Message #199666

[Bianca Markos]

Seasonal Feasting, Prehistoric-Style

It’s turkeys that traditionally get carved-up on the Christmas dinner tables of families such as Alison’s and Jill’s around this time of year in Britain. But it seems that there were once other animals that had reason to fear December coming round too.

Stonehenge Riverside Project director Mike Parker Pearson – who spoke to Heritage Key a while back about progress at the ongoing and thus-far remarkably successful archaeological investigation he leads – recently revealed that large quantities of pig and cattle bones have been discovered among other remains at Durrington Walls, an inter-linking companion site to Stonehenge.

4,500 years back the Stonehenge landscape was apparently a scene of heady celebration and ritual feasting at the solstices.

“Occupation and consumption were intense,” Parker Pearson wrote in a report, quoted by Discovery News. The animal remains were found alongside pottery, flint arrowheads and lithic debris. It seems that Durrington Walls and Stonehenge were the scenes of pockets of intense activity, as prehistoric people celebrated and gorged at very specific times of year. “The small quantities of stone tools other than arrowheads, the absence of grinding querns and the lack of carbonised grain indicate that this was a ‘consumer’ site,” Parker Pearson continued. “The midsummer and midwinter solstice alignments of the Durrington and Stonehenge architecture suggest seasonal occupation.”
 
The animals were apparently driven from hundreds of miles around to be slaughtered immediately at Durrington Walls in time for the winter solstice. Considering the treacherous travel conditions currently thwarting transport up and down the UK, the pagans of 2009 can be thankful that tradition has long since died out.