The stone circle of Stonehenge today lies in an open, largely unforested landscape. But what did this area look like before the Neolithic builders erected their sanctuary around 5,500 years ago? Archaeologists have now discovered this using animal fossils and pollen. According to this, the area was apparently no longer densely forested as early as the Middle Stone Age, but was characterized by larger open grassland areas. This and numerous finds of aurochs tracks could explain why Stonehenge was built there.
Stonehenge in South West England is one of the most famous megalithic structures in the world. The earliest beginnings of the circle system were probably built by members of the Windmill Hill culture, one of the earliest sedentary farming cultures in this region, dating back to around 3100 BC. Stonehenge then consisted of a circular mound of earth 115 meters in diameter with a moat and a ring of wooden posts. Around 2600 BC Then people of the Bell Beaker culture added the first standing stone circles to this building.
Forest or open landscape?
So far, however, it was unclear what prompted the Stonehenge builders to build their sanctuary in this area – and what the landscape looked like before. “There has been a long-standing debate as to whether the monumental site at Stonehenge was built in an uninhabited, wooded landscape, or whether it was created in an open landscape that was previously of significant importance to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers,” explains Samuel Hudson from the University of Southampton and his colleagues. Scientists have long favored the first scenario, according to which much of southern England was then covered by largely closed forest.
More recently, however, there are increasing indications that the landscape was characterized by grassland and sparsely wooded habitats in some areas even before the beginning of the Neolithic Age and the first clearing by sedentary farmers. In addition to a thin layer of humus unsuitable for trees on the limestone subsoil, such open zones could also have been caused by the grazing activity of larger herds of ungulates. To test these different scenarios, Hudson and his team examined an area on the edge of the Stonehenge World Heritage site.
Plant and animal fossils are evidence of grasslands
The Blick Mead site is about a mile east of Stonehenge and south of the Woodhenge passage tombs on a plain near the River Avon. “Excavations there have already brought to light a large number of Mesolithic relics, including a good 100,000 stone tools, as well as various animal relics,” report the researchers. The finds show that this place was already inhabited from about 8000 BC. BC was visited by hunters and gatherers. For their study, Hudson and his team analyzed fossils of animals and plants as well as pollen from this period and used them to reconstruct the vegetation and animal world of that time.
The analyzes revealed that while some forest animal species occurred in Blick Mead, most of the fossils came from animals that prefer to be found in wet meadows and in ponds. In addition to some fish and amphibians, these also included ground voles and insects such as the red clover shrew weevil or the flea beetle. The plant relics and DNA analyzes also painted a similar picture: the vegetation was therefore dominated by herbs such as thistles, bindweed, stinging nettles and grasses, while willows, sweet grasses and alders also grew in valleys near the river. “Taken together, this suggests the existence of small, overgrown pools in a grassland landscape,” the scientists report.
From game-rich hunting ground to sanctuary
According to Hudson and his team, all of this suggests that even before the famous stone circle was built, the landscape around Stonehenge was sparsely forested and rather open. In addition, the archaeological finds and large amounts of traces and bones of aurochs, red deer and other ungulates indicate that there were rich ungulate populations there at the time, which kept the landscape open through their grazing. At the same time, this game may have made the area particularly attractive to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the team explains.
“The clear evidence of human use at the site and the presence of many cut-marked aurochs bones suggest that Blick Mead was used by humans for hunting aurochs and other ungulates,” Hudson and his colleagues explain. In her opinion, it is obvious that the area, which is rich in wildlife and water, was also used for ritual gatherings at that time – and thus as a kind of forerunner of the ceremonies in Stonehenge. “Europe’s largest monumental landscape could therefore not only go back to the time of the hunters and gatherers in terms of spatial and ecological aspects, but could also have developed from it in many other respects,” the researchers state.
Source: PLOS One, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266789