The stone circle at Stonehenge in southwest England is the most famous megalithic monument in Europe. But the approximately 5000 year old sanctuary could be composed of parts of one or even several previous buildings. This is indicated by the discovery of a partially dismantled stone circle in Wales. It is a few hundred years older than Stonehenge, but its bluestones have been quarried and possibly brought to the south of England.
There has long been evidence that the material and possibly also the builders of the Stonehenge stone circle have their roots in Wales. The gate-like triliths still standing today come from quarries in the immediate vicinity of Stonehenge. However, this does not apply to the bluestones that once formed the outer ring of the sanctuary. Because they consist of dolerite and rhyolite, a volcanic rock that does not occur in southern England, but in Wales, among others.
As early as 2015, a team led by Mike Parker Pearson from University College London was able to prove that some of these Stonehenge bluestones must have come from two prehistoric quarries in the Welsh Preseli Mountains. Isotope analyzes of bone remains from some of the dead buried in Stonehenge also suggest that some of these people also came from this area.
A stone circle older than Stonehenge
New discoveries now suggest that the link between Wales and Stonehenge may be even closer than previously thought. They discovered Parker Pearson and his team when they examined the remains of an old megalithic monument in the Preseli Mountains. So far, only four upright bluestones have been seen of the monument, baptized Waun Mawn, arranged in a flat arch. The archaeologists have now used radar, magnetometers and conductivity measurements, as well as excavations to investigate whether these stones could possibly have been part of a once larger ensemble such as a stone circle.
As it turned out, this was actually the case: The researchers found six holes in which bluestones must once have stood and whose position continues the arc into a circle. “The six holes and four stones still standing could originally have formed a circle of 30 to 50 stones,” report Parker Pearson and his team. This stone circle was probably 110 meters in diameter. “This makes Waun Mawn the third largest stone circle in Great Britain, after the outer circle of Avebury at 331 meters and Stanton Drew at 113 meters,” the researchers said. And not only that: dating has shown that this Welsh stone circle was erected around 3,500 BC. Waun Mawn is one of the oldest stone circles in Great Britain and several hundred years older than the first bluestone version from Stonehenge.
Dismantled and recycled again in Stonehenge?
But unlike Stonehenge, Waun Mawn was apparently not used as a sanctuary for long. A large part of its bluestones was dismantled just a few hundred years after its construction. From around 3000 BC there are no more traces of activity on this stone circle. “It’s like people just disappeared back then,” says Parker Pearson. “Most of them evidently emigrated, taking their stones – symbols of their identity and their ancestors – with them in order to start over elsewhere.” But where did these people go? According to Parker Pearson and his team, there are some indications that at least some of the emigrants of the time came with their stones to the place where Stonehenge was built a short time later – on the Salisbury Plain.
From several parallels between Stonehenge and Waun Mawn, the archaeologists conclude that the Welsh stone circle provided both the construction plan and parts of the material for the first version of Stonehenge. This is supported by the fact that Waun Mawn is the only previously known stone circle in Great Britain whose diameter corresponds exactly to that of the Stonehenge moat ring. One of the holes in the Welsh monument also has a strikingly cruciform floor plan, exactly the size of one of the bluestones from Stonehenge. And the alignment to sunrise at the summer solstice can also be found on both monuments.
“Physical manifestation of their identity”
“It appears that Stonehenge was partly or wholly built by Neolithic immigrants from Wales who brought their monuments with them as a physical manifestation of their identity and rebuilt them on the Salisbury Plain,” the archaeologists write. They suspect, however, that Waun Mawn wasn’t the only stone circle that contributed to Stonehenge. Instead, stones from several Neolithic monuments could have been brought to Stonehenge and united there to form a common sanctuary. “This discovery is the culmination of 20 years of research – it is one of the most important discoveries I have ever made,” says Parker Pearson.
However, archaeologists have not yet been able to explain why people suddenly left their Welsh homeland so suddenly a good 5000 years ago and moved to southern England with their holy stones. They therefore want to continue looking in the Preseli Mountains for clues as to what triggered this Neolithic emigration.
Source: University College London, Article: Antiquity, doi: 10.15184 / aqy.2020.239