the eighth millennium BC (in the earlierMesolithic), discovered when the car-park for Stone-henge itself was constructed in 1966 (Cleal, Walkerand Montague 1995.43). This clearly refutes the

argument that only agriculturalists build monuments(e.g. Rowley-Conwy 2004.85), but it also potentiallydemonstrates the longevity of special places withinthis particular landscape. During the early 1980s, avery important programme of investigation was con-ducted by Julian Richards, under the rubric of theStonehenge Environs Project. This combined target-ed excavations with extensive field walking to iden-tify the surface concentration of lithics (Richards1990). The intention of this project was to place theknown field monuments into a clearer chronologicalframework, and to identify complementary domesticand industrial activity in their immediate surround-ings.

The publication of the Stonehenge Environs Project,and that of the various excavations by Gowland,Hawley, Atkinson, Piggott, Stone, and the Vatchers

ABSTRACT – The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a collaborative enterprise directed by six academicsfrom five UK universities, investigating the place of Stonehenge within its contemporary land-scape. In this contribution, a series of novel approaches being employed on the project are outlined,before the results of investigations at the Greater Stonehenge Cursus, Woodhenge, the Cuckoo Stoneand Durrington Walls are discussed.

IZVLE∞EK – Stonehenge Riverside Project je skupen projekt, ki ga vodi ∏est profesorjev s petih uni-verz Zdru∫enega kraljestva Velike Britanije. Ukvarjamo se s polo∫ajem Stonehenga v takratni pokra-jini. V prispevku predstavljamo vrsto novih pristopov, ki smo jih uporabili v projektu, kot tudi rezul-tate raziskav Greater Duringhton Cursus, Woodhenge in Durrington Walls.

KEY WORDS – Stonehenge; Durrington Walls; Southern Britain; monumentality; landscape

Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Chris Tilley and Kate Welham

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at Stonehenge itself during the course of the twen-tieth century (Cleal, Walker and Montague 1995)represent an unparalleled contribution to knowl-edge. However, for more than twenty years the pur-suit of archaeological investigations on any scalewithin the Stonehenge landscape has been curtailedby the continuing deliberations over the future ofthe A303 trunk road (which runs immediately to thesouth of the monument). Potential options haveincluded the possibility of running the major roadthrough a bored tunnel, closing the stretch of theA344 road that severs Stonehenge from the Avenuewhich connects it to the River Avon, and establish-ing a visitor centre to replace the present subter-ranean structure beside the car-park. At present, itappears that only the improvements to visitor facil-ities are likely to proceed in the foreseeable future(Harris 2007). Irrespective of the view that onemight take of this outcome, the effective hiatusaffecting archaeological research in the Stonehengelandscape has coincided with a period of heighteneddebate over the character of social archaeology,particularly as it relates to the British Neolithic (e.g.Barrett 1994; Bradley 1998; Whittle 2003). As a re-sult, until now the opportunity has not arisen to‘field trial’ a variety of new ideas and approaches inthe immediate context of Stonehenge. While hypo-theses and arguments concerning Stonehenge havecontinued to be constructed, they have had to relyon existing evidence, often collected according tothe research agendas of past generations.

New approaches to the landscape

The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a collaborativeresearch initiative directed by six academic archaeo-logists from five different British universities. Itbrings a series of novel approaches to bear on thedevelopment of the Stonehenge landscape, and wecan begin this contribution by outlining each. Thefirst is a concern with what we might call the ‘mate-riality of monuments’: that is, an interest in thephysicality and constituent substances involved inmonument building. These issues animated a pio-neering study by Parker Pearson and Ramilsonina(1998), who drew on a parallel with contemporaryMadagascar to suggest that monuments constructedof timber and stone respectively may have been un-derstood in different ways by Neolithic people. Formany Malagasy communities, the human body isconsidered to be soft and wet at birth, maturing togreater hardness and dryness, and culminating inthe exceptionally hard and dry character of thebones of the ancestral dead. Consequentially, whilethe living inhabit houses made of wood, whose or-ganic character has much in common with humanflesh, stone tombs and standing stones are the exclu-sive prerogative of the dead. In a similar way, Par-ker Pearson and Ramilsonina noted that while Stone-henge is distinguished by its multiple stone settings,the presence of numerous cremation burials, and ageneral paucity of ceramics and human remains, themuch larger henge monument at Durrington Walls,

Fig. 1. Stonehenge, seen from the north-east (photo: Aerial-Cam).

