Ask any archaeologist and historian directly and they will tell you—we know very little about the people who built Stonehenge and used it for religious rituals. There are all kinds of theories, including the improbable suggestion that it was constructed by aliens (looking at you, History Channel), but there is no consensus. One of the few things archaeologists do know is that the people who gathered there ate pork. But now, isotopic analysis of the remains of the animal bones found nearby promises to shed new light on what happened at Stonehenge.
The purpose of Stonehenge is a source of perennial fascination. Thousands of years ago people laboriously raised huge stones in a circular formation in an elevated field. The backbreaking work began around 3100 B.C. and those who were involved left no records of their purpose or goals. In the 12th century some people credited Merlin with the site’s construction. More recent studies have suggested that it was a burial site, healing shrine, soundscape, or even celestial observatory. One thing we do know is that the people who visited the sites feasted nearby.
Now a team of U.K.-based scientists from the universities of Cardiff, Sheffield, Leicester, and Nottingham have examined the bones of pigs unearthed at four late Neolithic (2800-2400 B.C.) sites: Durrington Walls, Marden, Mount Pleasant and the West Kennet Palisade. Each of these archaeological sites is located close to either Stonehenge (in Wiltshire) or Avebury (another Neolithic “henge” in Wiltshire, about 42 miles from the more famous Stonehenge).
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For the first time, scientists performed multi-isotopic analysis on the pig bones. In previous studies only human and cattle remains had been scrutinized in this way. The results, published in Science Advances, revealed that some of the pigs involved in the feasts had journeyed a long way to become the fuel for the Neolithic feasters. While most of the pigs had ‘only’ travelled 30 miles from other parts of Wessex, others had come from as far afield as Wales, Northeastern England, and even Scotland.
What this shows is that people who attended the feasts at the “henges” themselves travelled long distances. Dr. Richard Madgwick, lead author of the article, said in a press release that, “These gatherings could be seen as the first united cultural events of our island, with people from all corners of Britain descending on the areas around Stonehenge to feast on food that had been specially reared and transported from their homes.”
Jonathan Marks, professor of anthropology at UNC-Charlotte, told The Daily Beast that the findings cause us to rethink our understanding of mobility in the Neolithic period: “Clearly prehistoric people weren’t just sitting in situ as we sometimes imagine them, but moving around a lot and gathering together for reasons we don’t understand, but were ‘social’ and ‘religious.’”
Pigs would continue to be a focal point of cuisine and ‘religious’ feasting for thousands of years after neolithic people met at Stonehenge. Pork was the staple food in the Roman diet and was considered by ancient doctors to be the most appropriate meat for human consumption. The reason for this, the Roman-era physician Galen tells us, was that pork resembled human flesh in “both taste and smell” and, as a result, many people had unwittingly ingested pork that was served to them by “rascally innkeepers.”
Without curing, however, pork easily spoils, a fact that makes the transportation of live pigs both necessary and impressive. Herding pigs hundreds of miles for a religious meet-up is no small feat: at a minimum it would have slowed down the movement of the group. The pigs of Neolithic Britain were more similar to wild boars than they are today and would have been able to forage for food during the journey. Even so, it would still have been a demanding journey for everyone concerned.
Ethnographically pigs have a variety of social, ritual, religious, and domestic uses and significance. What’s remarkable with this new finding is how is reveals that bringing one’s own pigs was an important part of whatever rituals were performed at Stonehenge. Clearly, supplying locally-sourced swine would not have been enough to satisfy one’s social and ritual expectations. That incorporation of one’s own livestock was an integral part of this feast suggests that an individual connection to the swine was important. Despite the substantial burden of transporting live pigs the rituals at Stonehenge still attracted people from all over the island. But it still wasn’t aliens that drew them there.
