English archaeologists invited to discover the “inner kitchen” of Stonehenge

Stonehenge is considered the most magical and mystical place. The Neolithic Ideas festival will help people better understand the origins of the historical monument and its landscape from a scientific point of view.

The events will take place at Stonehenge in Wiltshire over the weekend of 11 and 12 November. Scientists, engineers and artisans will come as experts and give visitors new insight into the science that ancient people used to create the UNESCO World Heritage Site. They will also explain modern methods that give humanity insight into what happened in prehistoric times, The Guardian reports.

Head of English Heritage Education and Interpretation Dominique Bouchard said the festival was designed to help fit the site better into human history: “It is very easy to think of Stonehenge as something that is outside the history of science or technology. After all, it traditionally begins in the 16th or 17th century. This kind of building is undesirable.”

The age of Stonehenge remains unknown, but scientists believe that it was built almost 4.5 thousand years ago. The great wizard Merlin from the Arthurian cycle, as legend has it, brought massive stones from Ireland, where they were collected by giants. The scientific approach argues that the construction of Stonehenge was not a single event, but a series, starting in 3000 BC, when the first excavations came and a further 1500 years later the erection of megaliths.

“The consequence is that it can seem magical and otherworldly. What we’re trying to do with the festival organizers is to remind people that the people of Stonehenge were like us. They were engineers, project managers, as well as believers and travelers on pilgrimage,” Bouchard added.

The central theme of the festival will be a fresh look at how Stonehenge was built. For example, how did they manage to make lintels so amazingly smooth in Neolithic times? Civil engineers today use lasers, but how did ancient people fit pairs of hefty stones into deep holes in uneven ground and manage to lower others to the top with such precision? And how did they manage to calculate that the entire temple corresponds so perfectly with sunrises, sunsets, solstices, and so on?

Experts believe that “this was extensive preparatory work that required a complex understanding of the landscape, materials, skies, calculations and how to build.”

Bouchard expresses, like many, admiration for the ancient people who were able to carry out such a project: “I walk and I am at a loss how they could carry a massive stone hundreds of miles to the place where it needs to be put in the ground, and how precisely the height was measured. All this without paper, without pencil – just incredible.”

The festival will also teach visitors about modern techniques, such as carbon dating and DNA analysis, that are helping to illuminate prehistoric daily life, revealing diet, clothing, how society worked, and even Neolithic values.

For example, scientists from the University of Cambridge will tell how the chemical composition of tooth enamel helped determine where the people who built Stonehenge came from.

Cardiff University’s “food archaeology” team created a prehistoric supermarket to give modern people an idea of ​​what food was consumed then, including roast meats, flatbreads, dairy products, but, as it turns out, very little fish was eaten. People will be able to try their hand at making flour in a mill, churning butter in a replica kitchen gadget called a butter churn, and selecting Neolithic grain varieties to grow at home.

Scientists from Bournemouth University will reportedly demonstrate how the sun, moon and stars played an important role in beliefs and practices.

Manchester Metropolitan University and the Francis Crick Institute, which studies family matters among Neopolitan people, will reveal what they may have worn, how they may have styled their hair and how they may have decorated themselves and their homes. Skills such as ceramics, cooking, bronze casting and flint cutting will be demonstrated. The National Trust for Sites of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty will host a landscape tour that will tell us about the builders of not only Stonehenge, but also the mounds that surround it.

On the eve of the event, medievalist Natalia Budur told MK the specifics of such events and noted the importance of holding them: “Historical festivals are now particularly popular throughout the world as a form of learning history and at the same time as a trend in the tourism business. Is it good? Undoubtedly. Because in this way a person not only learns new things, but also learns history, and the movement of historical reconstruction itself is the latest cultural phenomenon, in which art, science, sports, handmade and tourism are intertwined.

The expert spoke about the first historical festivals. They appeared in the world in the 1970s, and from the very beginning there was a special focus on the Middle Ages. In the foreground were the Vikings and the construction of longships – their warships.

— What else in the field of reconstruction history do you think is of particular interest?

— All magical “themes” – and of course, Stonehenge comes first here. They write a lot about it, but historians still cannot come to a consensus on what it is. What is surprising is not the interest in it, but the fact that such a festival has not existed before.

— Why are such festivals so popular?

— Interest in studying the history and material life of different eras leads to attempts and visualization, and this is very good, because it is not just entertainment, but entertainment with meaning, in which people of all ages, starting with the smallest, take part. As a rule, at any festival there is a “village” in which its participants live – artisans, musicians, specialists in the era. They bring with them children who are fashionable to envy, because where else can a child travel in a time machine and find himself among druids or knights, talk to Merlin or touch the sword of King Arthur?

Guests of such festivals often become participants after some time, because living history fascinates in the truest sense of the word. So let there be more good and diverse festivals around the world.

Natalia Budur also noted that “England is very inventive in terms of festivals, both scientific and reenactment”: “In Scotland, in Lerwick, every year there is a historical Viking festival known as Up Helly Aa and marking the end of the Yuletide period (Viking Christmas) and is associated with traditions of the Viking Age, who ruled the Shetland Islands. The festival is famous for its “torch procession” and ceremonial burning of the longship and takes place on the last Tuesday of January.”