Emily Chan
“What’s really fascinating is that this date of around 3000 B.C. coincides with our radiocarbon dates for quarrying at the bluestone outcrops in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire [in western Wales],” said Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at the University College of London.
He added that some of the people buried at Stonehenge may have even been involved in transporting the stones, which required traveling over 180 miles.
It is possible that some of the individuals were cremated somewhere else and then brought to Salisbury Plain for burial at Stonehenge. These findings highlight the connection between people across regions through construction work and trade.
“There is perhaps a sense that Stonehenge was built to bring these two communities together,” Rick Schulting, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of scientific archaeology at Oxford University, said. He speculated that “personal or familial relationships” developed between the two regions somehow.
There are still many questions about Stonehenge that are left unanswered, but perhaps new developments will emerge in the future.
Moving forward, researchers hope to apply the techniques used on the cremated remains at Stonehenge to other sites.
The study can be found in the journal Scientific Reports.
