stonehenge - English Heritage

047-120 section 2.qxd 6/21/05 4:18 PM Page 58
Illustration 36
Rock art at Stonehenge.
(top) Distribution of stones
with prehistoric engravings.
(bottom) Axes and other
motifs on Stones 3, 4, and
53. [After Cleal et al. 1995,
figures 17, 18, and 20
with additions.]
and Young 1948; Stone 1949). There were four pits in all,
each oval in plan and rather shallow. They contained
Grooved Ware pottery, part of a Group VII stone axe from
North Wales and a wide range of worked flint, worked stone,
animal remains, fish remains, marine shells, and carbonized
hazel-nut shells. The pottery provides the site-type name
for one of the four recognized sub-styles of Grooved Ware
(see Longworth in Wainwright and Longworth 1971, 238).
Most recently, field evaluations on the site of the proposed
Stonehenge Visitor Centre at Countess Road East have
revealed a possible pit, a section of ditch, and a substantial
collection of flintworking debris that can provisionally be
dated to the third millennium BC (WA 1995; 2003a; 2004).
All these features form part of what must be considered as
a very extensive spread of third-millennium BC activity
extending from King Barrow Ridge eastwards to the Avon,
especially focusing on the higher ground south of
Durrington Walls along the east side of the Avon Valley
(Illustration 37). This area has been labelled the Durrington
Zone by Richards (1990, 269–70).
East of the Avon, similar material was found at Ratfyn
in 1920 (Stone 1935; Wainwright and Longworth 1971, 5–6).
A ditch (undated) and pits were the main features
represented. Finds included human skeletons, Grooved
Ware pottery, an axe hammer, worked flints, animal bones,
and a large scallop shell suggesting links with the coast.
Further south is the site of Butterfield Down which also
provides abundant evidence for activity in the later third
and early second millennia BC (Lawson 1993; Rawlings and
Fitzpatrick 1996, 10 and 37–8).
Scatters of pottery and flint artefacts dating to the third
millennium BC are fairly numerous through the central part
of the Stonehenge Landscape. The area around Durrington
Walls is especially rich in findspots of Grooved Ware and
Beaker pottery, mainly as residual finds in later contexts
around the north, west, and south sides (cf. Wainwright and
58