Stonehenge was scene of Stone Age battles

[Primus Pilus]

Stonehenge was the site of Stone Age battles to the death, an archaeologist has claimed. Dennis Price, a Stonehenge expert and former archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, says he thinks a skeleton discovered in a ditch around the ancient monument in 1978 is evidence that the site was used for ritual combat.

 

The skeleton belonged to a man who had been killed by arrows in 2,300 BC and after being analysed was donated to Salisbury Museum. Mr Price says skeletons found at or close to Stonehenge have often been found buried with weapons - suggesting those close to the mysterious monument could have died violent deaths...

 

Swindon Advertiser

[Doug Weller]

Stonehenge was the site of Stone Age battles to the death, an archaeologist has claimed. Dennis Price, a Stonehenge expert and former archaeologist with Wessex Archaeology, says he thinks a skeleton discovered in a ditch around the ancient monument in 1978 is evidence that the site was used for ritual combat.

 

Dennis Price is an enthusiastic amateur who has indeed worked with Wessex archaeology in a variety of capacities. He is also the one who identified Vespasian's Camp as Apollo's Lost City. I don't know why the Swindon Advertiser keeps calling him an expert on Stonehenge and an archaeologist. I'd take this with a big grain of salt. I suspect he thinks the skeleton and Apollo's Lost City are tied in somehow...

 

Doug

[Primus Pilus]

Thanks Doug... I suppose it's all connected to those Bosnian pyramids.

[caldrail]

Oh no, not my home towns own newspaper... How could you do this to me?....

 

Seriously though, Stonehenge is now generally regarded as a religious site connected with rites concerning death (as opposed to nearby Woodhenge, now believed to be associated with 'life'). The fact that skeletons have been found is nether here nor there without the correct context, and a burial site isn't necessarily where the person fell in combat. I remember a recent thread where someone was putting forward the theory that the place was a miltary defensible construction (erm... no), and any battle ought at the site back then would have been a very small scale affair. I'm not discounting the possibility of violence there, but at the same time you cannot discount the possibility of sacrifiial burial. Further study needed I think.