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3 kilometres to the north-east, showed a very diffe-rent pattern. Here, there were multiple settings ofupright timbers inside a massive earthwork enclo-sure, and colossal quantities of animal bones andGrooved Ware pottery (Wainwright and Longworth1971). On this basis, Parker Pearson and Ramilso-nina hypothesised that the two monuments mighthave been focal to two distinct areas of the land-scape, reserved for the living and the dead, andlinked by the River Avon. The transformation of thenewly dead into ancestors might then be physicallyexpressed through the passage downriver, from Dur-rington Walls to Stonehenge. Such an argument atonce draws our attention to the complementarity ofthe two monuments, to the way that what are often

understood as separate struc-tures may form parts of a sin-gle complex, and to the axialrole of the River Avon withinthe Stonehenge landscape.

This emphasis on the materi-al substance of monumentalconstructions is complement-ed by a concern with the con-struction of monuments as acollective social practice (Ri-chards 2004). Rather than asimple exercise in ergonom-ics, the creation of elaborateworks like Stonehenge andDurrington Walls involvedthe mobilization of largenumbers of people, materials,animals and food, in an en-

terprise that could generate prestige and fame forthe builders, but which also risked shame and fail-ure if the desired outcome was not achieved. More-over, addressing the physical composition of mon-uments encourages us to think about their varyingtemporal qualities: the way that their decay, de-struction or endurance conditions and contributesto quite different histories or biographies of place(Thomas 2004).

A second theme is provided by a new attentivenessto the disposition of materials in the archaeologicalrecord, informed by the concept of ‘structured depo-sition’. This originated in work undertaken by twoof the authors in the 1980s, re-assessing the evi-

dence from Geoffrey Wainwright’s exca-vations at the Durrington Walls henge,and suggesting that many of the depo-sits at the site had been deliberately pla-ced, as one aspect of ritual activity (Ri-chards and Thomas 1984). More recent-ly, increasingly sophisticated analyseshave drawn attention to the importantrole of depositional practice in transfor-ming the meaning of place, and in en-gendering memory (Pollard 1995;2001). Both within monumental struc-tures and in isolated pits dispersedacross the landscape, the placement ofartefacts and other materials appearsto have been one of the key means bywhich people expressed their connec-tion with specific locations during theBritish Neolithic (Garrow 2006).

Fig. 2. Map of prehistoric monuments in the Stonehenge area (drawing:Anne Leaver).

Fig. 3. The Greater Stonehenge Cursus under excavation, sum-mer 2007 east (photo: Aerial-Cam).


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Our third preoccupation is what we might call the‘phenomenology of landscape’, or an approach tofield survey that stresses the experiential qualities ofplaces and monuments (Tilley 1994). Although thearea surrounding Stonehenge has been subject toexhaustive survey and mapping, from the work ofSir Richard Colt Hoare and Philip Crocker (Hoare1810) down to the high quality investigations ofEnglish Heritage (e.g. McOmish, Field and Brown2002), it is arguable that a concern with the waythat the landscape might be engaged with from a hu-man perspective is capable of generating fresh in-sights. Both in terms of the architectural organisa-tion of specific monuments, and in relation to thewider landscape, a number of novel observationshave been generated (Tilley et al. 2007). In harmo-ny with some of the arguments already outlined, itis clear that the River Avon and the system of dryvalleys with which it articulates had a fundamentalrole in influencing the location of a variety of struc-tures throughout the Neolithic and Early BronzeAge. As well as delimiting areas of higher ground,the valley systems define a series of potential routesthrough the landscape, so that significant structuresmay have been positioned in such a way as to be en-countered by people and their animals in the courseof their daily or seasonal movements. Equally, Bea-con Hill, a distinctive natural eminence formed bythe intersection of the chalk with the pebble depositsof the Reading Beds, seems to be visible from oraligned upon by almost all of the Neolithic and EarlyBronze Age constructions in the whole landscape, in-cluding Stonehenge itself (Tilley et al. 2007.189).While Beacon Hill possesses no upstanding prehis-toric features of its own, its evident influence on thedevelopment of the monumental landscape demon-strates that ‘natural’ topographic features often holdgreat significance.

