Stonehenge
Posted on 10/14/2006 12:29:58 PM PDT by blam
Ancient Stonehenge Houses Unearthed
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Oct. 13, 2006 —Nine Neolithic-era buildings have been excavated in the Stonehenge world heritage site, according to a report in the journal British Archaeology.
The structures, which appear to have been homes, date to 2,600-2,500 B.C. and were contemporary with the earliest stone settings at the site's famous megalith. They are the first house-like structures discovered there.
Julian Thomas, who worked on the project and is chair of the archaeology department at Manchester University in England, said Stonehenge could have been a key gathering place at the Neolithic era's version of a housing development.
The buildings all had plaster floors and timber frames, and most had a central hearth. Two, including a house possibly inhabited by a community chief or priest, were enclosed by ringed ditches, the largest measuring 131 feet across. Postholes indicate a wooden fence would have surrounded the smaller of the two structures.
"If the structure inside the large ditch was indeed a chief's house, this individual would have been living rather humbly like the rest of the population, since the building itself wouldn't have been elaborate," Thomas said. "It's like a humble house that was meant to be separated and secluded from the outside world."
Near the buildings were remnants of grooved pottery characteristic of the period, along with stone tools. The findings suggest many people lived at the site around 4,600 years ago.
Thomas thinks many more residences could have once stood there.
"People at that time were probably mobile and living in flimsy buildings, which would have since eroded," he explained.
Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology and a leading expert on Stonehenge, told Discovery News the two isolated buildings at the site may have been shrines and not residences, but he thinks it's also possible the buildings were home to Stone Age VIP's.
"Perhaps these did house chiefs, or powerful priests," said Pitts. "Work is continuing, but it is clear that at last we are starting to see the exceptional archaeology we would expect to find in a landscape that until recently was (thought to be) almost empty except, at its center, for Stonehenge."
Excavation work is expected to continue over the next three summers.
Stonehenge
cool - ping
Was that supposed to be Eight Inches instead of Eight Feet?
Are you crossing your eyes?
Did anybody find my Zippo flint?
The elite intellectuals in the mainstream media find this sort of thing interesting, and so they deign to inform the great unwashed and unenlightened masses. They are elite, so they do not have to be bothered by such things as grammar and spelling. The spell-check takes care of the spelling so you won't find any misspelled words, but it is evident that they don't read their own stuff, because they make statements like that one and this one:
"Two, including a house possibly inhabited by a community chief or priest, were enclosed by ringed ditches, the largest measuring 131 feet across."
A ditch 131 feet across is hardly a ditch, and even too wide to be a moat. Unless they are saying that the area surrounded by the ditch is 131 feet across. Not exactly clear to me what they mean here. This is a fine example of what journalism schools call education. Also note the terminology of "community chief." That is a LOL. A completely new term just minted, to avoid the appearance of bias towards tribal societies.
Too bad there isn't an artist's rendition or something. I would like to see what these homes looked like.
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Stonehenge
Did they find any evidence of the space aliens that built Stonehenge ?
How did you know I always keep 3-d lenses in my computer desk, just in case someone posts something like this? (I really do keep a set there.)
My webcam hacker program enables me to watch anyone with a cam.
A Stonehenge thread wouldn't be complete without a Spinal Tap reference.
By the way, I just a VW ad with Nigel Tufnel playing guitar.
Of course, I almost never have a cam hooked up to the puter...semi-geek, not full mode...
Now that they've found these houses, it probably won't long before Zahi Hawass has a crew there looking for the bakeries that were used to feed the Egyptian workers who built Stonehenge on their days off at the pyramids.
Stonehenge changed their name to Crabby Appleton.
Stonehenge.
Where a man's a man,
And the children dance
To the pipes of pan...
;^)
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