Mike Parker Pearson on scrapping Stonehenge road tunnel plans

A giant neolithic structure, created 4,500 years ago, has been uncovered just under 2 miles north-east of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain near Amesbury, Wiltshire. Following geophysical prospection, ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry, a series of enormous shafts – each more than five metres deep and up to 20 metres across – were found to have been aligned to form a circle 1.2 miles in diameter.

Mike had previously suggested that Durrington Walls lay within a “domain of the living” separated from a “domain of the ancestors” centred on Stonehenge. The neolithic structure that has recently been discovered appears to have been a boundary guiding people to a sacred area, because Durrington Walls, one of Britain’s largest henge monuments, is placed at its centre.

Vincent Gaffney (University of Bradford), co-principal investigator of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which made the discovery while surveying the landscape, has described the discovery as unprecedented.

According to Mike:

Media Links

• The Guardian (Scrap Stonehenge tunnel plans)
• The Guardian (Vast neolithic circle of deep shafts found near Stonehenge)
• Sunday Express