Researchers Say Stonehenge Was a Family Burial Ground

Archaeology students Sam Ferguson, left, and Steve Bush sift through earth at the English site. (By Kirsty Wigglesworth -- Associated Press)

As many as 240 people were buried within Stonehenge, the researchers said.

The stone pillars have long fascinated archaeologists and the public. The smaller bluestones (they become bluish when it rains) were transported 250 miles from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, while the larger stones are from closer sources.

Most of the larger "sarsen" stones made up the 16-foot-high circle, with connecting lintel stones on top. But others inside the circle reach 25 feet tall. Sarsens are blocks of hard stone, formed and left behind by glaciers, found in many parts of southern England. They were used to build other, smaller megaliths.

The stones are located at the center of a horseshoe-shaped ditch enclosed by a series of small man-made berms that is 375 feet across -- the "henge" of Stonehenge.

While the findings appear to solve the mystery of how Stonehenge was used, other questions remain. Archaeologists, for instance, recently found a piece of an ancient red deer antler that was apparently used for digging in the Stonehenge Greater Cursus, a two-mile-long ditch. The cursus, flanked by berms and located a few miles from the stones, is thought to have been used for sacred purposes, also. The antler was dated to between 3630 and 3375 B.C., 1,000 years before the erection of the sarsen stones.

In addition, three 10,000-year old pits for wooden pillars -- now covered by the parking lot at Stonehenge -- have been found by the recent excavations.

"Why are they there? That's a really big mystery," Parker Pearson said. "They are among the earliest monuments on the planet."

The researchers who reported their results yesterday are convinced that Stonehenge is primarily a burial site, but some others are less certain.

In its Stonehenge story, National Geographic magazine describes Mike Pitts, editor of the journal British Archaeology and a former excavator at the site, as being skeptical of some conclusions. He said there is still no agreement about some important details of the theory -- such as when the sarsen stones arrived and why the surrounding area was used for general farming and grazing if Stonehenge was such an important burial and ritual site.

Nonetheless, Pitts is quoted as saying: "The value of this interpretation is not just the idea of linking stones and ancestors, but that it works with the entire landscape. Previous interpretations have taken the independent sites separately."