Stonehenge, Ohio Hopewell sites might have focused on burials
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Continuing research at Stonehenge has established that, in addition to being a place of ceremony connected with the sun and moon, it also was a center of mortuary rituals.
University of Sheffield archaeologist Mike Pearson, recently interviewed on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, said that it was, in fact, "the biggest cemetery of its time."
Pearson said, "I think the key thing is that from the moment that Stonehenge is built -- this is very shortly after 3,000 B.C. -- they're putting in burials as well as the parts of the monument itself. And I think it's something that is going hand in hand with it."
He referred to alternative theories, including Bournemouth University archaeologist Timothy Darvill's idea that Stonehenge was a place of healing, as in no way inconsistent with the site also serving as a cemetery. A place devoted to the ancestors naturally could have a variety of secondary uses, such as invoking their spirits to help with problems the community faced.
The astronomical cycles encoded in the alignments of the stones could have been a way of determining the most favorable times for ceremonies as well as charging the monument with cosmic energy.
What strikes me about these new views of Stonehenge is how remarkably consonant they are with our evolving understanding of Ohio's Hopewell earthworks.
The Newark Earthworks, for example, consisted of a number of enormous geometric enclosures, including two circles, a square, an octagon and an oval.
Each of the enclosures seems to have had its own special focus, such as the alignment of the octagon to the rising and setting of the moon. But they all were connected by a network of parallel-walled roads to an oval enclosure that surrounded a dozen or more burial mounds.
So, like Stonehenge, although the site served a variety of purposes, the ancestors were at the heart of it all.
Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society.