The Stonehenge Riverside Project - Recent Results. Lecture by Mike Parker-Pearson
7:00 pm, Saturday, 10 October, 2009

The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a major archaeological research study into the development of the Stonehenge landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain, being undertaken jointly by archaeologists from Sheffield, Manchester, Bournemouth, Bristol, Preston and Birmingham Universities, under the overall direction of Professor Mike Parker-Pearson of Sheffield University.

Mike Parker-Pearson last spoke to the Society about the project in 2006, when he described the discovery of a ceremonial avenue leading from the river to the Southern Circle of timber posts at Durrington Walls, where a settlement of Neolithic houses was uncovered. Following the 2009 AGM he will update us on work since then, particularly in the 2008 season when several WANHS members took part in excavations along the line of the avenue from Stonehenge to Stonehenge Bottom, in the Cursus ditch and at a settlement site on Stonehenge Down which may have been inhabited by the builders of the earliest Stonehenge around 3000 BC. The 2008 work also included reopening an Aubrey hole to recover prehistoric cremations put there by archaeologists in 1935.

News of the startling discoveries in 2009 have only just reached the press, and the lecture will give a chance to hear a little more.

The image of Stonehenge is an initialled watercolour, Sunset at Stonehenge, 1818, by Copley Fielding, from the Museum collections.

Booking:

Advance booking is essential, as we expect lots of interest following the recent news in national newspapers.