Cremated remains reveal hints of who is buried at Stonehenge · Europe, boosting the plausibility...
Transcript of Cremated remains reveal hints of who is buried at Stonehenge · Europe, boosting the plausibility...
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⚑−Barak-Har Elkin7 days ago
Locals sent west with their families to quarry bluestone?
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⚑−CedarTree132510 days ago
Organic matter fozzillization is a product of its environment. The environment dictates the amount of minerals, water,etc. that will influence the organic matter, too promote the fozzillation. Perhaps the biopaleo's need to take a geologyclass? LOL.
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⚑−RME76048 10 days ago
> CedarTree1325
Is 'fozzillization' anything related to Fozzie Bear?
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⚑−Kang the Unbalanced 10 days ago
> RME76048
Wokka wokka wokka!
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⚑−Linda Brooymans 8 days ago
> CedarTree1325
they are not fossils, they are actual bones.
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NEWS ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY
Stone trailA new study suggests some people buried at
Stonehenge in southern England spent their final
years in what’s now West Wales. Researchers
previously tracked the source of some stones at
Stonehenge to quarries in West Wales such as Craig
Rhos-y-felin.
T. TIBBITTS
Citations
C. Snoeck et al. Strontium isotope analysis on cremated human
remains from Stonehenge support links with west Wales. ScientificReports. Published online August 2, 2018. doi:10.1038/s41598-
018-28969-8.
Further Reading
B. Bower. Herders, not farmers, built Stonehenge. Science News
Online, September 6, 2012.
B. Bower. Domain of the dead. Science News. Vol. 173, June 21,
2008, p. 13.
Cremated remains reveal hintsof who is buried at StonehengeChemical analyses of skull pieces suggest some of the dead came from WalesBY BRUCE BOWER 9:00AM, AUGUST 2, 2018
FOREIGN TIES Some cremated humans buried at Stonehenge in southern England around 5,000 years ago came from far away,possibly West Wales, researchers say.
AIRWOLFHOUND/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Stonehenge attracted the dead from far beyond its location
in southern England.
A new analysis of cremated human remains interred at the
iconic site between around 5,000 and 4,400 years ago
provides the first glimpse of who was buried there. Some
were outsiders who probably spent the last decade or so of
their lives in what’s now West Wales, more than 200
kilometers west of Stonehenge, researchers report August
2 in Scientific Reports.
West Wales was the source of rocks known as bluestones
used in early stages of constructing Stonehenge.
Bluestones are smaller than the ancient monument’s
massive sandstone boulders.
The new investigation “adds detail to a previously rather shaky framework” of archaeological finds
suggesting that links existed among ancient societies across southern England and Wales, says
archaeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University in Poole, England, who was not involved in the
research.
Geographic origins of cremated remains at the site had previously eluded scientists. In the new study,
bioarchaeologist Christophe Snoeck of Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and colleagues analyzed two
forms of the element strontium in human skull fragments that were previously found among cremated
remains at Stonehenge to narrow down individuals’ origins. Signature levels of these strontium types
characterize rock formations and soil in different regions. Humans and other animals incorporate
strontium into their bones and teeth by eating plants.
HOT TAKE Chemical analyses of human skull fragments such as these, found among cremated remains buried at Stonehenge,indicate that some of the ancient site’s dead had been brought from more than 200 kilometers away in West Wales.
CHRISTIE WILLIS
Snoeck demonstrated several years ago that, rather than absorbing strontium from surrounding soil like
unburned bone, pieces of cremated bone retain a strontium signal from around the last 10 years of a
person’s life. Of 25 cremated people whose bones were studied, 10 individuals spent their last decade in
West Wales or near there, the researchers found. The rest were locals.
“Our results show that it was not just bluestones but people, or in some cases perhaps just their cremated
remains, that came to Stonehenge in its early phases,” says coauthor Rick Schulting, an archaeologist at
the University of Oxford.
Stonehenge served as a cemetery for at least 500 years, beginning around 5,000 years ago (SN: 6/21/08,
p. 13). Excavations at Stonehenge between 1919 and 1926 recovered cremated remains of up to 58
individuals that had been placed in 56 pits. Researchers reburied these finds in 1935. Archaeologist and
study coauthor Mike Parker Pearson of University College London led a team that in 2008 re-excavated
remnants of the 25 individuals analyzed in the new study.
Nonlocal people buried at Stonehenge were
cremated before being transported to the
ancient site, Snoeck’s group suspects. Levels
of two forms of carbon absorbed into the
bones during cremation indicate that funeral
pyres consisted of trees from dense woods
such as those in Wales. A different carbon
makeup characterizes trees from relatively
open landscapes, as in southern England. The
extent of contacts between communities in
the two regions is unknown. One reason:
Cremation destroys tooth enamel, which
preserves a strontium record of childhood
diet. As a result, investigators can’t determine
whether nonlocal people buried at
Stonehenge grew up in West Wales or
elsewhere.
For now, the best bet is that nonlocal people
buried at Stonehenge around 5,000 years ago
spent their final years in western Britain,
possibly West Wales, says archaeologist
Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University in
Wales. Archaeological finds from that time
link inhabitants of the Orkney Islands off
Scotland’s northeast coast to communities in
mainland Britain and probably continental
Europe, boosting the plausibility of long-
distance contacts between western Britain
and Stonehenge, Whittle adds.
Archaeologists also have discovered cultural ties between southern England and France’s northwestern
Brittany region dating to as early as around 5,000 years ago, Darvill says. That means outsiders could
have come from other places. Snoeck’s group should compare strontium signatures typical of Brittany
folk to those of people buried at Stonehenge, he suggests.
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