{"it":{"id":"BRI-004","kind":"site","sub":"British Isles","name":"Durrington Walls","place":"United Kingdom","lat":51.193,"lon":-1.788,"date":"The site was settled for about 500 years, starting sometime between c. 2800 and 2100 BC.","mat":"earth","nfacts":16,"tags":["Britain"],"sum":"Durrington Walls is a giant henge about 3 km northeast of Stonehenge, settled for about 500 years from sometime between 2800 and 2100 BCE (single source). Its ditch was originally about 5.5 m deep, and in places its bank ran up to 30 m wide (single source).","why":"Britain's largest known henge stood near Stonehenge; houses and feasting there may make it Stonehenge's partner for the living.","src":[310],"nsrc":2,"yt":"Durrington held houses and feasts, Stonehenge the dead. Were the two built as a pair?","rel":["STO-HEN","BRI-001"],"hook":"Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge, is Britain's largest known henge, around 500 m across."},"S":{"310":["Wikipedia: Durrington Walls","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrington_Walls"]},"rec":{"id":"BRI-004","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"combination of new technology and excavations revealed a","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"500","u":"m","o":"REF4 REF5 REF6 From 2010 to 2014, a combination of new technology and excavations revealed a 500 m henge constructed largely of wooden posts.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0963"},{"f":"a 1 2 mile circle or circuit of","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"10","u":"m","o":"In 2020, a geophysical survey uncovered a number of pits, some natural sink holes and others apparently modified to hold massive timbers, interpreted as belonging to a 1.2 mile circle or circuit of 10 m pits of Neolithic age.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0964"},{"f":"Originally the ditch was","a":"depth","v":"5.5","u":"m","o":"Originally the ditch was 5.5 m deep, 7 m wide at its bottom and 18 m wide at the top.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0965"},{"f":"Originally the ditch was 5 5 m deep","a":"width","v":"7","u":"m","o":"Originally the ditch was 5.5 m deep, 7 m wide at its bottom and 18 m wide at the top.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0966"},{"f":"deep 7 m wide at its bottom and","a":"width","v":"18","u":"m","o":"Originally the ditch was 5.5 m deep, 7 m wide at its bottom and 18 m wide at the top.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0967"},{"f":"The bank was in some areas","a":"width","v":"30","u":"m","o":"The bank was in some areas 30 m wide.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0968"},{"f":"The south eastern entrance is roughly","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"60","u":"m","o":"The south eastern entrance is roughly 60 m from the riverbank.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0969"},{"f":"A geophysical survey of the area","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"200","u":"m","o":"A geophysical survey of the area 200 m west of the Southern Circle, known as the western enclosures, showed \"a group of at least six penannular structures ... arranged around a terrace overlooking the timber circle and the eastern entrance\".","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0970"},{"f":"A ditch some","a":"depth","v":"5.5","u":"m","o":"A ditch some 5.5 m deep was dug, and the earth used to create a large outer bank some 30 m wide and presumably several metres high.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0971"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"Radiocarbon dates of approximately 2600 BC are roughly contemporary with the earliest stone phase a","u":"","o":"Radiocarbon dates of approximately 2600 BC are roughly contemporary with the earliest stone phase at Stonehenge.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M0972"},{"f":"Each trunk was approximately","a":"diameter","v":"1.5","u":"m","o":"Each trunk was approximately 1.5 m in diameter and 7 metres high, creating a palisaded enclosure similar to those more usually found in the north and west of Britain in the Neolithic.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0973"},{"f":"was approximately 1 5 m in diameter and","a":"height","v":"7","u":"metres","o":"Each trunk was approximately 1.5 m in diameter and 7 metres high, creating a palisaded enclosure similar to those more usually found in the north and west of Britain in the Neolithic.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0974"},{"f":"Some pits are claimed to be more than","a":"diameter","v":"10","u":"m","o":"Some pits are claimed to be more than 10 m in diameter and 5 m in depth.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0975"},{"f":"be more than 10 m in diameter and","a":"depth","v":"5","u":"m","o":"Some pits are claimed to be more than 10 m in diameter and 5 m in depth.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0976"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"soil within the pits had not been exposed to daylight since 2400 BC","u":"","o":"Optically stimulated luminescence tests revealed that soil within the pits had not been exposed to daylight since 2400 BC.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M0977"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"This study also reported (see fig 19) at least one of the luminescence series on cored samples a","u":"","o":"This study also reported (see fig 19) at least one of the luminescence series on cored samples as showing a natural sequential infill sequence in the top 1/4 of one core (pit 8A), underlain by an inverted exposure-age sequence in the lower part of the core.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1376871734 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M0978"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"Ground-penetrating radar results revealed a circle of enormous post-holes, not buried stones, beneath the henge bank which had later been filled with chalk rubble.