Settembre 2014: novità da Stonehenge - September 2014: news from Stonehenge

1 Versione in Italiano 

2 English version

Da http://www.ilnavigatorecurioso.it/

Utilizzando potenti georadar capaci di penetrare il suolo fino ad una profondità di quattro metri, un gruppo di archeologi ha scoperto un complesso di santuari e tumuli funerari che mostrano chiaramente che esistono ancora decine di monumenti sconosciuti intorno a Stonehenge.

L’enigmatico cerchio di pietre giganti di Stonehenge è sempre stato considerato dagli studiosi come un complesso isolato ai margini della piana di Salisbury.

Ma gli archeologi della Birmingham University hanno scoperto che Stonehenge è il centro di una più vasta rete di monumenti religiosi.

L’utilizzo della tecnologia di scansione radar del terreno ha permesso agli studiosi di individuare un grande complesso di santuari nascosti appena sotto la superficie.

I ritrovamenti includono l’esistenza di 17 strutture in legno o in pietra completamente sconosciute. L’indagine è durata quattro anni, con la mappatura di un area di circa 8 km², la più grande indagine geofisica mai intrapresa.

Secondo quanto riporta The Independent, la scoperta altera drasticamente l’opinione prevalente secondo cui Stonehenge sarebbe l’unico sito del paesaggio. La scoperta, invece, presenta la piana di Salisbury come un centro religioso attivo con più di 60 luoghi chiave dove i popoli antichi svolgevano i loro rituali sacri.

“Questo non è solo un altro ritrovamento”, spiega il professor Vince Gaffney, dell’Università di Birmingham. “Si tratta di un cambiamento del modo in cui interpretiamo Stonehenge”. I ricercatori hanno presentato le loro scoperte al British Science Festival di Birmingham.

Tra i ritrovamenti più significativi, la scoperta di 50 grosse pietre disposte su una linea lunga 330 metri a più di 4 metri di profondità. “Fino ad ora non avevamo assolutamente idea che fossero lì”, ha detto Gaffney. Ogni pietra è lunga circa 3 metri e larga 1,5 metri ed è posizionata orizzontalmente, anche se gli esperti non escludono che in origine fossero verticali come quelle di Stonehenge.

Le pietre dovrebbero essere state portate nel sito intorno al 2500 a.C. e pare formassero il braccio meridionale di un recinto per rituali realizzato a forma di “C”. Il monumento fu poi trasformato e reso circolare; ora è noto con il nome di “Durrington Walls” ed è stato definito il più grande complesso preistorico della Gran Bretagna: sembra fosse ben 12 volte più vasto di Stonehenge.

Sono stati anche dissotterrati enormi pozzi preistorici, alcuni dei quali sembrano avere legami astronomici e solari con Stonehenge. “Stonehenge è chiaramente parte di una struttura rituale molto grande, capace di attirare persone provenienti da molte regioni del paese”, continua Gaffney.

Un’altra scoperta significativa è una collinetta situata tra Walls Durrington e Stonehenge, che poi si è rivelata essere una struttura in legno battezzata “Casa dei morti”. Gli archeologi hanno trovato tracce di pratiche rituali che prevedevano la scarnificazione del defunto, rito durante il quale la pelle e gli organi del defunto venivano rimossi.

Il team di ricerca è ora impegnato ad analizzare i dati, nel tentativo di ricostruire esattamente come i popoli del neolitico e dell’età del bronzo abbiano usato il complesso di Stonehenge. Utilizzando modelli computerizzati, si sta cercando di capire in che modo erano collegati tra loro tutti i monumenti scoperti.

Al momento, le strutture non possono ancora essere datate con precisione, almeno fino a quando non verranno scavate, e qualsiasi decisione in merito spetta all’English Heritage.

David Keys http://www.independent.co.uk/

Archaeologists have discovered that Stonehenge had a huge stone sibling just two miles to the north-east.

