The boy with the amber necklace

[bixaorellana]

He was placed in a simple grave alongside an amber necklace just a mile from the stone circle.

The Boy in the Amber Necklace is the third foreigner discovered at the World Heritage site in the last few years. The finds raise the intriguing possibility that Stonehenge was attracting tourists and pilgrims thousands of years ago.

Archaeologists have previously showed that the Amesbury Archer - a man buried with a treasure trove of copper and gold and discovered in 2002 - was born in the Alps.

They also believe that the Boscombe Bowmen - a group of seven men, women and children found the following year - originated from Wales, the Lake District or Brittany.

Prof Jane Evans, who traces the birthplace of Bronze Age skeletons from a chemical analysis of teeth, believes the visitors were travelling to Britain to see awe-inspiring temple at Stonehenge.

The boy's virtually intact skeleton was discovered at Boscombe Down, a mile from Stonehenge, by Wessex Archaeology during a housing development.

The remains were radiocarbon dated to around 1550BC, when the monument was already more than 1500 years old.

Prof Evans said: 'He's about 14 to 15 years old and he's buried with this beautiful necklace. From the position of his burial, his age, and this necklace, it suggests he's a person of significant status and importance.'

The boy's grave was alongside dozens of other graves at the site but it was the only one that was not from Britain.

In contrast, the Amesbury Archer, who was buried 1,000 years earlier, was most likely to have been raised in the Alpine foothills of Germany, she said.

Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology said: 'We don't know why these people made these long journeys. ... 'It's possible they were coming to visit Stonehenge but we know people had been travelling great distances for thousands of years for trade and exploration.'

Stonehenge was built in stages between 3000BC and 2400BC and actively used for at least another 1,000 years.

It was built by early Bronze Age farmers who lived in small villages in homes made of wooden stakes and twigs, covered with a thick layer of clay and chalk.

Its creators carried 82 bluestones, some weighing four tons and 6 ft 6in tall, from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire across 150 miles of sea, river and land and placed them in two circles inside the earthworks.

Soon afterwards, they were repositioned and joined by 74 giant Sarsen stones - some weighing 50 tons and 30ft tall - mined in the Marlborough Downs.

It would have taken 500 men to shift one Sarsen stone, with another 100 in front to lay rollers and drag them 25 miles south to Stonehenge. full article

another article:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11421593

[mich64]

Hello Bix, this is fascinating....
Thanks!

[Deleted]

I couldn't imagine archaeologists running around Stonehenge at random with shovels, so I was wondering how graves were identified to excavate. As usual -- building developers!

[bixaorellana]

Thanks, Mich ~~ I love this stuff!

Kerouac, that detail completely escaped me. After reading your post, I googled Boscombe Down. Huh! The whole first page of hits is about aviation, the museum, air base, air shows, & possible UFOs in that location. The second page yielded some hits pertinent to our subject here ~~

The grave of a man dating to around 2,300BC was discovered three miles from Stonehenge by Wessex Archaeology staff in May 2002. His grave was the richest from this period (the early Bronze Age) ever found in Britain and contained the country’s first gold objects.He was found during excavation in advance of a housing development at Amesbury in Wiltshire, and the man was dubbed the “Amesbury Archer”... by the media.

Click on the picture for bunches of links, including information on the Boscombe Bowman, whose collective grave was found a kilometer away from that of the Archer.

[mich64]

Hi Bix, I wonder if the Government will stop future developments until further archaeological investigations can be made?

I know if that was happening here, all would be halted for the historic significance to be explored. They just stopped a development here due the public outcry over our city giving up park space for residential development, so I am sure they would put a stop if a historic find was uncovered. I am glad the park stays. There was also an archaeological dig along the Lavase River, explorer Samuel du Champlain came through this area.

Whenever I am walking around anywhere in Europe I always feel that I am walking on someone.... I know, I am odd.

We visited Juno beach a few years ago and found I was walking on my tippy toes on the beach, silly. Mind you we had just come from visiting the grave of my husbands Uncle who is buried in the WW2 Canadian Cemetery near there. We also visited his other Uncles' grave in Bergen-Op-Zoom, The Netherlands on that trip.

[bixaorellana]

You would think so, wouldn't you? I looked some more and found this about Swathling Housing, the developers:

The land on which the development stands is of considerable archaeological interest. In 2002 archaeologists uncovered the Amesbury Archer, a Bronze Age man of high standing, whose grave contained the first gold relics found from this time period. It also provided the Boscombe Bowman findings, graves from around 2300 BC, believed to be the builders of Stonehenge.

Swaythling Housing is developing 129 new homes on the Archer's Gate development. The houses, provide affordable homes for rent and shared ownership, have been part funded by a £3.5m Social Housing Grant from the Housing Corporation. full article here

The article is from 2008. I hope the archeologists had enough time to excavate sufficiently.

Mich, I live at the foot of this hill. There are pre-columbian pottery shards all over the place. It's an odd feeling to pick up something from the yard to put over the hole in the bottom of a plant pot, and to realize you may be the first person to have touched it in a thousand years.

I like your story about the tippy-toes. My son told me about realizing that the grassy swale where he was resting in the English countryside was a plague pit. I asked him if he thought it was creepy and he said no, that it was cool to be touching history like that.

[Deleted]

I think that just about anywhere in Europe, when there is an archaeological discovery on a construction site, the site gets turned over to an archaeological team from one to two years. You can imagine how many construction companies have probably destroyed all evidence before word gets out.

[betsie]

At the end of our street, the council put little coloured lights in the road at one point, in the centre of cobbled circles. This was part of the renovation of our whole neighbourhood, and I thought, "what nonsense is this, first we get horrible yellow lampposts and now coloured road lights, they are turning the area into Disneyland."

Then the noticeboard went up at the roadside: the lights and circles marked the 3,000 year-old burial ground that was discovered there when our neighbourhood was built in the 70s. The ashes of people were placed in pots and buried in circles, possibly one per family. The pots went to a museum, but I thnk this is a lovely gesture and I never cycle over that bit of the road without thinking of those ancient people.

[joanne28]

Thank you, Bixa. I always find things like these so fascinating. Like others, I feel a closeness when I am at a place people have lived or congregated at for thousands of years.

The older it is, the better, in my view.

[mich64]

Betsie, indeed, a lovely gesture. I am impressed on how sometimes councils come together with something beautifully symbolic.

[bixaorellana]

Thanks, Joanne. The colonial look of the city of Oaxaca is a big part of its attraction for tourists. But the part that appeals to me are all the ancient beliefs and customs that persist in spite of centuries of European overlay.

Betsie, that is utterly delightful. What an elevating way to honor and include those ancient residents in daily life.

So true, Mich. I guess it just takes one person to come up with something that fires the imagination of the rest.