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Friday, 19 September 2014

The buried stones at Durrington Walls



The map above is from Tim's blog -- the purple line shows where the stones are located. 

Here is an extract from his site, for those who are interested in the throwaway line in the recent BBC Stonehenge programme:

http://www.sarsen.org/2014/09/durrington-walls-dragons-teeth.html

This relates to part of the southern bank at Durrington Walls.  It appears that there have been no excavations so far in order to check out whether these really are recumbent buried stones, or something else entirely........  no doubt Tim will report on any developments.

Using powerful ground-penetrating radar, which can ‘x-ray’ archaeological sites to a depth of up to four metres, investigators from Birmingham and Bradford universities and from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Vienna have discovered a 330 metre long line of more than 50 massive stones, buried under part of the southern bank of Durrington Walls.
“Up till now, we had absolutely no idea that the stones were there,” said the co-director of the investigation Professor Vince Gaffney of Birmingham University.
The geophysical evidence suggests that each buried stone is roughly three metres long and 1.5 metres wide and is positioned horizontally, not vertically, in its earthen matrix.
However, it’s conceivable that they originally stood vertically in the ground like other standing stones in Britain. It is thought that they were probably brought to the site shortly before 2500BC.
They seem to have formed the southern arm of a c-shaped ritual ‘enclosure’, the rest of which was made up of an artificially scarped natural elevation in the ground.
The c-shaped enclosure – more than 330 metres wide and over 400 metres long – faced directly towards the River Avon. The monument was later converted from a c-shaped to a roughly circular enclosure. (source)

3 comments:

PeteG said...

in 2007 they dug in the north of Durrington and found a huge military rubbish dump.
It wouldn't surprise me if something similar was found when they dig for these hidden 'stones'
http://www.peteglastonbury.plus.com/Durrington2007rubbish.jpg

Myris of Alexandria said...

Now that would be fun.
I note the Guardian also thought the programmes less than....
M

TonyH said...

Presumably, the "Hidden Landscapes Team", or others, such as English Heritage or the Stonehenge Riverside Project folk, have also used ground penetrating radar similarly to 'x - ray' the footprint of Stonehenge and its immediate periphery?

A Doctor Who episode of a year or so back did find some VERY interesting things occurring under the ground there. You never know....Merlin & Arthur + assorted Druids??