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england's unique landscapes are rich
with history and
mystery and even at the most iconic
sites there's more than meets the eye
you just need to be prepared to look a
little closer
i'm mariano hotter i'm an anthropologist
and author and today i'm exploring
stonehenge in
wiltshire it's a site cared for by
english heritage
it's been studied for hundreds of years
and thousands of visitors come to see it
every year
so surely there aren't that many secrets
still to unearth
well you'd be surprised in fact today to
start understanding stonehenge
i'm not even at the site itself i'm two
miles away
at another english heritage site
woodhenge
this is woodhenge and over there is
durrington walls
woodhenge was a timber monument and it
comprises of
six concentric circles of posts
and each of these concrete posts marks a
place where the archaeologists
discovered
a post hole
the timber posts have long rotted away
but the archaeologists could work out
the the size of them
from the hole that was there and so each
of these concrete posts perfectly
represents the diameter of the timber
that was once standing
but what we don't know is what they look
like above ground
they reckon that some of them could have
been almost nine metres high
but we don't know whether they were
carved or whether they still had their
branches on them whether they were
strewn with textiles or pieces of animal
sacrifice
we also don't know whether they had some
kind of linking structure between the
posts
we don't have all the details of what
woodhenge would have looked like
but what's absolutely certain is that
this place was very special
indeed and it was constructed in 2500 bc
the same time that the stones were being
raised at stonehenge
there are a few details that you might
notice at this site
the first are the low remains of an
earthwork that circles the whole of the
monument there's a bank and then a ditch
it's a lot lower than it would have been
originally because
this land used to be plowed and so it's
flattened it slightly
but it's an earthwork similar to the one
that you'll spot around the stones at
stonehenge
and then at the center of the monument
is this ken
which marks the burial site of a
three-year-old child
the remains were discovered in an
archaeological excavation that was
conducted in the 1920s
and since then the bones have been lost
unfortunately
so we can't do further analysis it means
that we don't know exactly when the
child died
or why but it's possible that this was a
human sacrifice
or some other kind of special burial
that gave this site even more
significance
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on the other side of the road is during
the walls which is looked after by the
national trust
and it's another site of extraordinary
significance
archaeologists have discovered the
remains of a huge timber enclosure and
inside the enclosure were dozens of
small houses
the houses date to the same period as
the stones were being raised at
stonehenge and we don't know whether
these houses were
homes to the people who were building
stonehenge or whether they came there to
use or worship the stones instead
we also find the evidence of timber
circular monuments much
like this one at woodhenge there's
even more intriguing evidence that comes
out of durrington walls
because what you can see in the
landscape over there
is an absolutely enormous earthwork it
carries on across this field and then on
the other side of that road down there
as well
it's another henge enclosure with a
bank and then a ditch but this one is a
super henge what you can see now is
basically a tiny sliver of what was
originally there it would have been
bright white cut through to the chalk
and it would have been much much higher
and the ditch would have been much much
deeper that earthwork was built
after some of the houses had fallen into
disrepair and so the archaeologists
think that maybe that earthwork was
constructed in order to
memorialize what had already happened at
this site
another intriguing piece of evidence are
the animal remains found at durrington
walls
over 38 000 bones from pigs and cattle
have been discovered that were
butchered and cooked basically on giant
barbecues
from isotope analysis of the bones we
know that some of those animals were
raised in whales and other animals were
raised in northern britain
they must have come here on the hoof in
order to be fresh
meat and we don't know whether that
means that there were complex trading
networks across the whole of britain at
that time
or whether people were coming here with
their animals to
use this site and perhaps use stonehenge
here's a really cool detail when the
remains of these
animal meat feasts were thrown into the
ground there was still plenty of meat
attached to the bones
which indicates that they could afford
to throw meat away
so it challenges all our preconceptions
about what
life in the neolithic was like because
we know that at least
some people were eating very well so
well in fact they could afford
food waste so who was using these sites
who came here with their animals and who
got to have a big old barbecue in
durrington walls
is anyone's guess
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both woodhenge and durington are aligned
to the sunrise
woodhenge isn't actually a perfect
circle it's a slight
oval with the axis aligned east-west
and at durrington archaeologists
discovered an
avenue that is perfectly aligned for
mid-winter sunrise
if you follow that avenue down this hill
you get to the river avon
and if you follow the river avon you get
to an avenue