Finally, the Stonehenge Riverside Project has soughtto employ a series of new field technologies, many

of which have not previously been used in the Stone-henge area. As well as very large areas of GPS, mag-netometer and resistivity survey, the project hasmade use of ground-penetrating radar, laser scan-ning of archaeological features, and unmanned pho-tographic aircraft. At the Durrington Walls henge,for instance, this work has revealed two formerlyunknown blocked entrances through the hengebank, and the causewayed character of the ditch, in-dicating that this was probably dug in sections by aseries of work-gangs.

Monuments as places of enduring significance

The earliest site investigated under the aegis of theproject is also the largest. The Greater StonehengeCursus is a linear enclosure over a mile long, whichruns between the King Barrow Ridge and FargoRidge, immediately north of Stonehenge (Stone1947; Christie 1963) (see Fig. 2). The Cursus is in-timately associated with a series of Early Neolithiclong barrows, including Amesbury 42, which runsparallel with its eastern terminal (Richards 1990.96). However, the only radiocarbon date that haspreviously been derived from it falls in the mid-thirdmillennium cal BC, in our Later Neolithic (2890–2460 cal BC; OxA–1403). In the summer of 2007,excavations were able to demonstrate that this datehad come from one of a series of intrusive features,which formed the first of two phases of re-cutting inthe cursus ditch (Fig. 3) (Thomas et al. 2008). Clearly,the cursus was a very long-lived structure, which wasrepeatedly re-established over a long period of time.This was underlined by radiocarbon determinationsfrom a piece of antler located on the bottom of theditch at its western terminal, which calibrated to3632–3375 BC and 3630–3370 BC at the 95.4% con-fidence level (OxA–17953 and OxA–17954) (Fig.4).This is roughly half a millennium earlier than theearliest phase of construction at Stonehenge itself,so that the cursus can be said to have had an impor-

Fig. 4. Section of the Greater Stonehenge Cursus at its western terminal (drawing: Julia Roberts).


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tant role in structuring the landscape into whichStonehenge was placed. In the course of excavationit was also recognised that the initial laying-out ofthe structure involved an alignment on Beacon Hill,tying the enclosure into the local topography. Nei-ther geophysics nor excavation could locate any in-ternal features, and the ditches contain so little ma-terial culture that we were verylucky to recover the one pieceof antler noted above. So, un-like other Neolithic structuresin the area, the cursus gives lit-tle indication of having beenused for ceremonial, consump-tion or deposition, and this sup-ports the idea that it encloseda venerated, sanctified or cur-sed area, which was set apartfrom the rest of the landscape.

Immediately to the east of theCursus, and in line with its axis,excavation was conducted du-ring 2007 at the Cuckoo Stone,a formerly upstanding sarsenmonolith (Fig. 5). This is one of

two isolated sarsen stones that have been investi-gated by the project, and both here and at the TorStone on Bulford Hill, the stone socket and the holefrom which the stone was quarried were discovered.This is of particular importance as there has beena continuing debate in the literature over the ques-tion of whether some of the sarsens at Stonehengecould have been acquired locally, or whether theymust all have been dragged from the MarlboroughDowns, nearly 20 miles to the north (Stone 1924.69;Atkinson 1956.110). Evidently, we have two exam-ples of sarsen stones recovered from the chalk of Sa-lisbury Plain. Both the Cuckoo Stone and the TorStone seem to have been set up in the Neolithic,and to have formed a focus for Neolithic pits, EarlyBronze Age urned cremations, and in the case of theCuckoo Stone, a Roman shrine. So as at the Cursuswe have a sense of a particular site maintaining itsimportance over an exceedingly long period.