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"The site was settled for about 500 years, starting sometime between c. 2800 and 2100 BC.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"51.1925","lon":"-1.7875","src":"Wikidata P625 only + curated wave0 value agrees","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0025 deg (~0.28 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/766794798"},"src":[{"id":"S0293","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Durrington_Walls&oldid=1376871734"},{"id":"S0476","t":"Wikipedia: Durrington Walls","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrington_Walls"},{"id":"VBRI-004-3","t":"Historic England: Durrington Walls, list entry 1009133 (archived)","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1009133?section=official-list-entry"},{"id":"VBRI-004-4","t":"Stonehenge in the 21st Century: The Story so Far | English Heritage","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/articles/stonehenge-21st-century-story-so-far/"},{"id":"VBRI-004-5","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/373/"},{"id":null,"t":"Craig et al., Feeding Stonehenge: cuisine and consumption at the Late Neolithic site of Durrington Walls, Antiquity (2015), author manuscript","u":"https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/93098/7/Feeding%20Stonehenge_revised.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"University of York news, Feasts and food choices: the culinary habits of the Stonehenge builders (2015)","u":"https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2015/research/durrington-walls-culinary-research/"}],"sum":"The pigs were young. That was the first clue. When archaeologists studied the animal bones thrown away at a prehistoric site in Wiltshire, they found that most came from pigs, and that many had been killed in late autumn and winter, before they had reached their full weight. Nobody slaughters half-grown animals by accident. Burn marks on the bones showed they had been roasted outdoors, in large numbers. There was almost no sign of bread or vegetables. Someone, four and a half thousand years ago, had been throwing midwinter feasts of pork and dairy for a crowd, and doing it again and again.\n\nThe place is Durrington Walls, about three kilometres north-east of Stonehenge on the chalk downs of southern England. UNESCO calls it the largest known henge in Britain. A henge is a ring-shaped earthwork: a ditch dug in a circle, with the earth heaped up outside it into a bank. Durrington's ring is around 500 metres across and encloses 17 to 19 hectares, an area about the size of two dozen football pitches. Its ditch was originally 5.5 metres deep and 18 metres wide at the top, and its bank in places ran 30 metres wide. Today ploughing has worn it down to a low ridge around a shallow bowl, crossed by two roads. Its south-eastern entrance opens toward a bend in the River Avon, only about 60 metres away.\n\nFor most of the 20th century Durrington was a puzzle on a map. In 1810 the antiquarian Richard Colt Hoare noted that centuries of farming had left \"its form much mutilated.\" In 1966, when a new road was cut through it, Geoffrey Wainwright excavated the route and found the remains of two great timber circles inside the henge, now called the Northern and Southern Circles. The Southern Circle, built around 2600 BC, had four concentric rings of posts that once held enormous standing timbers. It was set to face the sunrise on the midwinter solstice, the shortest day of the year. From it a paved avenue ran to the river, aligned the other way, on the sunset at midsummer. Stonehenge, three kilometres away, has the same pair of solstice alignments and its own avenue to the same river.\n\nThen, between 2003 and 2009, came the Stonehenge Riverside Project, led by the archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, with teams from five universities. Under and beside the eastern bank of the henge they found something nobody had seen there before: houses. Seven house floors were excavated, small and square, about 5.25 metres on each side. One closely resembled a house at Skara Brae, the famous stone village in far-off Orkney. The houses dated to around 2500 BC, almost exactly the time when the great stones of Stonehenge were being raised. Their density suggested many more beneath the fields along the river. It has been estimated that, if the whole area was used, the settlement could have held up to a thousand houses and perhaps four thousand people, for a brief time perhaps the largest settlement in northern Europe.\n\nThat raised an obvious question. Was this where the builders of Stonehenge lived? The answer the dig gave is striking. The settlement was in use only a few decades before the henge bank was built over it. One study estimates that it began around 2535 to 2475 BC and may have lasted no more than about 55 years, though activity at the site as a whole spans some five centuries. A village of thousands that lasted barely a lifetime, at the very moment Stonehenge went up, looks less like a town than a construction camp, or a pilgrimage.\n\nThe feasts fit that picture. Parker Pearson said animals were brought from all over Britain for open-air mass gatherings, though other researchers read the same evidence as pointing to a more limited area. Pots from the houses held pork, beef and dairy; pots from the ceremonial areas held mainly dairy. Next to the Southern Circle stood a D-shaped building with a plaster floor and no hearth, read as a meeting house. English Heritage itself wonders whether the winter feasts were timed to midwinter ceremonies at Stonehenge.