Woodhenge

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article concerns WOODhenge in England. For STONEhenge in England, see Stonehenge. For the Woodhenge in North America, see Cahokia. For the Woodhenge in the Netherlands, see Zwolle. There is no Stonehenge in America or the Netherlands.

Image:Woodhenge 4 DB.jpg

Woodhenge is a Neolithic Class I henge and timber circle monument located to the North of Amesbury in Wiltshire, England, and it is closer to Amesbury than is Stonehenge.

Woodhenge was identified in 1922 after an aerial archaeology survey by Alexander Keiller and OGS Crawford.

Crawford credits the discovery to an aerial photograph taken by Sq. Lr. Gilbert Stuart Martin Insall VC in 1925 (Crawford, Air-Photography for Archaeologists, 1929)

Maud Cunnington excavated the site between 1926 and 1929.

Pottery from the excavation was identified as being consistent with the Grooved ware style of the middle Neolithic, although later Beaker sherds were also found. So, the structure was probably built during the reign of the Beaker People, who used both contemporary pottery as well as pottery from the Neolithic period.

The site was believed by Cunnington to consist of a central burial, surrounded first by six concentric rings of postholes, then by a single ditch and finally an outer bank, around 85m wide. The burial was of a child which Cunnington interpreted as a dedicatory sacrifice although it was destroyed in The Blitz (bombing by the Germans during World War II) and re-examination has not been possible. Cunnington also found a skeleton of a teenager in one of the ditch sections she dug. Another theory is that the site is the burial location of a Celtic royal family.

Most of the 168 post holes held wooden posts, though there is evidence of a pair of standing stones having been placed between the second and third post hole rings. The deepest holes measured up to 2m and the height of the posts they held has been estimated at up to 7.5m above the ground. This sort of timber would have weighed around 5 tons and are similar as the erection of the bluestones at Stonehenge.

Further comparisons with Stonehenge were quickly noticed by Cunnington; both have entrances oriented approximately on the midsummer sunrise and the diameters of the timber circles at Woodhenge and the stone circles at Stonehenge are similar making the reasons for the name more understandable.

The positions of the postholes are currently marked with modern concrete posts which are a simple and informative method of displaying the site.

There are various theories about possible timber structures that might have stood on the site, and about how the axes, etc, of the rings might have aligned with positions of the Sun on the horizon. Many opportunities remain for further work in this respect, unfortunatley, work on the study of Stonehenge has overshadowed any real breakthroughs in the understanding of Woodhenge.