that leads you directly to stonehenge
i'm here at stonehenge now with susan
greeney an english heritage
archaeologist
susan the sites that we're decoding
today
are woodhenge um stonehenge both by the
name
henge what exactly is a henge a henge is
a circular
usually earthwork monument surrounding
other things so sometimes stone circles
sometimes timber circles like you saw at
woodhenge
and we're actually stood now in the
ditch of stonehenge
the henge of stonehenge and
is it right i've read that stonehenge
isn't actually a proper hench what does
that mean
hendrix are built between about 3000 bc
and about 2500 and this is a
particularly early one and it's
sometimes referred to as a proto-henge
and it's because here we have a ditch
with an outer small bank and an inner
large bank so we've got two banks and a
ditch
whereas in proper henges you just get an
outer bank and a ditch
so this is a kind of early version and
how does this
earthwork link with the obvious massive
stone
monument in the middle well it's much
earlier so
as i said it was it was probably built
in around 3000 bc
and at that time we just have the
earthwork enclosure
and then some pits just inside the bank
which we call aubry holes now
and those pits might have held stones or
posts we're not quite sure
but they were also used for the place
where people put cremated dead
so there's a kind of 500 year history of
stonehenge which is
basically playing out before they put
the stones up in the middle of the
circle
and the thing about stonehenge is it's
constantly modelled and remodeled
isn't it for more than a thousand years
that's right so
over the late neolithic and into the
bronze age people are coming here and
embellishing and adding bits and
changing things around so we know that
for example
when the stones got put up first they
were in a different formation
a couple of hundred years afterwards
they moved some of the smaller stones
the blue stones around
so people were coming back here time and
time again and rebuilding and re
modifying the monument should we go and
have a closer look yeah sure
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so this is one of the markers that we've
put in place to show where the aubry
holes were
and the aubrey holds this early stage of
the monument
a big pit with human cremated remains in
it yeah that's right so there was about
a meter meter half across
and there were 56 of them all the way
around the inner bank of the henge
and we think that they held uprights of
some kind some archaeologists think
upright stones possibly the blue stones
others think maybe timber posts but they
were certainly used for the burial
of these cremated remains and what do we
know about
the people whose remains these are we
know that they are men women and
children
of various ages and we know that they
come from very different parts of
southern britain so perhaps they're
being carried here
small little bags of cremated remains
and being placed here at stonehenge
wow so stonehenge starts off
as a cemetery and it's not just for
local people
and it's like famous right from the
beginning that's right exactly people
are coming here from quite long
distances
let's go and see what else we can find
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susan tell me about the stones so we've
got two types of stones here at
stonehenge
we've got the enormous ones which are
sauce and stone which is a really hard
type of stone
and this is the local stone these ones
although they're
up to 30 tons each then they were bought
from
a local area so about 15 miles away to
the north of here
how do we know actually where they're
from well if you can see
up on the stone here there's some little
cut out circles oh there
yeah yeah that's the plug where some
work was done so these stones actually
fell down in 1797
and they were put back upright in 1958
and when they did that they found a bit
of a crack through this big one here
and um so they pinned it together with
metal rods and when they pinned it
together they took out
a column of the stone a stone rod in
effect
and recently only in the last year we've
been able to geologically analyze that
and match it to some natural assassins
and we've been able to pinpoint
where these stars and stones come from
on the marble downs
a site called westwoods and then these
are the blue stones that's right these
are the the smaller stones but as you
can see they're actually
pretty large and these were the ones
that were brought all the way from the
priscelli hills
in southwest wales so although they're
smaller and
lighter they've been brought over huge
long distances to be put up here at
stonehenge
what do we know about them i mean why
were they brought here and
how do they fit into the monument it's
really difficult to know why
these particular stones were brought
priscelli hills must have been a place
that was important these stones must
have been important
something perhaps they were put up in a
stone circle in wales first and then
brought here later
but they've been put up in several
different places and in fact that where
they're stood down today
is not where they've always stood at
stonehenge come over here and i'll show
you how we know that
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this stone here can you see it's got
this this groove all the way down one
side
the blue stones didn't always stand in
the current formation
um we've actually got some clues from
some of the stones that they were worked
and shaped
into slots and grooves so we think they
stood together as pears
and also some that are lintels and i've
got corresponding tenons on upright
stones so little mini trilathons
