Time Team Day 15 - Journey to Stonehenge

Good morning!  The Thirty-One Days of the Time Team continues and this time I am looking at a Time Team special the Journey to Stonehenge.  This is an episode that is on the Time Team official channel and Tony introduces it.  Today I am going to look at a Time Team Special, it is called Journey to Stonehenge and has a run time of 49:50.

This time the Time Team is working with some archelogy students excavating Durrington Walls.  The Durrington Walls are Britain’s biggest neolithic henge and dwarves Stonehenge.  Mike Parson Pearson talks about his theory that there was a connection between the two sites.  The cremated remains of the dead would have been thrown into the River Avon to join their ancestors.  These remains would travel to Stonehenge and join their ancestors in the afterlife.  The discovery of a curved avenue leading from the henge to the river helps provide evidence for this theory.

Tony walks the Durrington Walls and introduces the dig.  He talks about how archeologists have been testing the theory that Stonehenge and Durrington Walls were linked by life and death.  The Durrington Walls was a large ring that had two entrances.  A group of archeologists are working on this site.  Tony talks with Mike Parsons Pearson about henges.  Henges were the name for an enclosure meant to keep something in.  They would have been built during the Third Millennium.  Wessex, where Stonehenge and Durrington was a massive construction site during this time.  What was going on during this time?

Durrington Walls was unlike any other henge in the area.  There were a variety of finds discovered including arrowheads, pottery, and other unusual finds.  For four weeks, ten different universities are working on this site over a four-week period.  Mike talks with Mick about the chalk banks that were found.  These chalk banks would have been a challenge to dig during the Neolithic period.  The henge would have been a bright white gleaming wall of chalk.  It would have been massive with a deep ditch.  Why would the Neolithic people carve such a henge?

Tony and Mick talk about Durrington Walls and its potential purpose.  Mike has developed a highly unusual idea: the Durrington Henge was a place where you transitioned into death.  The cremated remains would have been tossed into the River Avon.  This ceremony would have happened during the Midwinter, and there would have been feasting taking place.  It does sound highly unusual, but there may be evidence for this theory.

A huge trench is opened over the entrance to Durrington Walls and the archeology was amazing.  Many objects were discovered.  There were cooking pots, animal bones, and arrowheads discovered.  Much of the rubbish was neatly buried, however, some things were not neatly buried.  Another trench is opened in another area of the Durrington Walls and this trench is over a wooden henge.  Uncle Phil talks with the archeologist who is overseeing this dig.  There was a dig in the 1960s over this wooden henge and discovered the wooden posts.  The dig this time around is looking to find some dating evidence to see when this wooden henge was built.

Durrington Walls is close to Stonehenge and they are linked together by the River Avon.  Tony takes a short tour of this river and talks about how the River Avon was the start of the journey for the dead into the afterlife.  Tony talks with Mike about the evidence for this theory.  Mike has been looking for an avenue that leads from Durrington Walls to the River Avon, like the Avenue from Stonehenge to the River Avon.  Stonehenge has been associated with death, so what would have been the equivalent of life in Durrington Walls?  Mick talks with Mike about the theory of the place of the dead and the place of the living.  What else does this special talk about Stonehenge?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out!

This is an excellent episode talking about the further archeology that is being done on Stonehenge.  Uncle Mick and Uncle Phil are good narrators.  I rather enjoyed Mike’s contribution to the episode as well.  I would recommend showing this to a history class.