Archaeologists have discovered a 5,000-year-old monument near Stonehenge that aligns with the summer and winter solstices, potentially serving as a prototype for the later solar alignment at the world-famous neolithic site. The find, described as a "once in a lifetime" discovery, was made at Bulford, just 5km from the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in Wiltshire.
Carbon dating places the structure at around 3000BC, contemporaneous with the earliest phase of Stonehenge's construction and 500 years before its massive trilithon stones were positioned to align with the midsummer and midwinter sun. Experts say it is the earliest solstice-aligned structure in the Wiltshire landscape and one of the first in Britain.
Phil Harding, the archaeologist who led the dig for Wessex Archaeology prior to the construction of new Ministry of Defence housing, called it "one of the greatest finds of my career." Unlike Stonehenge's towering sarsen boulders that still stand after 4,500 years, the Bulford monument consisted of two wooden poles 120 metres apart, leaving only two large post pits surrounded by smaller rubbish pits.
Harding, a former presenter on Channel 4's Time Team, initially did not recognize the discovery. It was only during later analysis of the site plan, when he drew a line between the two larger postholes, that he noticed the solstice alignment. "The thing that struck me as soon as I saw that was that [the line was] about 50 degrees off the direct north, which was pretty much the line of the midsummer sunrise. And so I got really, really excited about that," he said.
Further analysis by Fabio Silva, a "skyscape archaeologist" and expert in ancient astronomical mapping, confirmed that the two wooden poles accurately aligned with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset in 2950BC, based on extensive radiocarbon dating. The poles stood 3-4 metres high and would have aligned like a "gunsight" with the solstice sunrise and sunset. A smaller pit, also aligned with the poles, contained a rare disc-shaped flint knife, possibly shaped to represent the sun.
"What we're seeing here is the religion of the stone age made manifest in the ground," said Matt Leivers, senior research manager at Wessex Archaeology. "Obviously we have no understanding of precisely what any of it meant, but the fact that time and again, over thousands of years, people are coming back to [the Stonehenge landscape] to build and rebuild and mark and remark this set of substantial events – it gives us an indication that this is religion. This is how they are understanding their place in the cosmos, how the universe works, what their deities are."
Leivers added that it was "inconceivable" that those commemorating the solstices at Bulford would have been unaware of similar activities at Stonehenge, and they may have been the same people. "If you had a time machine and went back, I wouldn't be at all surprised if what we have found is one of the campsites of the builders of the first phase of Stonehenge. I think that's entirely plausible."
Harding reflected on the significance of the find: "Sites like this come along once in a lifetime, sometimes they don't come along at all. It doesn't matter whether you are a resident of Wiltshire or a resident of the Earth – everybody knows about Stonehenge. And to be able to contribute something to expanding our knowledge of Stonehenge is an incredible privilege."