so we know that they stood in a previous
formation here at stonehenge
in that setting and archaeologists have
found that when they've been excavating
they found this double blue stone arc
which is where the blue stones first
stood in the middle of stonehenge
i love the idea that there's a kind of a
missing mystery monument from stonehenge
itself
it's just that at some point the
ancestors decided to rearrange the
the bricks and build something else
there's one other type of stone here at
stonehenge that isn't a blue stone or a
sass and it's something different
entirely okay
so this stone is probably perhaps the
most important stone on the site
that one that's it that profoundly
underwhelming one
that's right yeah this is a different
type of geology so this one
is uh made of sandstone and it comes
probably from the area of the brecon
beacons in wales so
somewhere in between here in the
bracelet hills in pembrokeshire
and we call it the altar stone why do
you call it the altar stone i mean
immediately i'm thinking a kind of
druid like shamanic figure doing wild
rituals and blood sacrifice
too many fantasy novels babies maybe
yeah i mean we call it the altar stone
because it stands right in the middle of
the
most special inner sanctum of stonehenge
it's surrounded by the horseshoes and by
the circles of stones
and it's laid flat it's sort of like an
altar so that's why you know
antiquaries first gave it the name
alterstone it could have stood upright
but it's probably quite likely that it
was flat and it is
here right at the middle of the the of
the stone so we don't know what kind of
ceremonies took place here but it's
clearly it was an important stone
it's kind of frustrating that it's been
squashed by these
they're the rest of the trilithon with
this one isn't it yeah that's right so
this has fallen over at some point in
the past we don't know when
the the these are the this is the
tallest trilethon on the site so it's at
the head of the horseshoe
one half of it has fallen towards us and
actually this here is the lintel
you can still see the hollows underneath
where it would have slotted on top
and that gives us a really good sense of
how they were carving and shaping these
joints so that the stones fitted
together
and you can see the tenon that's still
on the top there
and stonehenge is described as a clean
site is that right because you don't
find animal remains you don't find bits
of pottery
it kind of looks like it was kept
special in some way
that makes it so different to what we
find at during tomorrows and woodhenge
where there's animal bones everywhere
and bits of pottery and all sorts of
houses all sorts of kind of
life yeah it's a complete contrast so
you've got the two sites of being
occupied and built at the same time
but they're very very different uses and
different perspectives so
here it's kept clean it's kept sacred
perhaps you know it's not suitable for
everyday life and lots of rubbish and
excitement so maybe it's a special
sacred place maybe it's because
it's a burial place of the dead that you
come here and it's a it's a very
special place whereas darrington is
where you know everything's going on and
you've got parties
yeah exactly and yet they're linked
so you've got party town over there but
then you come up the river
and you arrive here that's right so both
the monuments are linked by their own
avenues to the river avon
so the stonehenge avenue we can actually
go and have a look at where it begins
and where the entrance to stonehenge is
susan this is the avenue that's right
we're standing at the end of the avenue
and it runs right the way down into the
valley here and just here is where we
can see some of the earthworks of the
bank and ditch that flank either side of
it
yeah you can see it just sort of
tracking up through the field there but
it's really clear this side that's right
and this part of the avenue is really
important because it's aligned on the
solstice
so together with a heel stone this
enormous stone
it marks the sunrise so in this
direction the sun rises
in mid-summer and in the opposite
direction the sun sets between the two
tallest stones at midwinter
now that's a really intriguing link
because
you've got the avenue which is the link
up with the river avon and the avenue to
durington walls and woodhenge but
over there elements of the monuments are
aligned for mid-winter sunrise and here
you've got the alignment with mid-winter
sunset the point where
the sun disappears on the darkest
shortest day of the year
so we think that people perhaps moved
between the two perhaps you can imagine
rituals and ceremonies processions
we don't know exactly how people use the
two sites but certainly there's a
contrast between
the sort of during turn the timber
monuments the sunrise there
and coming here in the sunset
so to actually understand these
monuments we have to look at them
in the landscape as a whole yeah we have
to look at how the monuments
interconnected and how people are moving
between them
and how they're seeing different parts
of the landscape in different ways
what a remarkable place this is
for thousands of years people have come
to stonehenge and they have
marveled and they've tried to make sense
of it and we still do that today
we've got smartphones we've got space
flight but stonehenge
holds its own when you do come and visit
don't just rush to the stones though
explore the wider landscape there are
hundreds of archaeological sites to
discover
there's a network of footpaths and open
access land
because by wandering and wondering
and using our imaginations that's
how we actually unlock the secrets of
these incredible sites
you