A 4,500-year-old monument experts thought was "another Stonehenge" is now understood to have not contained any standing stones at all.
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| A dig at Durrington Walls has shown there were no standing stones at the site [Credit: Nicola Snashall/National Trust] |
Last year they said a survey showed evidence of "a Superhenge" of more than 100 buried stones at the site.
But no evidence of stones was found during an excavation. Instead, pits that contained wooden posts have been found.
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| Archaeologists said they now believed huge timber posts were used in the monument [Credit: Nicola Snashall/National Trust] |
National Trust archaeologist Dr Nicola Snashall said ground penetrating radar had revealed "anomalies" that were originally believed to be buried stones.
"The response from the radar was so good that the team thought they were dealing with a whole series of stones lying on their side, buried beneath the bank of this ancient earthwork."
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| The area near Stonehenge has been surveyed for the past six years [Credit: Nicola Snashall/National Trust] |
"What we've discovered are that there are two enormous pits for timber posts. They have got ramps at the sides to lower posts into.
"They did contain timbers which have been vertically lifted out and removed at some stage. The top was then filled in with chalk rubble and then the giant henge bank was raised over the top."
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| Ground penetrating radar had suggested a 4,500-year-old stone circle lay beneath a huge earthwork circle outside Durrington in Wiltshire, but new excavations have revealed large pits that had been used to hold giant wooden posts instead [Credit: University of Bradford/Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project] |
"For some strange reason they took the timbers out and put up the enormous bank and ditch that we see today."
The Durrington Walls monument, which is about 480m (1,500 ft) across, is just under two miles (3km) from the famous Stonehenge site in Wiltshire.
Source: BBC News Website [August 12, 2016]