‘Superhenge’ Revisited

Last year one of the leading discoveries in archaeology was the ’Superhenge’ found a few miles from Stonehenge. Archaeologist using ground penetrating radar discovered what looked like 90 large buried stones. This summer the ground penetrating radar survey was followed up by what is called ‘ground-truthing.’ (digging to prove what was on a geophysics survey is there). It turns out there were no stones there after all — instead massive 6–7 meter timber posts (now long gone).

A Telegraph article from last year quotes archaeologists working on the site and their enthusiasm for the find. Vince Gaffney from the University of Bradford said:

“It’s just enormous. It is one of the largest stone monuments in Europe and is completely unique. We’ve never seen anything like this in the world.”

A discovery of this magnitude near Stonehenge will have intense media coverage — At least as extreme as archaeological news coverage gets. Media attention is significant for archaeology, but it has its pitfalls. When archaeologists excavate, they form ideas about the purpose, function, and layout of the site. These ideas evolve over the course of the excavation. It is not unusual for the first ideas to be completely wrong. That is part of being a scientist. The pitfall is making sweeping conclusions to the public before the actual excavation took place.

Those conclusions lead to headlines like “That Hidden ‘Superhenge’ Was a Super Dud — D-brief” from Discover magazine or this one from motherboard “Archeologists Were Wrong About ‘Superhenge’”. The first headline is very unfair, as is the article. The motherboard piece is a bit more even in its coverage. However, no one likes to see in a headline that he or she were wrong — even if it is true.

The disappointing thing is that the new discoveries are quite exciting. Stonehenge to us is an unchanging monolithic structure, but during its use it went through a number of changes. One these changes going from medium size stones to the large stones we see today was happening during the period that ‘Superhenge’ was built. There is still so much to learn from the site. Hopefully, after careful analysis, we will have a clear picture of exactly what was happening. Unfortunately, that takes years.

At least everyone has learned their lesson, and will not rush to premature conclusions in the future — alas — this quote from The Independent in regards to the latest findings sums it all up

“It was as if the religious “revolutionaries” were trying, quite literally, to bury the past.”

This may turn out to be the case and fascinating if true, but lets at least wait to the field season is over.