The same is true of Woodhenge, the small late Neo-lithic enclosure just south of Durrington Walls orig-inally excavated by Maud Cunnington in the 1920s(Cunnington 1929). Here, excavation in 2006 re-vealed that the bank overlay a tree-hole which hadbeen filled with large quantities of Early Neolithiccarinated bowl pottery, before being covered overby a chalk capping. Moreover, the concentric timbercircles that Cunnington had excavated proved tohave been succeeded by two separate phases ofstone settings, again indicating a very long-livedstructural sequence (Pollard and Robinson 2007.162) (Fig. 6). In 2007, immediately to the south ofWoodhenge, in an area of Bronze Age ring-ditcheswhich had also been investigated by Cunnington,

Fig. 5. The Cuckoo Stone: excavations 2007 (photo:Aerial-Cam).

Fig. 6. Excavations at Woodhenge, 2006 (photo: Aerial-Cam).


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three separate Late Neolithictimber structures were encoun-tered, each composed of fourmain uprights, with two en-trance posts and, in some ca-ses, an enclosing palisade (Fig.7). Although these were notroofed structures, their archi-tecture seems to relate to thesmall houses of the Late Neoli-thic Grooved Ware tradition(see below). In this respect,they are very relevant to theevidence that was recoveredimmediately to the north, atDurrington Walls.

Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls is the largesthenge monument in Britain, with an overall diam-eter of nearly half a kilometre (Fig. 8). Henges area type of enclosure dating to the later Neolithic,from 3000 BC onwards, distinguished by having anexternal bank surrounding an internal ditch. For themost part, they are considered to have been cere-monial, and non-domestic in character, the enclo-sure keeping something in – or at least secluding it,rather than keeping enemies out (Wainwright 1989.14). When Geoffrey Wainwright excavated at Dur-rington in 1966–7, in advance of road-building, thestrip that he cut across the enclosure was the largestprehistoric excavation that had ever taken place inBritain (Wainwright and Longworth 1971; Pitts2000.55). Wainwright’s excavation revealed colos-sal banks and ditches and massive timber circles,and produced prodigious quantities of GroovedWare, animals bones, and stone tools. His worktransformed our understanding of the Neolithic insouthern Britain but, because it was a rescue projectconducted under formidable time constraints, it lefta series of questions unanswered. Forty years later,new excavations conducted as part of the Stone-henge Riverside Project sought to complement theextensive work of the 1960s with a more targeted,intensive approach.

The initial decision to excavate outside of the east-ern entrance of the Durrington Walls henge wasbased on the hope of discovering an avenue con-necting the henge to the River. This would confirmthe link between Durrington and Stonehenge. Justsuch an avenue was found in 2005, actually a hugemetalled roadway, 30 metres wide, with a bank and

gully on either side, leading for 170 metres down tothe river. The avenue had traces of extensive tram-pling down the middle, and large quantities of highlyfragmented animal bones and Grooved Ware potteryscattered on either side. It was re-surfaced on twooccasions, and had a line of upright sarsen stonesrunning down one side (Parker Pearson 2007.130).

Fig. 7. Exacavation of Late Neolithic timber structures, amongst EarlyBronze Age ring ditches, south of Woodhenge 2007 (photo: Aerial-Cam).

Fig. 8. Durrington Walls: areas excavated 2004–7(drawing: Mark Dover).


