Stonehenge theory shaken to its foundations with new long barrow excavation

Posted On: Dec 7th, 2017 at 11:22

England
Excavation of the 6,000-year-old “Cat’s Brain” long barrow in the Vale of Pewsey is offering a new insight into these ancient structures. Long thought to be places where tribal leaders and their families were buried – a conclusion I was never happy with due to the sheer number of them around the Stonehenge area – the lack of burial goods including bodies has brought that entire notion into question. In fact, this is one of the most important findings in British archaeology this century.
Cat’s Brain long barrow was clearly never a tomb but contained an internal structure and was most likely a place where people gathered. The sheer size of it (60 x 30 ft) suggests it was actually a timber hall.
Suddenly we jump from Mike Parker-Pearson’s theory of Stonehenge being a place of the dead (a theory I have dismissed at every turn and has made me quite irate at times!), to now seeing the huge amount of Long Barrows in the area as possible contemporary hotels – if these structures were lived in then clearly they were used during festivities, and perhaps all year round. There is no evidence of permanent settlement in the long barrows, but now there is evidence they were used for people to stay in. This idea would work wonders for the problem of placing people in a warm environment during, say, the winter solstice – Stonehenge has never been considered as a permanently used placed – 365 days a year – but if people gathered for the solstice and they arrived here for a celebration then temporary housing would have been necessary. The long barrows would have housed a large number of people at any given time, and also in the case of Stonehenge a commanding view of the surroundings. Although Cat’s Brain barrow is not as close to Stonehenge as many of the other barrows, the fact there are no burial goods changes Stonehenge from a dreary, dark, morbid place used by a death cult (if you get sucked into Parker-Pearson’s world), into a colourful, year-round place where people gathered and celebrated life itself and temporarily lived together in barrows.
So the new evidence to me suggests long barrows were ancient hotels!
I would like to be a little cautious here though. Cat’s Brain long barrow (4000 BC) existed before Stonehenge (3600 BC) was built, if one is to believe the chronology of the area. However, I think the use of long barrows likely did not change from living places into burial places in the space of 400 years and more. In fact, there has never really been any evidence to show that Stonehenge was a “place of the dead”, as some archaeologists will have us believe, which makes me wonder why some of them are in the positions they hold. If anything they are guilty of promoting false histories, and bad guesswork is not a welcome philosophy when we are dealing with one of the world’s most important ancient monuments. Scant evidence should not be used as an opportunity for those in prominent places to fill in the gaps with whatever ideas they please. If there’s anything we’ve learned about Stonehenge research over the last couple of hundred years is that no one has any idea what this site was used for or why it was built, and it’s ironic that the structures around the site have given us the clues.

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/02/monument-offers-glimpse-of-britains-neolithic-civilization_partner/