Just three miles from the world-famous Stonehenge, archaeologists have unearthed a complex religious site that appears to be an earlier 'prototype' for the iconic monument – revealing that sun worship in the area predated the main phase of Stonehenge by at least 450 years.
The discovery at Bulford in Wiltshire, directed by Neolithic expert Phil Harding of Wessex Archaeology, consists of 50 ritual pits and two timber monuments precisely 120 metres apart. The wooden posts – probably 3.5 metres tall and 50 centimetres in diameter – were deliberately aligned with the summer and winter solstices, showing that by 3000 BC, prehistoric Britons were already celebrating the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.
“Neolithic complex with solstice-aligned timber monuments found at Bulford, likely a prototype for Stonehenge.”
The pits, ritually filled with feasting debris, and the timber monuments were dug and erected around 5000 years ago. This prefigures what would be constructed in stone 450 years later at Stonehenge itself, where the key stones were positioned to mark the same solstitial alignments.
Intriguingly, Stonehenge’s circular earthen bank – built at the same time as the Bulford site, long before the surviving stone monument – is roughly 115 metres in diameter. Archaeologists now suggest that early Stonehenge may have had similar solstice-marking totem poles on opposite sides of its original 'henge'.
Apart from Stonehenge and Bulford, the only other precisely solar-aligned monuments of identical or older vintage known in Europe are at a giant tomb in Ireland and in at least two temples in Malta. The findings are likely to prompt a fresh wave of research.
“The solstitial alignment discovered at Bulford is likely to help encourage archeoastronomers to investigate whether there are similar solar alignments in even older monuments in Britain, Ireland, western France and elsewhere,” said Dr Fabio Silva, an archeoastronomer at Bournemouth University.
For decades, solar alignments have been known to form a crucial part of Stonehenge’s design. Now, with this earlier timber counterpart, scientists are beginning to question whether similar rituals and celebrations may have occurred at the site of Stonehenge centuries before the famous stones were erected.