One of the most mysterious prehistoric monuments - Stonehenge - was about 800 years younger than its neighbor Avebury. According to radiocarbon analysis, this iconic Neolithic site was erected 5,300 years ago. However, it was not a cromlech, but a wooden fence.
Stonehenge, a stone megalithic structure inscribed on the World Heritage List, is far from the only one in this area. The cult site of Avebury, consisting of megalithic tombs and temples, is located in Wiltshire, just 37 kilometers from Stonehenge, not far from the English village of the same name. This monument is spoken and written less often than Stonehenge, although amateurs are familiar with it. By the way, it was added to the aforementioned UNESCO list along with Stonehenge in 1986.
The entire landscape around Stonehenge consists of mounds without graves, which alternate with astronomically oriented ditches and other structures intended, apparently, for ritual purposes. In the neighboring Neolithic settlement of Darrington Walls, archaeologists using georadars and magnetometers have discovered a row of hundreds of boulders. Megaliths four and a half meters high were hidden underground for about four and a half thousand years. This is a kind of "superstonehenge".
On a hill near Avebury rises a 40-meter conical hill with gentle slopes. According to the terminology of archaeologists, it is a long mound. At the eastern end of West Kennet lies a 12-meter-long burial chamber that is approximately five and a half thousand years old. Inside the burial ground, the remains of 46 people were found, including children, as well as ceramics, jewelry and food remains, probably intended for some kind of ritual. It is quite possible that for several years, and perhaps even longer, the dead were placed in the burial ground of the West Kenneth mound.
Using the latest achievements in the field of radiocarbon analysis, scientists once again examined in Avebury not the multi-ton stones of megaliths or the alley of menhirs, but the remains of a once wooden palisade, now a row of charred embers. Presumably, the wooden structure was set on fire during religious ceremonies. This "Euroshtaketnik" was originally intended for such a fiery extravaganza.
“This is too vast an area to be just a fenced in; it should be the fence of some place for ceremonies, - said co-author of the study, archaeologist Alex Bayliss in an interview with Live Science magazine. "This is completely unlike anything we have ever found in the history of primitive Britain."
These timber structures in Avebury were discovered during pipeline construction in the 1960s and 1970s. The circles are located about 37 kilometers from the mysterious stone circle at Stonehenge. In the late 1980s, Cardiff University archaeologist Alasder Whittle undertook small excavations at the site. Together with colleagues, he discovered the charred remains of two imposing, adhered to each other circles, which covered in a circle about four kilometers. The largest of the circles is about 250 meters in diameter.
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"They are like a pair of glasses: there are two circles between them with a small gap," says Bayliss.
The "picket fence" erected in the vicinity of West Kenneth mound was 800 years older than previously thought. This monument appeared in the darkest centuries of British history, and the more valuable any archaeological finds become, because there are at least some artifacts of that period. According to experts, relatively much is available to them 700 years before that and 700 years after that, but they have absolutely nothing between these two time intervals.
If the new dating is accurate, then the area around Stonehenge and Avebury must have been of great ritual significance for local residents almost a millennium before the creation of the famous stone circles. This is evidenced by a burial mound located near two newly dated circles. The long mound of West Kenneth was built about 400 years before Stonehenge.
Near the front garden, archaeologists have also found the remains of a primitive settlement dating from about 2500 BC. In a way, this place is the same age as Stonehenge. The mysterious Salisbury Hill, only a few hundred yards away, was also created during this period; possibly the inhabitants of this settlement.