Using powerful ground-penetrating radar, which can ‘X-ray’ archaeological sites to a depth of up to four metres, investigators from Birmingham and Bradford universities and from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Vienna have discovered a 330-metre long line of more than 50 massive stones, buried under part of the bank of Britain’s largest pre-historic henge.

 “Up till now, we had absolutely no idea that the stones were there,” said the co-director of the investigation Professor Vince Gaffney of Birmingham University.

The geophysical evidence suggests that each buried stone is roughly three metres long and 1.5 metres wide and is positioned horizontally, not vertically, in its earthen matrix.

However, it’s conceivable that they originally stood vertically in the ground like other standing stones in Britain. It is thought that they were probably brought to the site shortly before 2500BC.

They seem to have formed the southern arm of a c-shaped ritual ‘enclosure’, the rest of which was made up of an artificially scarped natural elevation in the ground.

The c-shaped enclosure – more than 330 metres wide and over 400 metres long – faced directly towards the River Avon. The monument was later converted from a c-shaped to a roughly circular enclosure, now known as Durrington Walls – Britain’s largest pre-historic henge, roughly 12 times the size of Stonehenge itself.

As a religious complex, it would almost certainly have had a deeply spiritual and ritual connection with the river. But precisely why is a complete mystery, although it is possible that that particular stretch of water was regarded as a deity.

The discovery of the buried stones is part of a much wider archaeological investigation into Stonehenge’s sacred landscape.

A two-part special BBC Two documentary (Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath), being shown this Thursday evening and next Thursday, is set to reveal the details of many of the investigation’s new discoveries.

As well as revealing the previously unknown stones of Durrington Walls, the Anglo-Austrian-led investigation has succeeded in locating more than 60 other previously unknown pre-historic monuments.

“It shows that, in terms of temples and shrines, Stonehenge was far from being alone,” said Professor Gaffney.

Using ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry and other geophysical techniques to peer beneath the landscape’s surface, archaeologists have found around 17 other henge-like Neolithic and Bronze Age religious monuments, each between 10 and 30 metres in diameter. Some may well have consisted of circles of large timber posts – wooden equivalents of conventional prehistoric stone circles.

But the archaeologists have also discovered around 20 large and enigmatic ritual pits – each up to five metres in diameter.

They have also discovered more than half a dozen previously unknown Bronze Age burial mounds – and four Iron Age shrines or tombs, as well as half a dozen Bronze Age and Iron Age domestic or livestock enclosures.

In total, some 4.5 square miles of buried landscape has been surveyed by the joint Birmingham/Vienna team in an exercise that has taken four years to complete.

Now the archaeologists plan to analyse the new data – in order to work out how all the newly discovered prehistoric monuments related to each other.

Using avatar-based computer models, they are hoping to tease out exactly how Neolithic and Bronze Age people used Stonehenge’s landscape.

Initial results suggest that some of the newly discovered shrines and other monuments grew up along processional ways or pilgrimage routes in Stonehenge’s sacred landscape.

The 4.5 square mile survey is the largest of its kind ever carried out anywhere in the world.

The large variety of ‘x-ray’ style techniques used have included more than half a dozen different systems.

Magnetometry and electro-magnetic induction have been used to map underground features by firing electro magnetic energy into the ground and then measuring the inter-action of that energy with subterranean features such as buried pits, ditches and stones.

Earth resistance and electrical resistivity imaging have gathered data on underground features by firing electrical energy into the ground and measuring differences in sub-surface resistance to it.

A fifth technique, magnetic susceptibility analysis, helps archaeologists detect buried layers of burnt material, which often indicate ancient human activity. The system works because naturally occurring iron oxides in the ground can become magnetized through the process of being burnt. A final technique, microgravimetry, can also help detect subterranean features, especially cavities – by measuring tiny differences in local gravitational fields.

The four year investigation into what lies beneath Stonehenge’s landscape has been carried out jointly by four UK universities (Birmingham, Bradford, St. Andrews and Nottingham) and two continental European institutions – the University of Ghent in Belgium and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Austria.