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This last point invites comparison with the WestKennet Avenue, connected to the Avebury henge innorth Wiltshire, but in the local context, it is clearthat this roadway is the equivalent of the Stone-henge Avenue, linking the henge to the river, and ina way that has an astronomical alignment comple-mentary to that at Stonehenge. The stone settings atStonehenge face the midsummer sunrise, while theStonehenge Avenue is aligned on the midwinter sun-set; the southern timber circle inside DurringtonWalls faces the midwinter sunrise, and the Dur-rington Avenue aligns on the midsummer sunset.The implication is that one might process from Dur-rington to Stonehenge at midwinter, and in the op-posite direction at midsummer, passing over orthrough the purifying or transforming waters of theriver in the process. Recent reconsideration of theradiocarbon dates from Stonehenge has demonstra-

ted that the sarsen stones and theavenue can be placed in the mid-thirdmillennium cal BC, contemporary withDurrington Walls (Parker Pearson etal. 2007.627), so we are entitled tosee the two monuments as parts of asingle, integrated structure.

Although the potential presence ofthe avenue was the initial reason forexcavating at the eastern entrance, thepresence of seven small houses of LateNeolithic date, clustered around theroadway (Fig. 9) was a complete sur-prise. Two of these were located onopposite banks of the avenue, and ap-pear to have been open on their east-ern sides, facing toward the river.Only a very few such houses havebeen found on the British mainland,and never as a substantial settlement,so the only real parallels are the vil-lages of stone cellular buildings in theOrkney Isles of northern Scotland,such as Skara Brae, Rinyo and Barn-house (Childe 1931; Childe and Grant1947; Richards 2003). Like the Orca-dian houses, the Durrington buildingshave clay floors and central hearths,but their walls were of wattle anddaub rather than stone (Fig. 10). Se-veral of the houses had floor levelsthat had been terraced back into thehillside, and some were separated byfence-lines, against which waste mate-rials in the form of burnt flint, flint

cores and animal bones had been flung (Fig. 11).Associated with the houses were borrow pits, fromwhich the daub had been acquired, and other pitscontaining dense deposits of animal bone and pot-tery, as well as large numbers of flint arrowheads.The buildings appear to have been abandoned withsome formality: three had a single human bone de-posited close to them, and two had deposits of cat-tle vertebrae placed into their hearths.

Several of the structures were stratified beneath thehenge bank, which indicates that both the housesand at least the first phase of the avenue pre-datethe construction of the bank and ditch. It is likelythat the enclosure of the great natural amphitheatreof Durrington Walls may have been made at the veryend of the Neolithic (at around 2500–2400 BC), andthat there was a complex sequence of structures of

Fig. 9. Plan of excavations at the eastern entrance, DurringtonWalls, 2004–7, showing the Avenue and Neolithic house floors(drawing: Mark Dover).


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various kinds that culminated inthis event, and which paralleledthe sequence at Stonehenge. At va-rious points around its circumfer-ence, excavations (whether for thepurposes of research or for pipetrenches) have cut through thebank, and in every case a densespread of cultural material has beenencountered, similar to that spreadover the settlement area (e.g. Stone,Piggott and Booth 1954). The im-plication is that a Late Neolithic set-tlement covered the entire area co-vered by the henge bank, and thatit was very large indeed. None theless, this settlement was clusteredaround a roadway leading to anenormous timber circle (see below)and was close to the group of non-domestic timber structures identi-fied south of Woodhenge (seeabove), indicating that the imme-diate location was rather specialeven before the henge bank and ditch were con-structed. It is open to question whether the hugeaccumulation of houses at Durrington represents atypical Late Neolithic habitation, fortuitously pre-served under the combination of bank and hill-wash,and whether we should expect to find numeroussuch settlements in future.

