Durrington Walls | Neolithic Henge, England, UK | Britannica (original) (raw)
Durrington Walls, the largest known Neolithic henge in the United Kingdom. Overlooking the River Avon near Amesbury, Wiltshire, the henge is approximately 1.9 miles (3 km) northeast of Stonehenge (3000 to 1520 bce) and about 76 yards (about 70 metres) north of Woodhenge (2500 to 2200 bce). Durrington Walls is thought to have been a site used for ritual or ceremonial activity from about 2000 to 1600 bce.
Durrington Walls is part of the larger Stonehenge landscape. Its shape is circular, measuring about 1,640 feet (500 metres) in diameter, and it is surrounded by a ditch about 58 feet (17.7 metres) wide, which is further surrounded by an outer bank made of quarried chalk and measuring about 131 feet (40 metres) wide by 3.3 feet (1 metre) high. The site has two entrances: one break in the bank on the west side and another break on the east.
The first major excavation at the site took place in 1966–67, led by archaeologist Geoffrey Wainwright. That excavation unearthed the ditch and outer banks, at least two timber circles (circles of upright wooden posts), stone tools, Grooved-ware pottery, and pig and cattle bones. The discovery of pottery and animal bones led researchers to infer that the site was used for feasts rather than for ceremonies or rituals relating to death, which were likely carried out at Stonehenge. In 2005 another excavation (led by Mike Parker Pearson) uncovered a 100-foot- (30-metre-) wide road that led from the Durrington site to the river as well as a grouping of floors of seven houses that once stood along the road. The discovery of the road suggested that Durrington Walls was part of a larger Neolithic complex that was linked to Stonehenge and Woodhenge (a nearby site that consists of circles of wooden posts), both of which also were connected to the river by roads.
In 2015, after discovering that some 90 15-foot- (4.5-metre-) high stones were buried in a C-shape around the site, archaeologists declared Durrington Walls a “super-henge.” The stones were discovered by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project (led by Vincent Gaffney and Wolfgang Neubauer) with noninvasive ground-penetrating radar technology. It is thought that the line of stones, which were hidden underground for thousands of years, may have been a ritual procession route used at an early phase of the site’s existence, a phase that may be contemporary with or earlier than that of Stonehenge. The discovery of the underground stones instigated further research into the history of the entire Stonehenge region.