The Traveller's Magazine
A new breed of metal detectors, sensors and lasers have revealed 6,000 year-old wood and stone temples and shrines beneath the place where Stonehenge stands.
New methods in subterranean scanning have helped archaeologists discover a whole new complex of ruins beneath Stonehenge that date back 6,000 years. These include 17 previously unknown shines and temples as well as at least a dozen burial mounds which have now been mapped to very small detail thanks to new scanners.
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The whole process has taken four years and is the largest geophysical survey ever to have been undertaken. It covered an area of 12 square kilometres and penetrated depths of 3 metres. Professor Vincent Gaffney from the University of Birmingham has been working on the project, explaining,
“Most of the area around Stonehenge is terra incognito. It has never been explored and everything we thing about Stonehenge is on the basis of what we don’t know about it. The area around Stonehenge is teeming with previously unseen archaeology…”
New monuments include Durrington Walls, or “super-henge” which have a circumference of nearly 1 mile and was once flanked by as many as 60 massive posts or stones up to three metres tall!
