Ancient Village Unearthed Near Stonehenge

cityhunter007 writes to point out coverage on CNN.com about an ancient village discovered two miles from Stonehenge that may have housed workers building the monument, or perhaps visitors after it was constructed. The village, at a site known as Durrington Walls, dates from about the time Stonehenge was built, 2600 BCE. The article says: "The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge — where cremated remains have been found — was a cemetery and memorial... Stonehenge was oriented to face the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the wooden circle at Durrington Walls faced the midwinter sunrise and midsummer sunset."

Comments

A place for the living?

[sczimme]

The article calls Durrington Walls a "place for the living"? The houses appear to have been abandoned while still intact, given the artefacts found within them.

Silly question: where did everyone go?

Re:A place for the living?

[gEvil (beta)]

Silly question: where did everyone go?

More importantly, does anyone know who they were, or what they were doing?

Re:A place for the living?

[jd]

Well, I wouldn't get too caught up in the theories from the archaeologists on this. The buildings are associated with Stonehenge by proximity in time and location, but only just. The area is littered with relics from the past (Avebury - which makes Stonehenge look like a roadside memorial, Silbury Hill - one of the largest man-made hills of ancient times, Woodhenge, the White Horse, the Giant, a veritable forest of longbarrows and roundbarrows, a giant meeting center roughly a hundred feet high and twice the area of a modern American Football field, etc.)

How can we be so sure this has anything to do with Stonehenge? The buildings are described as similar to those in Skara Brae, and those people were as close to indigenous as anyone in Britain gets. Yet we know that Stonehenge's builders displaced the Avebury builders by force and were a relatively modern society. The theory put forward simply doesn't add up. You can get cut shaving with Occam's Razor, but I think it's safe to apply it here - the theory linking this settlement to Stonehenge requires too much unnecessary complexity and should not be accepted.

To answer the question - the buildings were never abandoned as they were never really inhabited. They were summer houses, if you like - places for the rich and famous neolithic people to rub shoulders and get their cave paintings taken. The buildings were simply never returned to, at some point, possibly because the tribe's real home was wiped out in a fight, though it might be that the paparazzi ran out of ochre. The history of the area is confusing, though less because of the facts and more because of a desire to dramatize. There really isn't any need to make things sound more amazing than they really are, and all the archaeologists do when they do that is make themselves look stupid to anyone who knows even a little of the history of the region.

Re:A place for the living?

[TapeCutter]

"The history of the area is confusing, though less because of the facts and more because of a desire to dramatize. There really isn't any need to make things sound more amazing than they really are, and all the archaeologists do when they do that is make themselves look stupid to anyone who knows even a little of the history of the region."

One of the "facts" is that the buildings showed no real evidence of people living in them (ie: no domestic waste from "holiday makers"). That kind of shoots down your "I know better than the archeologists" rant that is based on a little knowledge and an apparent predisposition to translate everything into modern cultural terms. Occam's Razor may be good for deciding the simplest theory that explains a particular phenomena but it's is of no real use when talking about human behaviour in a very distant culture. (eg: A rain dance may be performed repeatedly until it rains at which point it is declared to have "worked", the dance is simply a random ritual and as such is more or less immune to a logic tool that removes unessasary random components).

"There really isn't any need to make things sound more amazing than they really are, and all the archaeologists do when they do that is make themselves look stupid to anyone who knows even a little of the history of the region."

I agree that a little knowledge can lead people into wild fantasy, but I don't think that particular problem lies with the archaeologists in this case. The archaeologists evidence for their version of events may be weak, your questions may be pertinent but your bald assertions don't even register.

anecdote

[OriginalArlen]

Nothing to do with Stonehenge per se, just an anecdote. We have a neolithic stone, known as the Long Stone, a ten minute walk down the road from where I'm writing this, which is on the edge of the Wye Valley , right up against the Welsh border. It's a single stone, sticking up at an angle of about 75 degrees, perhaps seven feet tall. A few years ago I had to walk from my village to the nearest town to sign on the dole - a tedious 40 minute slog along unmaintained road verges - but passing the stone, I always felt compelled to reach out and give it a pat. I'm a hardcore, Dawkins-type rationalist, but I don't see any contradiction between that and a consciously irrational but of behaviour like patting the stone... it fits my brain, somehow, and it feels good to be connected with the people who lived here four thousand years ago. Poor bastards, it must have been miserable during the winter nights.

Re:anecdote

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I'll bet you almost anything that nobody has carried out even a basic archaeological survey of the area

Well let's start. Does someone have the coordinates and I'll look it up on google...

Re:Previous henges

[Anonymous Coward]

let me continue to weigh down a joke with more facts:
There's a Seahenge, too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahenge
What really fascinating is that it can be "confidently" dated to exactly SPRING or SUMMER 2049BC!

Re:The Druids

[Darby]

So, in 30 minutes you read that whole (long) article, examined the vast amount of research documented in the footnotes ( you couldn't claim "poorly researched" otherwise) , ignored all of that documentation which *you* just claimed was "poorly researched" (you couldn't claim "unsubstantiated" otherwise) and then go on to claim that, due to you contradicting yourself in one simple sentence, he must be some wacko conspiracy theorist?

Wow, you're truly amazing. Not only do you make no sense (you'd have given a couple dozen examples if you were actually trying to look like you make sense given that you're slagging thousands of hours of *substantiated, documented research* with one ignorant sentence) but you demonstrate yourself to be an idiot. Nice!

The simple fact that your entire post was one big ad Hominem Doesn't prove you wrong, but it does show that you know *nothing* that could back up whatever it is that you think your point might be.

My opinion is that you don't even have a clue what point you're trying to make since that would involve logic, and you've completely failed that.

Honestly, even on /., I can't think of anybody who's ever looked as stupid as you do right now :-)
OK, Taco with the iPod thing, but other than that...