Khem Caigan wrote:
> here's another one

Might be of interest:

Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a 
huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has 
taken archaeologists by surprise.

A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the 
remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are 
among "Britain's first architecture," according to archaeologist Helen 
Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project.

Archaeologist Joshua Pollard, who was not involved in the find, agreed. 
The discovery is "remarkable," he said, given the decades of intense 
archaeological attention to the greater Stonehenge region.

"I think everybody assumed such monument complexes were known about or 
had already been discovered," added Pollard, a co-leader of the 
Stonehenge Riverside Project, which is funded in part by the National 
Geographic Society.

At the 500-acre (200-hectare) site, outlines of the structures were 
spotted "etched" into farmland near the village of Damerham, some 15 
miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge (Damerham map).

Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. 
government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles" are the 
results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant 
growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.

The central features are two great tombs topped by massive mounds—made 
shorter by centuries of plowing—called long barrows. The larger of the 
two tombs is 70 meters (230 feet) long.

Estimated at 6,000 years old, based on the dates of similar tombs around 
the United Kingdom, the long barrows are also the oldest elements of the 
complex.

Such oblong burial mounds are very rare finds, and are the country's 
earliest known architectural form, Wickstead said. The last full-scale 
long barrow excavation was in the 1950s, she added.

The Damerham tombs have yet to be excavated, but experts say the long 
barrows likely contain chambers—probably carved into chalk bedrock and 
reinforced with wood—filled with human bones associated with ancestor 
worship.

During the late Stone Age, it's believed, people in the region left 
their dead in the open to be picked clean by birds and other animals.

Skulls and other bones of people who were for some reason deemed 
significant were later placed inside the burial mounds, Wickstead explained.

"These are bone houses, in a way," she said. "Instead of whole bodies, 
[the tombs contain] parts of ancestors."

Later Monuments, Long Occupation

Other finds suggest the site remained an important focus for prehistoric 
farming communities well into the Bronze Age (roughly 2000 to 700 B.C. 
in Britain).

Near the tombs are two large, round, ditch-encircled structures—the 
largest circular enclosure being about 190 feet (57 meters) wide.

Nonintrusive electromagnetic surveys show signs of postholes, suggesting 
rings of upright timber once stood within the circles—further evidence 
of the Damerham site's ceremonial or sacred role.

Pollard, of the University of Bristol, likened the features to smaller 
versions of Woodhenge, a timber-circle temple at the Stonehenge World 
Heritage site.

Damerham also includes a highly unusual, and so far baffling, U-shaped 
enclosure with postholes dated to the Bronze Age, project leader 
Wickstead said.

The circled outlines of 26 Bronze Age burial mounds also dot the site, 
which is littered with stone flint tools and shattered examples of the 
earliest known type of pottery in Britain.

Evidence of prehistoric agricultural fields suggest the area was at 
least partly cultivated by the time the Romans invaded Britain in the 
first century A.D., generally considered to be the end of the regions' 
prehistoric period.

Riches Beneath Ravaged Surface?

The actual barrows and mounds near Damerham have been diminished by 
centuries of plowing, but that, ironically, may make them much more 
valuable archaeologically, according to Pollard, of the University of 
Bristol.

The mounds would have been irresistible advertisements for tomb raiders, 
who in the 18th and 19th centuries targeted Bronze Age burials for their 
ornate grave goods.

And "even if the mounds are gone, you are still going to have primary 
burials [as opposed to those later added on top] which will have been 
dug into the chalk, so are going to survive," Pollard added.

The contents of the Stone Age long barrows should likewise have 
survived, he said. "I think there's good reason to assume you might have 
the main wooden mortuary chambers with burial deposits," he said.

An administrative oversight may also be partly responsible for the site 
remaining hidden—and assumedly pristine, at least underground—project 
leader Wickstead said.

When prehistoric sites in the area were being mapped and documented in 
the 1890s, a county-border change placed Damerham within Hampshire 
rather than Stonehenge's Wiltshire, she said.

"Perhaps people in Hampshire thought [the monuments] were someone else's 
problem."

This lucky conjunction of plowing and politics obscured Damerham's 
prehistoric heritage until now.

The site shows that "a lot of the ceremonial activity isn't necessarily 
located in these big centers," such as Stonehenge, Pollard said. "But 
there are other locations where people are congregating and constructing 
ceremonial monuments

From

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090615-stonehenge-tombs-crop-cir 
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090615-stonehenge-tombs-crop-cir>\cles.html

__._,_.___
>  270.13.2/2213 - Release Date: 07/01/09 18:07:00
>
>