A timber structure aligned precisely with the summer and winter solstices was set up near Stonehenge 500 years before the great stone monument in Wiltshire was built, archaeologists have discovered.
The finding, made by a team from Wessex Archaeology on what is now an Army housing estate at Bulford, suggests the structure might have been an early prototype for the alignment of Stonehenge’s huge stones.
Two tall wooden poles were erected 120 metres apart on the site 5km from Stonehenge in a line that pointed at the rising sun during the summer solstice around June 21 and, in the opposite direction, at the setting sun during the winter solstice around December 21.
It suggests large groups of Neolithic people started to gather on Salisbury Plain to celebrate the longest and shortest days of the year as far back as 3000 BC, much earlier than previously thought.
Phil Harding, who led the excavations and is one of Britain’s most recognisable archaeologists, said: “Discoveries like this only come once in a lifetime. Archaeology always produces interesting new things but for me, after a lifetime in the field, these two holes in the ground constitute the best find I’ve ever had.”
The two holes in question are pits, measuring about a metre deep and 50cm across, in which the solstice poles sat.
Nothing remains of the timber itself but Harding thinks the posts were three to four metres high, cut from ash trees. “One of the post pits had charcoal fragments of ash,” he said. “Ash produces lovely straight-growing wood and it has strong pagan associations.”
The Bulford discovery dates back to the earliest phase of Stonehenge, when the first earthworks — large ditches, banks and enclosures — were built at the site. This was almost 500 years before megaliths were hauled long distances to set up the structure still standing today.
Excavations at Bulford uncovered 48 pits that were radiocarbon dated to between 3000 BC and 2950 BC. They contained pottery, flint tools, charcoal and animal bones including some from aurochs, extinct giant cattle, suggesting large gatherings over a short period to celebrate the solar cycle. “The amount of meat being consumed would have been one hell of a barbecue,” said Harding.
The most remarkable artefact was an extremely rare round flint knife, which the archaeologists said might have been shaped in symbolic reference to the sun’s disc.
The excavations, on Ministry of Defence land, have been covered over and will not be accessible to the public.
Archaeologists have explored the Stonehenge area of Salisbury Plain extensively in recent years, revealing an interconnected ritual landscape with stones, timber circles and extensive earthworks. Neolithic monuments include Durrington Walls, Stonehenge Cursus, Woodhenge and Larkhill causewayed enclosure.
Matt Leivers, senior research manager at Wessex Archaeology, said he believes “the chance of anybody carrying out large-scale archaeological work on the Stone Age landscape for some time in the future is fairly slight”.
“The very extensive programmes of fieldwork carried out over the last 10 to 20 years have all finished and are now in the process of analysis and publication,” he added.
But for now the archaeologists are celebrating their Bulford discovery ahead of the crowds arriving at Stonehenge to mark this summer’s solstice on Sunday.
“When we talk about the solstice, we’re talking about religion,” said Leivers. “About how prehistoric peoples understood the cosmos, the world, and their place in it.”