There are several strands of evidence that suggestthat the situation was not straightforward. Some ofthe anticipated signs of year-round domestic activityare missing. Despite having subjected enormousnumbers of soil samples to flotation, no cereal grainsor glume fragments havebeen recovered from the set-tlement area: the only cerealremains came from the sur-face of the avenue. This iscomplemented by a completeabsence of grinding stones.Amongst the assemblage of80 000 pig and cattle bones,there are no neonates at all,suggesting that animals werebrought to the site and notraised in the immediate area.The lithic assemblage fromthe settlement is dominatedby transverse arrowheads,with few scrapers and knives,

and no flint or stone axes. All of this suggests tempo-rary (perhaps seasonal) rather than permanent ha-bitation. There are very large numbers of domesti-cated pig bones, but some of these animals seem tohave been shot with arrows and then barbequed.This does not suggest conventional culinary behav-iour, and there are strong indications that periodicfeasting took place (Albarella and Serjeantson2002). An unusual proportion of the animal bonesare complete and hundreds were discarded still inarticulation. Tooth eruption evidence suggests thatmost of the pigs were killed at about nine monthsold, most likely in the midwinter period. Given the

Fig. 10. Two of the house floors at the eastern entrance, DurringtonWalls (photo: Aerial-Cam).

Fig. 11. Laser scan of the surface of a Neolithic house-floor, eastern en-trance, Durrington Walls (image: Kate Welham/Mark Dover).


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midwinter solstice alignments at Stonehenge and atfour of the Durrington timber monuments, it is like-ly that this was a major calendrical event. The firstfew radiocarbon determinations for the settlementshow that it was occupied in the 26th century BC.Some of the house floors were re-plastered up toseven times, and the inter-cutting of the borrow pitsassociated with each house suggests up to a dozenepisodes of repair for the walls and floors. However,this might still mean that the overall inhabitation ofthe settlement was comparatively brief. Further ra-diocarbon dates may tell us whether the site servedas a centre for seasonal gatherings or pilgrimage formany decades, or whether it represents a singlesignificant episode, such as an accumulation of pop-ulation to build the stone settings at Stonehenge.

The Southern and Western Circles at Durring-ton Walls

Some indication of the character of the activity atDurrington Walls is provided by a series of struc-tures enclosed inside the henge bank and ditch fur-ther to the west. The Southern Circle was a two-phase timber structure composed of six concentric

rings of upright posts, 60% ofwhich was excavated by Wain-wright in 1967 (Wainwright andLongworth 1971.23) (Fig. 12). Afurther timber structure, theNorthern Circle, was also identi-fied in the same excavation. Onits eastern side the Southern Cir-cle intersected with a chalk andgravel platform, which we cannow identify as the western ex-tremity of the Durrington Ave-nue, leading down to the river.This provides a stratigraphic linkthat places the circle earlier thanthe henge bank and ditch: thetimbers of the Southern Circle pe-netrated the surface of the ave-nue, but their post-holes were insome cases masked by it. Anotherelement of the Southern Circlecomplex, originally identified asan enclosed midden, can now bereconsidered in the light of thediscoveries at the eastern entran-ce. It is very likely that this repre-sented a large, hall-sized build-ing with a terraced floor area sur-rounded by stakehole-defined

walls. Wainwright considered that the timber circlehad itself been a massive roofed building, compa-rable with the ‘council houses’ of certain Native Ame-rican communities (Wainwright and Longworth1971.232). However, subsequent investigation ofsome even larger timber circles has demonstratedthat they were simply too big to be roofed, and thesame was probably true of the Southern Circle (Da-vid et al. 2004) (see Fig. 13 for the probable ap-pearance of the Southern Circle in its second phase).While there were indeed two phases of construction,our re-excavation in 2005–6 demonstrated that someof what had been identified as postholes of the firstphase were actually integral to the second, standingon either side of individual larger posts, and perhapssupporting sections of fencing or shuttering. Thestructure thereby defined establishes a secluded in-ner space within the circle, comparable with the in-nermost area of Stonehenge. Tellingly, this structurerespects the spiral entrance passage to the second-phase circle. The implication of this is that the firstphase circle was comparatively modest, composedof four main posts, surrounded by a single post-ring,attached to an avenue and façade. This would makeit very similar to both the Northern Circle, and the

Fig. 12. The Southern Circle, Durrington Walls: plan of excavations1967 and 2005–6 (drawing: Mark Dover).


