These charred bones were extracted from a burial site at Stonehenge. Radiocarbon dating of bones found in the area indicates that they date back to about 3000 B.C., roughly the same time people started to erect the mysterious landmark. Other bones found there suggest people continued to use the area as a burial site until well after the stones went up around 2500 B.C.
"It's now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages," said lead archaeologist Parker Pearson. "Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid-third millennium B.C. The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use and demonstrates that it was still very much a 'domain of the dead.'"
Photo by National Geographic
Caption by Jennifer Guevin
