The mystery of why Stonehenge was built has kept people guessing for millennia. New radiocarbon dating indicates one certainty: the monument stood as giant tombstones to the dead for centuries.

Stonehenge, a Neolithic monument constructed on England’s Salisbury Plain during the third millennium B.C. and one of the enduring landmarks of prehistoric times, has been one of the greatest mysteries left to us by the ancient world.

There are plenty of theories about Stonehenge: It was a place of healing; an astronomical observatory; a place to demonstrate the movements of the moon (corresponding with a shift from lunar to solar worship); and, of course, that it has long been a landing site for little green men.

Now a group of archaeologists believe they are a step closer to an answer that explains the mystery of one of the enduring landmarks of prehistoric times.

The site appears to have been intended as a cemetery from the very start, around 5,000 years ago — centuries before the giant sandstone blocks were erected, suggest new radiocarbon dating featured in the June 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Archaeologists at the University of Sheffield have revealed new radiocarbon dates of human cremation burials at Stonehenge, which suggest that, for 500 years from its earliest beginnings around 3000 B.C., Stonehenge was used as a cemetery.

This is the first time any of the cremation remains excavated from the monument’s site have been radiocarbon dated.

Many archaeologists previously assumed the site was mainly used as a burial ground only between 2700 and 2600 B.C., before the large stones — known as sarsens — were even put in place.

The new dates “provide strong clues about the original purpose of the monument and show that its use as a cemetery extended for more than 500 years,” according to a statement from the university.

The carbon-dated remains are three of 52 cremation burials. The burials dated were excavated in the 1950s and were stored in a local museum. The remaining 49 were dug up during the 1920s, only to be reburied because they were thought to be of no scientific value.

“Archaeologists estimate that up to 240 people were buried within Stonehenge, all as cremation deposits,” according to the statement.

The Sheffield archaeologists, Professor Mike Parker Pearson and Professor Andrew Chamberlain, believe that the cremation burials could represent the natural deaths of a single elite family and its descendants, perhaps a ruling dynasty. One clue to this is the small number of burials in Stonehenge’s earliest phase, a number that grows larger in subsequent centuries, as offspring would have multiplied.

The project team’s previous excavations indicate that Stonehenge was linked via the River Avon and two avenues to “a matching timber monument at nearby Durrington Walls,” according to National Geographic News.

The theory is that the majority of the dead were deposited in the river upstream at Durrington Walls. Only “a select few” — possibly because of their special status as members of an elite dynasty of rulers — were buried at Stonehenge itself, Parker Pearson said.

The new dating evidence indicates that these chosen few must have been interred over centuries.

The latest findings are the result of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a collaboration between five UK universities, which is funded by the National Geographic Society and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, with support from English Heritage. According to the University of Manchester, the project will run from 2004 until 2010, with a series of seasons of fieldwork supported by post-excavation work.

Resources

Image: stock.xchng

If the Stones Could Speak
by Caroline Alexander
National Geographic Magazine, June 2008

Stonehenge Could Have Been Resting Place for Royalty
University of Sheffield, May 29, 2008

GeoPedia: Stonehenge
by Elizabeth Snodgrass
National Geographic

Stonehenge Was Cemetery First and Foremost, Study Says
by James Owen
National Geographic News, May 29, 2008

Five Theories about Stonehenge
by Linda Geddes
New Scientist, May 29, 2008