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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: New theory on Stonehenge: health center Presence of Welsh bluestones intrigues archaeologists (05-11) 04:00 PDT Amesbury, England -- The mysterious circle of stones that rises on Salisbury Plain near here has stood as an archaeological marvel for thousands of years, its origins and purpose shrouded in the mists of history. But a just-completed excavation of Stonehenge, the first within the ancient circle in more than 40 years, could provide some of the first reliable explanations for one of the greatest wonders of the prehistoric world. A team of British archaeologists hopes to prove its theory that nearly 4,000 years ago Stonehenge was regarded not as a place of sacrament for the dead, but as a temple with unique healing powers. The dig is looking closely at the presence of about 82 bluestones - a double circle of large rocks, some weighing as much as 4 tons, that were brought in during the second stage of Stonehenge, which began about 2150 B.C. and account for the first stone construction at the site. About 150 years later, these were rearranged and surrounded by a circle of the much larger sarsen stones that have become iconic of Stonehenge. Yet it is the bluestones, somehow hauled to the Salisbury Plain from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, Wales, that researchers say hold the key to the clouded mystery of Stonehenge. Although the researchers found to their dismay that the area they examined had been tampered with in Roman times, they still hope the excavations will help show that the bluestones were once viewed as therapeutic. Over the years, Stonehenge's legends have been many. Some said the devil bought the stones from a woman in Ireland; another story suggests they were placed on the plain by the wizard Merlin; others have sworn that aliens built the monument and left it as a place for worship, or that Druids built it as a temple for sacrificial ceremonies. "You could put 10 archaeologists in a room, and you'd get at least 11 theories," said Dr. Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology, a private company involved in the excavation, which was approved by English Heritage, which manages Stonehenge. "I think the one thing everybody would agree on is that Stonehenge is a temple, which is easy to lose sight of in the kind of to-ing and fro-ing of ideas." But the recent realization that the site contained stones from mountains 250 miles away in Wales shed new light on Stonehenge's origins. Tim Darvill, a professor at the University of Bournemouth, and Geoff Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London, have spent the last six years researching Stonehenge and the rocky outcrop Carn Menyn, thought to be the exact site in the Preseli Hills from which the bluestones were taken. Darvill and Wainwright, the co-directors of the dig, found the Welsh site to be a center for ceremony and burials, where the springs that flowed below the rocks were regarded by ancients as having medicinal powers. They hope that by finding evidence to tie the stones from the Preseli Hills to those at Stonehenge, they will have an answer to the age-old mystery of the site's purpose. Darvill and Wainwright hope to establish a more precise timeline for the construction of Stonehenge to within 10 years by collecting samples from the excavation and comparing them to those taken from the site in Wales through radiocarbon dating. The scientists also hope to shed light on whether the stones were transported manually, as Darvill believes, or whether perhaps the former Irish Sea Glacier pushed the stones to Salisbury. But one fact is certain: Their presence at Stonehenge makes it unique among the stone circles of its era. "Once they arrive here, this monument becomes very different from any other kind of monument in the British Isles. ... And when they come here they elevate this monument into something rather special," Darvill said one recent afternoon, accenting various points of interest with the end of a long hoe, as a student volunteer sifted buckets of dirt through a giant metal sieve nearby. "You can make the analogy with a medieval cathedral - it's a bog-standard Paris church until they get those relics, and at that point it becomes a beautiful, marvelous building," he said. "It changes its purpose at about that time from a fairly standard henge to a temple of really European renown." This theory, first proposed in a book about Stonehenge by Darvill himself nearly two years ago, is in its infancy when compared to the many other beliefs and cult theories that have followed the monument for hundreds of years. Even so, according to Fitzpatrick, it is also one of the two most widely accepted theories about the origins of Stonehenge now competing for support in the archaeological world. The second dominant theory is being explored by another Stonehenge scholar, Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, who recently uncovered evidence of a village in Durrington Walls, only a few miles away from the monument. Pearson believes that Stonehenge's true significance is in its relationship to a sister temple found at Durrington Walls. Together, he believes, the temples served as meccas for religious observance - Durrington Walls a site of feasts for the living, Stonehenge a series of statues of the dead. "There is certainly a debate going on amongst archaeologists in the U.K. at the moment," Fitzpatrick said. "We're all kind of waiting to see how it pans out; we're waiting to see if the new excavations provide dating, which will help us resolve some of these questions." Now that researchers have come to believe the bluestones come from Wales, the question is why? If the bluestones were just ordinary rocks, surely prehistoric peoples would not have bothered to move them so far. One clue may lie in the ancient burial mounds that surround the site: Are they commemorations of the dead, or evidence of attempts to heal the living? "There's people in the landscape buried here who have come here perhaps like pilgrims, in order to benefit from the things here," Darvill said. "You can imagine a big temple like this is going to have shamans, it's going to have witch doctors, it's going to have all the sorts of people who in prehistoric terms would look after those who were ill." Many of the remains uncovered during previous excavations show signs of ailments and, in some cases, prehistoric surgery. "One, for example, has a trepanation taken out of the top of the skull, a circular piece of bone taken out to relieve pressure on the brain. You've got to be feeling pretty unwell to let somebody get a flint blade and cut the top of your head off," Darvill said. Although the Romans may have destroyed some of the evidence the two scientists were hoping to find, they refuse to be deterred. Their research "ties in with some big questions about the interpretation of Stonehenge," Darvill said. "Once these bluestones were moved here, people believed the place was important, it was sacred, they could become pilgrims, they could come here." But for what? For Darvill and Wainwright, inching closer to an answer is all they can ask for.
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