Scientists dig in Stonehenge for first time in 50 years
Tuesday, 01 Apr 2008 11:22
Stonehenge is thought to have been created about 3100BC
Science In Focus
Click here to see how British small businesses are creating innovative, low carbon business ideas, on inthenews.co.uk. Full Story
Scientists are digging in the UK's famous Stonehenge for the first time in 50 years to try and find what it was built for.
The project is being filmed by Timewatch, a new history series from the BBC which will be shown in the autumn.
The dig began on Monday 31st March and will take place for two weeks until April 11th, following 18 months of preparation.
Theories have suggested that Stonehenge, consisting of a circle of large upright and flat rocks on the Salisbury Plain, could have been created as a holy place or as a secular structure for calculating time.
Professor Timothy Darvill and Professor Geoff Wainwright, who are leading the dig, argue however that Stonehenge was a site of healing.
"The whole purpose of Stonehenge is that it was a prehistoric Lourdes," Professor Wainwright, who is chief archaeologist at English Heritage, told the Timewatch website.
"People came here to be made well."
Bournemouth University's Professor Darvill added: "There's an amazing and unnatural concentration of skeletal trauma in the bones that were dug up around Stonehenge.
"This was a place of pilgrimage for people... coming to get healed."