国家地理-2008-06-14 New View on Stonehenge Burials 巨石阵新解（在线收听）

The tantalizing mysteries of Stonehenge may have come one step closer toward being solved. New radiocarbon dates of human cremation burials there indicate that Stonehenge was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3,000 BC until well after the large sarsen stones went up around 2,500 BC. Archeologist Mike Parker Pearson has a new theory that Stonehenge was just half of a large religious complex and also functioned as a huge cemetery.

"Stonehenge is full of burials. It's our biggest cremation cemetery from that time."

 With National Geographic's support, Mike Parker Pearson leads the Stonehenge Riverside Project. Parker Pearson's teams excavating the plain surrounding Stonehenge have discovered the largest Stone Age settlement found in northern Europe.

"We knew this was a big village, and I was thinking maybe a few hundred houses. But what we found out this year is that it was really big. We are looking at well over a thousand houses."

Parker Pearson suspects this was the lost city of the builders of Stonehenge.

"I think what we are seeing is a community that are bringing all their stock with them coming here for short parts of the year. This isn't a full-time permanent settlement."

He has found evidence that people came here to celebrate an important event in their calendar, the longest day of the year, the midsummer solstice. He believes they used Stonehenge as a monument to the death.

Perhaps on the same day, less than two miles away at Durrington Walls the ancient Britons celebrated life. Here a vast circular earthwork known as a henge dominates the landscape. It's 20 times larger than Stonehenge and was surrounded by a ditch and bank 18 feet deep and 30 feet wide.

In new excavations outside the henge of Durrington walls, archeologists found remains of houses from the third millennium BC. Among the most remarkable discoveries are the remains of an oval-shaped hearth with two thick grooves visible in the floor where the person who did the cooking kneeled.

"The thing that really got my imagination going was the, the knee holes that you get by the hearth over there. And that, that just triggers  the imagination of someone everyday sitting by the fire to cook or tend to the hearth, and little things out there really get your imagination going."

Parker Pearson hopes to find more clues to the Stonehenge mystery over the final three years of the excavation project. His findings are featured in the June issue of National Geographic Magazine and revealed in a National Geographic Channel special Stonehenge Decoded premiering Sunday June 1st. Check local listings.

Notes:
Stonehendge: a group of very large, tall stones that are arranged into a large circle with a smaller circle inside it, which stand on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, southern England. People think that they were put there about 4000 years ago and were used for studying the movements of the Sun, Moon, and stars. Some people also believe that they were used by the Druids (=ancient priests before the Christian period) in religious ceremonies.

inception: the beginning of something
Sarsen stones: stone blocks found in quantity on Salisbury Plain, the Marlborough Downs, in Kent, and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Dorset and Hampshire. They are the remains of a cap of tertiary sandstone which once covered much of southern England.

Vocabulary Mix:
cremation: the reduction of a corpse to ashes as a way of disposing of it