New digital mapping helps researchers discover 'unseen' archaeology of Stonehenge

Researchers have discovered many previously unknown archaeological monuments around Stonehenge through a new digital map.

The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, led by the University of Birmingham in conjunction with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, would be the largest project of its kind.

Remote sensing techniques and geophysical surveys have discovered hundreds of new features which now form part of the most detailed archaeological digital map of the Stonehenge landscape ever produced.

The survey unveiled in full at the British Science Festival, include 17 previously unknown ritual monuments dating to the period when Stonehenge achieved its iconic shape. Dozens of burial mounds have been mapped in minute detail, including a long barrow, which revealed a massive timber building, probably used for the ritual inhumation of the dead following a complicated sequence of exposure and excarnation, and which was finally covered by an earthen mound.

Among the most significant relate to the Durrington Walls 'super henge', situated a short distance from Stonehenge. This immense ritual monument, probably the largest of its type in the world, has a circumference of more than 1.5 kilometers.

Work also revealed novel types of monument including massive prehistoric pits, some of which appear to form astronomic alignments, plus new information on hundreds of burial mounds, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman settlements and fields at a level of detail never previously seen.

Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, said that developing non-invasive methods to document the cultural heritage was one of the greatest challenges of this time and could only be accomplished by adapting the latest technology such as ground-penetrating radar arrays and high-resolution magnetometers.