An organisation of archaeologists has discovered what might well be the UK’s largest prehistoric sites near Stonehenge.
Researchers run through the University of Bradford have discovered a ring of no less than 20 “wells” more than 32 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep that form a circle more than 1.2 miles in diameter. The ring, which surrounds the site of a Neolithic village called Durrington Walls, can also shed new light on the origins of the mystical stone circle in south-west England.
“The area around Stonehenge is amongst the most studied archaeological landscapes on earth,” Vince Gaffney, Chair of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences in the Faculty of Life Sciences, said in a statement. “It is remarkable that the application of new technology can still lead to the discovery of such a massive prehistoric structure which, currently, is significantly larger than any comparative prehistoric monument that we know of in Britain, at least.”
Gaffney stated that when the holes were first identified, they were herbal features. Geophysical studies allowed researchers to decipher a “large-scale model.”
“This demonstrates the importance of Durrington Walls Henge, the complexity of the intellectual structures of Stonehenge’s landscape monuments, and the strength and preference of Neolithic communities to register their systems of cosmological trust in some way and scale that we had never expected before.”
Archaeologists claim that the well circle was created about 4,500 years ago and could have marked a circular boundary around the gigantic fence of Durrington walls, which may have guided other Americans to devout sites and warned others not to cross.
The site is located just over a mile northeast of Stonehenge, the observed maxim of the mysterious stone circles of the great apple built thousands of years ago in Britain. The giant monument was built between 3000 BC. and a thousand six hundred BC. and the top tourist attractions in the country.
Hundreds of people, adding druids and heathens, regularly visit the site in summer and winter solstices, but this year’s celebrations have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The discovery allowed researchers to “write a new bankruptcy in the landscape of Stonehenge landscape,” Nick Snashall, an archaeologist at the National Trust for the World Heritage site of Stonehenge and Avebury.
“As a place where Stonehenge developers lived and celebrated, Durrington Walls is quite critical in locating Stonehenge’s wider landscape,” he said. “This fantastic discovery gives us new perspectives on the life and ideology of our Neolithic ancestors.
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