Image: Christopher Ison/English Heritage/PA
The Kusuma Neolithic Hall, based on Durrington 68 site, will allow visitors to ‘step back in time’ into the lives of those who built the stone circle. It may have been a place for ceremony or a barn for pack animals. It could have been a place for weary labourers to rest their heads. Or perhaps there was no building at all.
English Heritage has unveiled a 7-metre-high reconstruction of what a 4,500-year-old Neolithic hall may have looked like at Stonehenge, offering visitors a glimpse into the lives of the prehistoric builders who raised the world’s most famous stone circle.
The £1m project is in its final stages of construction near the Stonehenge visitor centre on Salisbury Plain. Built entirely by hand over nine months by a team of more than 100 volunteers, the Kusuma Neolithic Hall will open to the public this summer before transforming into an immersive, historical learning space for schools.
The structure is based on the archaeological footprint of an anomaly known as Durrington 68, a unique “square in the circle” building discovered two miles away near Woodhenge, another Neolithic site. First excavated in 1928 by Maud Cunnington, and re-examined in 2007 by the Stonehenge Riverside Project, the original site features a horseshoe-shaped ring of post holes surrounding four massive internal roof support pillars.
Because centuries of ploughing destroyed the original floor and hearths, its true purpose remains a mystery. However, discoveries of animal bones and grooved ware pottery nearby point towards winter feasting, ritual gatherings or even communal storage.
Luke Winter, an experimental archaeologist, who analysed European Neolithic carpentry and prehistoric pollen data to design the hall, explained the construction’s rigorous scientific backing. “Everything in that building was growing in this landscape 5,000 years ago,” he said. “We’ve been using replica stone tools to create every aspect of this building … we’ve counted literally every blow every axe has made.”
Winter said while he was initially sceptical about whether the archaeological footprint represented an actual roofed building, the construction process changed his mind. “I was 50/50 it might have been a structure. As we’re nearing completion … I’m now 75% sure it was a structure with a roof.”
Source: The Guardian
Image: Christopher Ison/English Heritage/PA