The eternal mystery of what Stonehenge actually was may have just been solved. British scientists today declared that the monoliths were the final repository of cremated human remains beginning 5000 years ago.
[R]adiocarbon analysis of human remains excavated from the site have revealed that it was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3000BC until well after the largest circle of stones went up in about 2500BC. Previously, archaeologists had believed people were buried at Stonehenge only between 2700 and 2600BC. xxx
The new research provides clues about the original purpose of the monument and shows that its use as a cemetery extended for more than 500 years. The earliest cremation burial dated – a small pile of burnt bones and teeth – came from one of the pits around Stonehenge’s edge known as the Aubrey Holes and dates to 3030-2880 BC, roughly the time when Stonehenge’s ditch-and-bank monument was cut into Salisbury Plain.
But not just for anybody, it seems. They say that Stonehenge may very well have been the world's oldest exclusive club.
Andrew Chamberlain, a specialist in ancient demography at the University of Sheffield, said that the relatively small number of burials in Stonehenge’s earliest phase, becoming larger over the following centuries, was in line with the idea that this might have been the final resting place of a single, growing family.Stonehenge as nothing more but a Neolithic restricted cemetery is less interesting than what its age-old mystique may have implied. What may ultimately be more fascinating is Stonehenge as proof of the ancient provenance of elitism.Professor Parker Pearson added that placement of the graves and artefacts, such as a small stone mace, were evidence that the site was reserved as a “domain of the dead” for the elite.
“I don’t think it was the common people getting buried at Stonehenge, it was clearly a special place at the time,” he said.
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