FULL EPISODE | CLASSIC TIME TEAM SPECIAL

In this episode, archaeology students excavate Durrington Walls, Britain's biggest neolithic henge, which dwarfs the nearby Stonehenge. Mike Parker Pearson explains to Time Team his revolutionary theory about the connection between the two sites, where the cremated remains of the dead would, after a winter funerary festival, be thrown into the nearby River Avon to travel downstream to join their ancestors. As they travelled downstream towards Stonehenge, the dead would then be transformed into spirits and pass into the afterlife. The discovery of a curved avenue (the first neolithic road found in Europe) leading from the henge to the river helps to bear out his theory – of the spiritual transition from wood and decay to stone and permanence. Meanwhile, Harding takes part in Time Team's biggest ever reconstruction, a great timber henge aligned to the midwinter sunrise.

Original broadcast date: 28th November 2005.

Discover more about the Stonehenge landscape:

Stonehenge Discovery Mesolithic Pits (with Henry Chapman):    • STONEHENGE DISCOVERY: Mesolithic Pits...  
Blick Mead The Stonehenge Spring:    • Blick Mead: Stonehenge Spring sheds l...  


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