This comes as a surprise to me, especially since a team of archaeologists publicized the evidence about two years ago in a Guardian article. However archaeologist, Andrew Fitzpatrick, stated in a CBS interview that they are looking for evidence that will tell them exactly what Stonehenge was used for. Watch the video and see for yourself, but I think they pretty much solved the mystery.

Archaeologists have uncovered a huge ancient settlement at Durrington Walls, which they believe are the houses of the people who built the Stonehenge. According to researchers, the dwellings date back to 2,600 - 2,500 BC. Hundreds of people lived in this settlement, making it the largest Neolithic village found in Britain.

“In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards,” Sheffield University Mike Parker Pearson explained.

The researchers have excavated eight houses in total at Durrington and identified many other probable dwellings using geophysical surveying equipment. Each house measured approximately 16 feet square, was made of timber, with a clay floor and a central hearth. Archaeologists think there could have been at least one hundred houses.

Source: BBC News

Engineers have explained how the four-ton bluestones of Stonehenge were transported to the Salisbury Plain from the Preseli hills of south Wales. Why they were transported has been the subject of intense research and speculation over thousands of years. Professors Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill have come up with a new and compelling theory: Stonehenge was a hospital.

Stonehenge was distinct among British henges - in its scale and spacious setting, and in the exceptional number of burial mounds round it. As Darvill says, it was “constantly being remodelled and changed over a period of perhaps a thousand years … getting larger, more grand and more complicated”. True its architecture is dominated by astronomical calculations, implying a priesthood and time-related rituals. But this would have meant nothing to ordinary mortals. What drew them to Stonehenge from across Europe must have been specific, a reputation for relief from disease and disability.

What makes this theory so convincing is the deformities in the skeletons in burial mounds that surround Stonehenge. I’ve read many of the theories about Stonehenge over the course of my life, but this one makes the most sense. Click on the Guardian Unlimited article link below to read a more indepth and fascinating account of this latest theory.

Source: Guardian Unlimited