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Coneybury Anomaly

Archaeological sites in WiltshireSites associated with Stonehenge
Stonehenge World Heritage Site map 2
Stonehenge World Heritage Site map 2

The Coneybury Anomaly is a pit with animal and other refuse, interpreted as the remains of a cross-cultural feast, within the Stonehenge Landscape in Wiltshire, England. It was not apparent on the ground and was discovered in the 20th century by geophysical survey. Excavation has produced a large amount of early Neolithic pottery together with a large quantity of animal bone, and flint tools of both Mesolithic and Neolithic types.

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Coneybury Anomaly
A303,

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.1735 ° E -1.8093 °
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Coneybury Henge

A303
SP4 7DD , Amesbury
England, United Kingdom
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Stonehenge World Heritage Site map 2
Stonehenge World Heritage Site map 2
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Stonehenge Avenue
Stonehenge Avenue

Stonehenge Avenue is an ancient avenue on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site. Discovered in the 18th century, it measures nearly 3 kilometres, and connects Stonehenge with the River Avon. It was built during the Stonehenge 3 period of 2600 to 1700 BCE. Along some of its length, the avenue is aligned with the sunrise of the summer solstice, suggesting a time of most frequent use. In 2013 a section of A344 road was closed, which had cut through the avenue close to Stonehenge. After the road surface was removed, it was shown that although the avenue's banks had been sliced off, the filled-in ditches were still in evidence, confirming that the avenue continued through to the stone circle.At the end of the avenue, a ring of pits, referred to as Bluestonehenge, was discovered in 2009. No monoliths were found, and stone chips which were assumed to be of bluestone were later found to bear no relation to the bluestones at Stonehenge.Natural ice age grooves called periglacial stripes are present in the ground underneath the avenue. Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project believes that the avenue was inspired by, and built over the top of, this existing natural formation of parallel rills which had a significant astronomical alignment. The presence of ridges and gullies that happened to line up with the solstice directions may have been venerated, leading the Neolithic people to later build Stonehenge at this particular site.The avenue, along with Stonehenge itself, is a scheduled monument, first designated in the 1882 act which was the earliest legislation to protect British archaeological sites.

Aubrey holes
Aubrey holes

The Aubrey holes are a ring of 56 chalk pits at Stonehenge, named after seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey. They date to the earliest phases of Stonehenge in the late fourth and early third millennium BC. Despite decades of argument and analysis, their purpose is still unknown, although an astronomical role has often been suggested. Whilst visiting the monument in 1666, Aubrey noticed five circular cavities in the ground and noted them in his records. These features were ignored or not seen by the later antiquarians to investigate the site, and it was not until the 1920s during the work carried out by Colonel William Hawley that Hawley's assistant Robert Newall identified a ring of pits he named in honour of Aubrey and his early survey. The depressions seen by Aubrey himself are more likely to have been different features from those that now bear his name. Mike Pitts in a 1981 article in Nature pointed out that the holes had been backfilled thousands of years before Aubrey visited the site. The presence of later cremation burials and sarsen stone chips in the holes' upper fills supports this. That none of the other antiquarians who visited the site noticed any such holes implies that they were not permanent features either. Pitts argues that they were more likely to be the cavities left by features that had recently been removed. He has suggested that perhaps further megaliths stood at Stonehenge which occupied these other holes and are now lost.

Stonehenge
Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds).Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed in several phases from around 3100 BC to 1600 BC, with the circle of large sarsen stones placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the bluestones were given their current positions between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC.One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected scheduled monument since 1882, when legislation to protect historic monuments was first successfully introduced in Britain. The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another 500 years.