\n\nOut of all this Parker Pearson built a bold idea. Durrington, with its timber and its houses, was a land of the living. Stonehenge, built of stone and surrounded by burial mounds, was a land of the dead. The river and the two avenues joined them, and a procession from one to the other was a journey from life to death. It is an elegant theory, and English Heritage notes that not everyone agrees. Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill argue that Stonehenge was a place of healing and that a close link between the two monuments is unlikely. Mainstream archaeology now treats the two as parts of one ceremonial landscape, but how they worked together is still debated.\n\nDurrington had more surprises waiting. In 2015 a survey suggested that up to 90 standing stones lay buried under its bank. In 2016 excavators dug and found no stones at all. They found something stranger. Beneath the bank ran a ring of around 300 enormous postholes. Each had held a tree trunk about 1.5 metres thick and 7 metres high, forming a wooden wall around the whole site. About fifty years after it was built, too soon for the wood to have rotted, the trunks were carefully lifted out, the holes packed with rammed chalk, and the great bank and ditch raised on the same line. \"For some strange reason,\" said the National Trust archaeologist Nicola Snashall, \"they took the timbers out and put up the enormous bank and ditch that we see today.\" The henge itself seems to have gone up in one continuous effort, the ditch dug in sections, perhaps by separate gangs, with estimates of 4,000 to 6,000 people involved. Why the change, around 2450 BC? A shift in belief, new leaders wanting their own mark, the arrival of new people: all have been suggested. Nobody knows.\n\nThen, in 2020, a team from several British universities announced a ring of huge pits encircling Durrington at a distance, a circuit about 1.9 kilometres across. Some pits were more than 10 metres wide and 5 metres deep. Some at least appear to be natural hollows, and the reading remains debated. But in 2021 a team led by Vincent Gaffney concluded that many were dug by people, and luminescence tests showed that the soil at the bottom had not seen daylight since about 2400 BC. Gaffney called it \"the largest prehistoric structure found in Britain.\"\n\nSo the story of Durrington keeps growing outward. A circle of timber aligned on midwinter. A village of thousands that lasted a few decades. A wall of three hundred tree trunks pulled out and replaced with earth. A ring of shafts nearly two kilometres across around all of it. Each discovery shows people organising labour on a scale that is hard to imagine without metal tools or writing.\n\nWho gave the orders that moved thousands of people to build, feast and tear down and build again, and what were they preparing for when they gathered in the dark of midwinter beside the river?","qs":["Durrington held houses and feasts, Stonehenge the dead. Were the two built as a pair?","Feasting here seems to have happened in winter. What might bring crowds together at midwinter?","The Southern Circle and its avenue line up with the solstice. Why would a henge for the living need a sky alignment?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Southern_Wall_of_Durrington_Walls.jpg/1280px-Southern_Wall_of_Durrington_Walls.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_Wall_of_Durrington_Walls.jpg","title":"Southern Wall of Durrington Walls.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Ethan Doyle White","cap":"In the foreground is the southern wall of Durrington Walls, a prehistoric site near to Durrington in Wiltshire. In the background of the image is the western wa"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/A_lidar_view_of_Durrington_Walls_and_Woodhenge.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_lidar_view_of_Durrington_Walls_and_Woodhenge.jpg","title":"A lidar view of Durrington Walls and Woodhenge.jpg","lic":"CC BY 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0","by":"Dr John Wells","cap":"A lidar image derived from Environmental Agency open source data.gov.uk data (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/) via th"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Durrington_Walls.JPG/1280px-Durrington_Walls.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Durrington_Walls.JPG","title":"Durrington Walls.JPG","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Midnightblueowl","cap":"Durrington Walls, as seen from the south of the monument. It is bisected here to the left by one of the two roads that now cross the prehistoric site."},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Durringtonwalls.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Durringtonwalls.jpg","title":"Durringtonwalls.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","by":"Psychostevouk at English Wikipedia","cap":"A shot of the western bank of Durrington Walls, seen from Woodhenge."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Panorama_Durrington_Walls_3.jpg/1280px-Panorama_Durrington_Walls_3.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Panorama_Durrington_Walls_3.jpg","title":"Panorama Durrington Walls 3.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Dietrich Krieger","cap":"Settlement Durrington Walls near Woodhenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"2600 BC","h":"Same era as the first stone phase at Stonehenge, 3 km away","s":[63]},{"v":"2800 BC","h":"Settled for about 500 years, starting c. 2800–2100 BC","s":[63]},{"v":"Earth","h":"Made of","s":[63]}],"hs":{"63":["Wikipedia: Durrington Walls (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durrington_Walls"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/BRI-004.webp","w":1280,"h":719,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Southern_Wall_of_Durrington_Walls.jpg/1280px-Southern_Wall_of_Durrington_Walls.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}