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structures excavated south ofWoodhenge (see above).

Another issue addressed throughre-investigating the SouthernCircle was that of deposition.Wainwright’s original interpre-tation for the concentration offinds in the upper parts of thepost-hole fills was that, withinthe roofed building, sherds ofpottery, animal bones and otherobjects had been placed as of-ferings at the bases of the tim-ber uprights. When the latterhad rotted out, the objects fellinto what he referred to as ‘wea-thering cones’ (Wainwright andLongworth 1971.24–5). Thesehe argued to have been formed by the erosion ofthe post-packing, following the decay of the posts.However, this interpretation was open to question.If we accept that the structure was unroofed, it ishard to see how pottery sherds and animal bonescould have survived on the surface for some de-cades in an unabraded state, before falling into theweathering cones. In all of the post-holes excavatedin 2005–6, it was clear that the so-called ‘weatheringcones’ were actually conical re-cuts, dug after theposts had rotted out (see Fig. 14).

Inside these re-cut features, deposits of flints andanimal bones had clearly been placed, or at leastdumped, rather than having fallen haphazardly intoeroding post-pipes. Animal bone predominat-ed, but flint occurred as clusters of waste,often higher in the fill (Thomas 2007.149).In all cases, pottery sherds were foundalmost exclusively in the upper part of there-cut fill. This suggests a pattern in whichsherds were being carefully placed into thetops of the re-cuts following the more sum-mary deposition of flint and bone. It is clear,though, that our excavated area, located op-posite the entrance to the circle, producedfar smaller quantities of cultural materialthan the postholes facing toward the avenueand the river, dug in 1967. In other words,the densities of objects placed in each post-hole reflected the individual importance ofeach feature. If this material had been depo-sited in features that were cut after the postshad rotted out, it must have post-dated theconstruction and initial use of the circle by

one or two generations, if not more. It is possiblethat this re-cutting took place at much the same timeas the enclosure of the Durrington landscape by thehenge bank and ditch. It follows that the SouthernCircle was ancient and ruinous by the time the re-cutting took place, indicating that the depositionalactivity was essentially commemorative in charac-ter. That is to say, digging a hole and placing cul-tural materials in it was a means of venerating theCircle, its component elements, and the past activ-ities that had taken place within it. The richness ofthe material deposited in the re-cuts reflected therelative significance of the different parts of the tim-ber circle, even though the structure was by thendecrepit. The physical manifestation of the circle

Fig. 13. Full size reconstruction of the Southern Circle, constructedfor the Time Team TV programme (photo: Julian Thomas).

Fig. 14. Section of post-hole 071 in the Southern Circle, sho-wing re-cut pit in the upper fill (drawing: Julia Roberts).


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was then one of collapsed timbers, slumped post-holes, and memories that were brought to mindthrough acts of deposition. So this was now an ‘ar-chitecture of memory’, commemorated in its absence.

We have noted that the discovery of the roadway de-monstrates that Durrington Walls and Stonehengeare effectively parts of a single structure linked bythe two avenues and the river. This challenges someof our implicit expectations of monumentality, forrather than being a cultural imposition onto a natu-ral landscape, the Stonehenge-Durrington complexthreads together built elements and topography.We might argue that both the Stonehenge and theDurrington avenues were conceptually indistinguish-able from the river, and that the two henge enclo-sures were linked by flows and movements of var-ious kinds. This encourages us to consider the rela-

tionship between the SouthernCircle and the Stonehenge stonesettings at each end of this pas-sage. We might see them as com-plementary structures: whilecomposed of stone and timberrespectively, they are remark-ably similar in plan (Fig. 15).The principal sarsen and blue-stone settings at Stonehengehave much the same diametersas the four inner rings at Dur-rington, and similar units ofmeasurement appear to havebeen used in laying them out

(Chamberlain and Parker Pearson 2007). Signifi-cantly, the interiors of both structures are much thesame size, and would have admitted the same num-ber of people. Moreover, we have seen that the South-ern Circle may have had a secluded inner spacecomparable with the Stonehenge sarsen ‘horseshoe’,while a geophysical survey of the unexcavated por-tion of the Southern Circle undertaken in 2006 sug-gests some elements of the Southern Circle may beoval rather than truly circular. It is highly likely thatsome relationship of mirroring or mimicry existedbetween the Durrington Southern Circle and thestone settings at Stonehenge.

