Stonehenge has been the focus of study and excavation for decades, sitting at the heart of one of Britain’s richest archaeological sites.
Relics have offered snapshots of how ancient Britons lived, and even how visitors from as far away as Europe went about their daily lives.
But one question remains above all: what exactly was Stonehenge used for?
Some say it was used as a site of ritual sacrifice, others that it was a place to observe the cosmos.
There is one more theory grounded in first-hand evidence that suggests Stonehenge was a place of rest for the Neolithic Period’s most important individuals.
It is something that was explored during the Smithsonian Channel’s short video, ‘Evidence Suggests Stonehenge Was an Elite Cemetery’, where Professor Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London (UCL) explained that Stonehenge was not just for local people but also for those who lived “miles and miles away”.
Researchers have discovered this by taking DNA test samples from the various bones found at Stonehenge.
Bioarchaeologist Dr Christie Willis, also from UCL, has played an integral part in assessing around half a million fragments of human bone unearthed around the stone plinths.
Talking about bones she said: “These results not only rewrite what we know about Stonehenge, but rewrite what we know about Neolithic Britain.”
Neolithic remains usually display signs of violence and harrowing injuries from fights and confrontations.
Dr Willis expected to find such evidence, things like “arrowheads and of spears [having passed] through the body, hitting the bones, deflecting off the bones.”
Yet there was “no evidence of any kind of violence on these bones”.
The make-up of the bones was varied: there were small and large bones, short and long bones, each telling a story about how the ancient people “honoured their dead”.
They would have collected each fragment of bone and treated them with great care while preparing the burial grounds, the narrator noting: “It suggested what linked the burials was the status and respect these people commanded in life.”
A breakthrough in understanding how Stonehenge was used, questions still remain over why it was built in the first place.
At the time of its construction, around 5,000 years ago, people were subsistence farmers living hand-to-mouth.
With such limited materials and mobility, just how the Neolithic people transported the hulks of stone to the Salisbury Plain remains a great obstacle in answering the ‘why’ question.
