mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
British Archaeology banner

Cover of British Archaeology

Issue 78

September 2004

Was Stonehenge really built by welshmen?

On midsummer day Wessex Archaeology and the National Museum and Gallery,
Cardiff launched news of a Beaker grave (they have exhibitions to
promote). It contained, said the Times, men who ?helped to transport
giant bluestones from the Preseli mountains in West Wales to build
Stonehenge?. British Archaeology asked AP Fitzpatrick of Wessex
Archaeology and Jane Evans and Carolyn Chenery of the British Geological
Survey to explain

The story begins in May 2002 on the outskirts of Amesbury, 4.5 km
south-east of Stonehenge. Routine archaeological work before
construction of new housing and a school revealed a grave containing the
skeleton of a man and around 100 artefacts: the ?Amesbury Archer? with
his copper knives, gold hair ornaments, five Beaker pots and other items
such as a small stone that may have been used in copper or gold smithing.

The artefacts (the quantity is unique for a Beaker grave) indicate a
central European connection. The skeleton has been provisionally
radiocarbon dated to 2,400-2,200 bc, meaning the man could have seen ?
or ordered ? Stonehenge built.

As the bones from a nearby grave were cleaned, we discovered a second
man had been buried with similar gold ornaments to the first. A unique
variation in their feet (pseudo facets between the navicular and
calcaneum bones, present in both of the Archer?s feet and one of his
companion?s) points to a close family link. The second man was also
dated to 2,400-2,200 bc.

Then in May last year a third grave turned up. QinetiQ, who run the
airfield at Boscombe Down, were installing new water mains. They have
two keen archaeologists, Colin Kirby and Bob Clarke. Colin saw human
bone and Beaker sherds and called Wessex Archaeology: a team was on site
that afternoon.

Early Bronze Age graves in southern England are usually thought of as
containing one, or occasionally two, skeletons. Better recording and
analysis have now shown greater variability. In a few cases burials were
deliberately disturbed or rearranged. Sometimes not all the bones from a
body were buried. Some graves contain Beaker pots, others do not. But
whatever their condition, the remains of separate individuals were kept
together.

Boscombe was different. A man aged 30-45 (all ages approximate) lay on
his left side with legs tucked up and head to the north (his left
thighbone had been broken badly enough to give him a limp). By his head
were three children: one aged 2-4 had been cremated; few bones survived
of a child aged 5-6; a third, aged 6-7, lay at a higher level,
apparently inserted at a later date. The bones of a teenager, aged
15-18, and two men aged 25-30 lay around the man?s legs, both below and
on top of his body, their skulls towards his feet.

Jackie McKinley says the surfaces of the disarticulated bones were more
worn, suggesting the remains had been exposed or re-interred. This would
not be out of place in a much older Neolithic chambered tomb.

Artefacts once again have European links, and close parallels with some
of the Archer?s; we await radiocarbon dates, but suspect they will be
similar. There is nothing as distinctive among the new bones as the
Archer?s feet, but Jackie says the men?s skulls were very similar in
shape, with small extra bones called Wormian bones. It seems highly
likely they were all related.

Separately these three graves are special: as a group they are
astonishing. Given the signs of family relationships, the central
European style artefacts and the old controversy about ?Beaker people? ?
a mass immigration that is today rarely countenanced ? this seemed a
perfect case for a relatively new analytical technique applied to teeth
enamel. Could we say where these men had been born?

Confirming the artefact assessment, the Archer?s teeth showed he had
been born in central Europe, the first real demonstration of an
immigrant into prehistoric Britain. His companion was born in southern
England ? perhaps to his then settled immigrant father?

The new data from the Boscombe men show a remarkable co-incidence in the
strontium isotope composition of their premolars and third molars,
indicating that all three spent their early childhood in one place and
moved elsewhere in early adolescence, but not to Wiltshire, which must
represent at least a third move. When oxygen isotopes are also
considered, their origin is restricted to areas of pre-Mesozoic rocks on
the western side of Britain. Wales provides the nearest, most extensive,
and archeologically most likely place for their childhood, although the
Lake District and parts of Scotland cannot be ruled out.

Strontium is an element similar to calcium, and follows calcium into
teeth and bones. Along with oxygen it is fixed into tooth enamel when
teeth mineralise during childhood. The two elements preserve an
environmental fingerprint in the form of an isotope signature. The
87Sr/86Sr isotope ratio of strontium in soil varies, predominantly,
according to the nature of the underlying rocks weathering to create the
soil. Older rocks such as the slates, sandstones schists and gneisses of
the British pre-Mesozoic will generate relatively high 87Sr/86Sr values,
above 0.711, whereas the younger and rubidium-poor lithologies such as
Chalk release strontium with a lower isotope ratio around 0.708. These
differences may seem small, but as we can measure the ratios precisely
to the sixth decimal place, they are in fact large and significant.

The pattern of data in the teeth is remarkable. These three men each
followed the same pathway/career. In early childhood, during the
mineralisation of their premolars, they lived in a place with a
radiogenic signature of about 0.7135, typical of UK Palaeozoic slates
and shales. They must have moved to another, less radiogenic area during
the mineralisation of their third molars, probably during early
adolescence. We know that they ended up together in Wiltshire and so the
shortest distance they are likely to have travelled (from the Palaeozoic
rocks of Wales to Wiltshire) is around 200 km.

The Preseli Hills, source of the Stonehenge bluestones, lie within one
of the highly radiogenic areas in which the ?Boscombe Bowmen? were born.
This may be a coincidence, but it seems highly probable that the men and
their families were involved in the movement or migrations associated
with or established by the movement of the bluestones. It was ? and is ?
an epic story.

Objects from the Boscombe grave can be seen at the Changing Places
exhibition, celebrating 25 years of Wessex Archaeology, at Salisbury
Museum till 30 August. The Archer is in the travelling Buried Treasure
exhibition, at Cardiff till 5 September