Further to the west again, on a terrace overlookingthe Southern Circle and the eastern entrance, agroup of at least six penannular enclosures havebeen revealed by geophysical survey. While these

Fig. 15. Comparison of the plans of the Stonehenge stone settings andthe Southern Circle (drawing: Julian Thomas).

Fig. 16. Plan of enclosed building (Trench 14), Western Enclosures, Durrington Walls 2006 (drawing:Julian Thomas).


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were reasonably expectedto have enclosed burials ormore timber circles, thetwo that were excavated ac-tually contained small buil-dings not dissimilar to thoseat the eastern entrance(Thomas 2007.152). How-ever, in each case the buil-ding was enclosed inside atimber palisade, while each‘house’ had four post-holes,presumably roof-supports,surrounding the centralhearth (Fig. 16). These werenot present in the housesat the eastern entrance. Thebuilding in the larger of thetwo ring-ditches investigated also had a façade ofhuge posts, so closely-set that they may have repre-sented the equivalent in timber of the Stonehengetrilithons (see Fig. 17). Both buildings appear to havebeen kept clean in comparison with the filthy hous-es at the eastern entrance, and the larger one hada pit immediately outside the entrance to the pal-isade containing distarticulated animal bones andabraded pottery that may have been accumulated inthe course of cleaning up.

So were these buildings inside the Western Enclo-sures elite residences, or were they shrines or cult-houses? The key to this question may lie in their si-milarity with the first phase of the Southern Circle,with the Northern Circle, and with the structures in-vestigated south of Woodhenge. Here, the familiararchitecture of the Grooved Ware house was elabo-rated upon, and elements that were more usuallyfound in monumental contexts were added to drawattention to the separation between the small enclo-sed space of the building and the outside world, in-cluding the more obviously domestic dwellings. Sig-nificantly, Richards (1993) has described a similarprocess in Neolithic Orkney, in which the modularform of the house found echoes in the layout ofchambered tombs and henge monuments. At anearly stage, the natural amphitheatre of DurringtonWalls was occupied by a series of structures that de-veloped a single basic plan in different ways, pro-

viding spaces for dwelling and for ritual. Only laterdid the more complex concentric architecture of theSouthern Circle and Woodhenge develop, at a timewhen the former came to be physically linked toStonehenge in a new and grand design that drewthe entire landscape together. Recognising this, how-ever, depends on acknowledging the long and com-plex histories of place that the Stonehenge RiversideProject has revealed.

Fig. 17. Reconstruction of enclosed building (Trench 14), Western Enclo-sures, Durrington Walls (image: Aaron Watson).

We thank our colleagues on the Stonehenge RiversideProject, particularly Umberto Albarella, Mike Allen,Mark Dover, Charly French, Karen Godden, Dave Ro-binson, the site supervisors (Dave Aspden, Ian Heath,Neil Morris, Bob Nunn, Becca Pullen, Jim Rylett, DaveShaw, Anne Teather), the outreach team and themany students and volunteers who have made thiswork such a success so far. We also thank AmandaChadburn, Richard Osgood, Mike Pitts and Julian Ri-chards for their advice and support. Funding for theSRP was provided by the Arts and Humanities Re-search Council, the British Academy, English Heri-tage, the McDonald Institute, the National GeographicSociety, the Prehistoric Society (who awarded it theBob Smith Prize), the Royal Archaeological Instituteand the Society of Antiquaries. We thank the Rawlinsfamily, the National Trust, Wiltshire County Counciland the Ministry of Defence for permission to exca-vate on their land.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


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