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Jun 7, 2017 - Avebury wooden circles 800 years older than thought, say scientists. The Times {Main}, 07 Jun 2017, p17, Keyword: Historic England, ...
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HISTORIC ENGLAND Historic England Avebury wooden circles 800 years older than thought, say scientists The Times {Main}, 07 Jun 2017, p17, Keyword: Historic England, Journalist: Simon de Bruxelles,

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The Times {Main}

Keyword:

Historic England

UK Wednesday 7, June 2017 17 581 sq. cm ABC 445737 Daily page rate £16,645.00, scc rate £75.00 020 7782 5000

Avebury wooden circles 800 years older than thought, say scientists Simon de Bruxelles

Years before Stonehenge was built, religious rituals were being staged 20 miles away at a lesser-known prehistoric site. New radiocarbon dating has revealed that two vast wooden palisades at Avebury in Wiltshire are at least 800 years older than previously believed. The circular palisades — up to 250 metres in diameter — were built using thousands of oak trees close to the monument in Avebury, the world’s largest prehistoric stone circle. After their discovery 30 years ago, the palisades were believed to be contemporary with the nearby stone circles at Avebury and Stonehenge, thought to have been begun in about 2,500BC. However, the new dates suggest that the palisades were erected in about 3,300BC, only a few hundred years after the introduction of farming in Britain. It has also been revealed that the wooden structures were deliberately burnt to the ground to make huge rings of fire. The tests were carried out by Alex Bayliss, a carbon-dating expert at Historic England, using charcoal samples excavated by Alasdair Whittle, of Cardiff University, in the early 1990s and stored in the British Museum. At that time, however, the samples were too small to be dated accurately. The discovery was made when colleagues of Professor Whittle looked at his past projects for a book to mark his retirement. Professor Bayliss said: “The date of 3,300BC puts the palisades in a completely different context; it’s the end of the early neolithic, when there’s a blank in our knowledge of the big monuments of the time. They are two really massive circles of timbers. One of the hypotheses is that one could have been for women and the other for men to use for rituals. We have an entirely new kind of monument that is like nothing

else ever found in Britain.” The structures were built within a few years of each other. Professor Bayliss says they are too large to have been for defence or for keeping livestock. There is no evidence that the site of the palisades was occupied until nearly a millennium later, when it was used by the builders of nearby Silbury Hill. By then there would have been no visible trace of the wooden walls. The two structures would have represented a huge investment of time and labour. Professor Whittle calculated that they stretched over four kilometres and used more than 4,000 trees. One structure was about 250m in diameter; the other comprised two concentric circles of timbers 200m across. Although wooden circles have been discovered elsewhere, they date from much later. Woodhenge, near Stonehenge, was built in about 2,300BC. The discovery, published in British Archaeology, was described as shocking by Mike Pitts, the editor and a former curator of the Alexander Keiller Museum at Avebury. He said very little was known about the development of the monument and none of the megaliths or the enormous ditch had been accurately dated. He said: “Having this massive palisade structure, not just at Avebury but even in southern England, at 3,300BC is completely unexpected. The dates are so surprising some archaeologists are going to question it. I have looked at the evidence very carefully and I think it works. At Avebury, unlike Stonehenge, there’s been little excavation since the war and we are starting from a base of almost complete ignorance.”

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The Times {Main}

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Historic England

UK Wednesday 7, June 2017 17 581 sq. cm ABC 445737 Daily page rate £16,645.00, scc rate £75.00 020 7782 5000

Stone circles: a timeline 3,500BC Mayburgh Henge constructed in Cumbria.

Cumbria, made up of about 40 megaliths. 3,000BC Stonehenge

Third millennium BC 1,000km ditch in Avebury, Wiltshire, enclosing the world’s largest stone circle. 3,000BC Castlerigg, in

2,500—2,000BC Ring of Brodgar, Orkney. Stone circle 104m in diameter originally consisting of 60 stones, of which 27 remain standing.

2,500BC Arbor Low, Peak district. A recumbent stone circle made up of 50 limestone megaliths. 1,500BC Long Meg and her Daughters, Cumbria. Legend says Long Meg, the tallest, was a witch turned to stone.

Che elttenh elt el enham Gloucester Glouce

The Cotswolds

M5

Swindon

M4 Bristol 10 miles

North Wessex Avebury Downs

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The Times {Main}

Keyword:

Historic England

UK Wednesday 7, June 2017 17 581 sq. cm ABC 445737 Daily page rate £16,645.00, scc rate £75.00 020 7782 5000

  

  

The palisades were thought to have been contemporary with the Avebury henge, the world’s largest stone circle, but radiocarbon dating shows they were much older

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