Digital Mapping Project Discovers Chapels, Shrines And Burial Mounds Hidden Beneath Stonehenge

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A four-year project to digitally map the area surrounding Stonehenge has revealed more than two dozen previously undetected archaeological sites located near the iconic monument, including hidden chapels, burial mounds and neighboring shrines, researchers from the University of Birmingham revealed Tuesday at the British Science Festival.
Members of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, which included Birmingham professor Vincent Gaffney and colleagues from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, used ground-penetrating radar and GPS-guided magnetometers to map the area surrounding the standing stones to depths of up to two miles, explained Sarah Zhang of Gizmodo.
By doing so, they were able to map hundreds of features, including 17 newly discovered Neolithic monuments that, like Stonehenge, are believed to be approximately 5,000 years old. Many of them, including a rectangular enclosure known as the Cursus, appear to be “astronomically important,” she added.
The Cursus is less than two miles wide and over 60 miles long, and contains two pits that appear to be aligned with the rising and setting sun on the summer solstice when viewed from Stonehenge’s heel stone. “Taken together, the monuments suggest Stonehenge is the most obvious remainder of a large complex of structures with ritual importance,” Zhang noted.
In addition, BBC News science reporter Maria Dasi Espuig said that the digital mapping project also revealed traces of 60 huge stones or pillars believed to have formed part of the 1.5km-wide so-called super henge previously discovered at Durrington Walls, located a short distance from Stonehenge’s home on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
The survey revealed that this marked an early phase, when a row of massive posts or stones – some up to three meters high – flanked the monument, and the archaeologists believe that some of those stones may still be intact beneath the monument. Their work also provided new information of hundreds of burial mounts and settlements from the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the Roman Empire.
“This radically changes our view of Stonehenge. In the past we had this idea that Stonehenge was standing in splendid isolation, but it wasn’t… it’s absolutely huge,” Gaffney told Ian Sample, science editor with The Guardian, on Tuesday. He added that people apparently used the area around Stonehenge to create “their own shrines and temples. We can see the whole landscape is being used in very complex ways.”
The new three-dimensional map covers an area of approximately 12 square kilometers, equal to about 1,250 football fields, according to BBC News. Much of the region had never been surveyed using this technique, and according to the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, it is the most detailed archaeological digital map of the Stonehenge region ever produced.
In a statement, Gaffney said that the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project has “revolutionized how archaeologists use new technologies to interpret the past” and “transformed how we understand Stonehenge and its landscape. Despite Stonehenge being the most iconic of all prehistoric monuments and occupying one of the richest archaeological landscapes in the world, much of this landscape in effect remains terra incognita.”
“This project has revealed that the area around Stonehenge is teeming with previously unseen archaeology and that the application of new technology can transform how archaeologists and the wider public understand one of the best-studied landscapes on Earth,” he added. “New monuments have been revealed, as well as new types of monument that have previously never been seen by archaeologists. All of this information has been placed within a single digital map, which will guide how Stonehenge and its landscape are studied in the future.”
Gaffney and his Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project colleagues include experts from the University of Birmingham; Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, Vienna and international partners; University of Bradford; University of St Andrews; University of Nottingham; and the ‘ORBit’ Research Group of the Department of Soil Management at the University of Ghent, Belgium.
The organization operates under the auspices of the National Trust and English Heritage. Their findings will be presented as a part of an upcoming television program entitled ‘Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath,’ which is scheduled to premiere in the UK at 8pm BST on Thursday on BBC Two. It will also be broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel in the US, CBC in Canada, ZDF in Germany, ORF in Austria and France 5 in France.