Stonehenge a New Understanding by Mike Parker Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

houses are visible, as is the curving line of postholes forming a fence that separated two of the houses.

    The avenue had yet more information to give us. Clive Ruggles came to take a good look at the Durrington Avenue while it was being excavated, to record its exact orientation. He found that the avenue’s orientation when looking westward, upslope from the river, was within a degree of the midsummer solstice sunset during the Neolithic. Clive already knew that the Southern Circle inside the henge, partially excavated in 1967, had an entrance facing southeast, to the point at which the sun rose on the midwinter solstice. Since the two directions of midsummer sunset and midwinter sunrise are perpendicular to each other, there is usually no way of being sure whether both directions are significant or only one of them. Our avenue was pretty much aligned with the entrance to the Southern Circle, but was a few degrees off the precise axis of the midwinter sunrise. Which mattered most to the avenue’s builders—was the avenue meant to share the same alignment as the timber circle (toward midwinter sunrise), or was it aligned in the opposite direction, toward midsummer solstice sunset?
    Clive worked out that the midsummer solstice sunset was the important direction—the avenue shows a deliberate alignment with the setting sun, not with the axis of the timber circle. He is convinced that the builders made sure that the avenue was a few degrees off the axis of theSouthern Circle so that it would align with the midsummer sunset. As a consequence, it has an imperfect alignment with the midwinter sunrise. Had the avenue been constructed simply to lead from the midwinter sunrise to the Southern Circle, it would have missed the alignment with the midsummer sunset. The midsummer solstice alignment is affected by the topography: The Durrington valley rises quite steeply from southeastto northwest. The steepness of the valley means that the sun disappears below the horizon sooner than it would on flatter ground, so the avenue is aligned on the spot where the midsummer sun actually sets.

Full plan of the Southern Circle, combining the 1967 and 2005–2006 excavation and geophysics results. The cone shapes are the postholes and their ramps. Julian Thomas’s excavation trench is marked to the west. The rest of the circle is now buried beneath the modern road.

A plan of the Late Neolithic timber circle of Woodhenge. Today the postholes are marked with small concrete pillars and the bank and ditch are barely visible. The contents of the grave were destroyed during the Blitz but the burial is thought to date to the Early Bronze Age.

    Ever since Geoff Wainwright’s discovery of the rings of postholes that held the timbers of the Southern and Northern Circles within Durrington Walls, archaeologists have tried to reconstruct what these timber circles looked like. The Northern Circle consisted of one orperhaps two rings of posts enclosing a rectangular setting of four large posts. 2 This circle was approached from the south (from the direction of the Southern Circle) via a post-lined passage that passed through a façade of posts forming a screen on the south side of the rings of timbers. Geoff tentatively ascribed the outer and less convincing of the two post rings (almost 25 meters across) to a first phase of the structure. Since more than half a meter of chalk had gone from the ground surface here by the twentieth century, when he excavated the site, only the deeper features survived. A four-post square setting in the center of the rings appears to have been oriented eastward, toward the midwinter sunrise.

A reconstruction of the timber posts at Woodhenge.

    The Southern Circle was much more impressive and better preserved; artifacts lying on the Neolithic ground surface around it were still in position. 3 At its center was a rectangular arrangement of posts enclosing a smaller setting of six posts. Geoff interpreted these posts as