Traces of ancient village found near stonehenge

New excavations near Stonehenge have uncovered hearths, timbers and other remains of what archaeologists say was probably the village of workers who erected the brooding monoliths on Salisbury Plain in England.

The archaeologists announced today that the 4,600-year-old ruins appear to form the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain.

The houses at the site known as Durrington Walls were constructed in the same period that Stonehenge, less than two miles away, was built as a religious center presumably for worshippers of the Sun and their ancestors.

Mike Parker Pearson, a leader of the excavations from Sheffield University, said the discoveries last summer supported the emerging recognition that the ring of standing stones and earthworks at Stonehenge was part of a much larger religious complex.

In a teleconference conducted by the National Geographic Society, Dr.Parker Pearson said a circle of ditches and earthen banks at Durrington Walls enclosed concentric rings of huge timber posts ? "basically a wooden version of Stonehenge," he said.

Over the years, mystical Stonehenge has inspired a wide range of conjecture, although it is now assumed that this was a place of worship that seemed to be related to solar cults. A decade ago, more precise radiocarbon tests dated the first constructions at Stonehenge to 2600 to 2400 B. C., more than 600 years earlier than previous estimates. The houses at Durrington have been dated to 2600 to 2500 B.C.

Eight houses were discovered last September, and a broad survey detected traces of many more buried over a wide area, the archaeologists said. Each house, constructed of wattle and daub, was no bigger than 14 to 16 feet square and had a hard clay floor and a central fireplace. Indentations in the floor were interpreted as postholes and slots that once anchored wooden furniture.

By contrast, Julian Thomas of Manchester University found neater house remains in a western part of the Durrington site. The two excavated so far were small, neat structures, each surrounded by its own ditch and wood palisade and set apart from others in the vicinity. At least three other such structures probably are buried nearby.

Dr. Thomas offered two possible interpretations in the telephone news conference. These may have been dwellings of special people, chiefs or priests.

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