In
the September issue of Smithsonian magazine, we see how archaeologists
can explore underground without digging it up. Vince Gaffney heads a
project that has given us a sort of three-dimensional map of what’s
underneath the land surrounding the most mysterious place in Britain:
Stonehenge.
Gaffney’s latest research effort, the
Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, is a four-year collaboration
between a British team and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for
Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria that has
produced the first detailed underground survey of the area surrounding
Stonehenge, totaling more than four square miles. The results are
astonishing. The researchers have found buried evidence of more than 15
previously unknown or poorly understood late Neolithic monuments:
henges, barrows, segmented ditches, pits. To Gaffney, these findings
suggest a scale of activity around Stonehenge far beyond what was
previously suspected.
Read about what they found, and see plenty of pictures and graphics to explain the project at Smithsonian.
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