In Current Archaeology 438 -August/September 2026 – there is an interesting article on recent excavations at Bulford Camp. When the army was pulled out of Germany for cost savings the troops had to be housed elsewhere so the ministry decided to update accommodation at Larkhill and Bulford camps. Previous to the building works an archaeological exploration was done in 2017 and 2018. Phil Harding of Wessex Archaeology was involved – better known for his activities with Time Team as seen on television. They unearthed 20th century military installations, an Anglo Saxon period cemetery, and a wealth of prehistoric features. The hill top at Bulford was circled with a series of 48 pits that seem to have featured, or became, rubbish dumps filled with a mix of animal bones, both wild and domesticated, as well as flint knapping debris and an interesting assemblage of early Grooved Ware shards. Some of the pits seem to have had a more structured filling and included unusual items such as a small chalk ball and a shaped flint knife. Large gatherings appear to have taken place on the site – with lavish meals [lots of meat was eaten]. The number of bones of aurochs would alone have fed a huge crowd of people. It is thought they were celebrating a special occasion – but what was it? This has racked the minds at Wessex Archaeology. It seems these events led to partial occupation at the site. People went home or back to their farming or pastoral way of life in between such events. Some 40 samples that were dated via C14 methodology has produced a narrow range of dates. They cluster around 2950BC. The investigators suggest it was used seasonally over a period of a few decades at the most. It doesn’t seem to have been used over a long period of time. That didn’t stop them from invoking modern visits to Stonehenge at summer solstice. Why they would only come just for a few decades and not over a few centuries is not addressed.
Why did the celebration take place on what was a hill top. What was the occasion we may wonder. Well, they also discovered two other large pits, spaced 400 feet apart. These were unlike the other pits filled with rubbish as all they had in them was chalk rubble. This is the sort of material used to pack around a post. Hence, the two pits are thought to have housed wooden posts – which stood between 10 and 13 feet in height. Ash charcoal was also found at the bottom of one of them. This suggests the timbers were charred in order to aid preservation – yet the posts appear to have been removed after those few decades. No trace of wood was found in them. We can assume they were built, in the first instance, for a series of events – but over how long a time? That is an unknown. The chalk rubble infill points towards a deliberate removal of the posts suggesting it was dismantled as it was not required any more. What had happened?
Harding describes how the pits were plotted on paper to look for clues. When the two post holes were extended by Harding’s ruler they were seen to represent a solar alignment. One very similar to that at Stonehenge, constructed a few hundred years later. It was a perfect match – an alignment to the summer solstice. Midsummer sunrise one way and midwinter sunset in the opposite direction. The pits are not contemporary with the stone circle at Stonehenge, a short distance away, but they are contemporary with the earthen henge surrounding the stone circle. Hence, it could be argued both sites were aligned to the summer solstice at 2950BC. The problem Wessex Archaeology had is that archaeologists in the UK are not conversant with archaeoastronomy. In the drive to cancel culture the work of Alexander and Archie Thom, mainstream had more or less separated archaeology from archaeoastronomy, and the latter publish their studies in their own journals and archaeologists in their various journals. This is described by Prof Ronald Hutton in ‘The Strange History of British Archaeoastronomy‘ [2013] – see https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v714.376 … although that link may not work. Hutton has however done several talks to societies on the subject which can be accessed on the Net. Hutton is an academic and therefore does not critique his fellow academics. It is basically pointing out that the two disciplines have no meeting point and therefore archaeologists have no access to the thoughts and research of the other side. Harding and Wessex Archaeology had a dilemma. Who could they enlist to confirm their paper alignment. A year or so ago there was a new start up, Skyscape Academy. Students could enlist for courses on astronomy at ancient sites – particularly at megalithic monuments. See https://skyscape.academy … This turned out to be a brilliant move. They supplied the scientific verification. This move therefore bypassed any criticism that may have emerged from other archaeologists. Dr Fabio Silva, a teacher at the skyscape academy and the author of papers on archaeoastronomy at Portuguese megalithic monuments, both earlier and later than the Bulford example, began by reconstructing the landscape of 5000 years. The idea was to see if there were any obstructions to the alignment. The lay of the land for example. He used a NASA data set of the heavens in the early 4th millennium BC. This revealed the path of the Sun at midsummer and midwinter. Fabio found the sight line did agree with the dataset – but only if they looked at the Sun in the early morning at midsummer or late in the day at midwinter. During the day the Sun cast a deep shadow that may have spoilt the sight line view. It would also have been seen more clearly if the viewer was standing about 30 to 100 feet behind the first post. This coincided with the rubbish pit with the chalk ball and flint knife.
The idea of incorporating the Sun into a monument is not peculiar to Stonehenge, or Bulford, but can also be seen at various other Neolithic sites on Salisbury Plain, as well as Newgrange in Ireland. Another nearby site, Larkhill, that also has an army camp that was revamped the same time as Bulford. It had a causewayed enclosure dating to 3750BC. Its entrance faced towards the highest point on the horizon, Sidbury Hill. Here the Sun can be seen rising over Sidbury Hill at summer solstice. Larkhill also included a pair of penannular henges, 57 and 52 feet in diameter. They were built later, during the Piorra Oscillation [3200 – 2900BC]. However, further activity dated to the early Bronze age, which in Britain is defined as 2400-2100BC. See also https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/bulford … and Current Archaeology at https://www.archaeology.co.uk …
The archaeologists are left to think in terms of festivities at the summer solstice in the modern era. This involved modern pagans, a sanitised and carefree look at our ancestors, beloved of hippie types from the 1960s onwards. It was their attempt to hoist Stonehenge to their invented belief system that caused the stones to be fenced off to the general public. Prior to the 1980s you could walk among the stones and touch them and do your own research without anyone bothering you. Nowadays you are led down a path to view the stones from a distance. Funnily enough, the people who caused the problem, or their modern equivalent, are allowed to enter the stone circle at midsummer, in order to celebrate the rising of the Sun. What all these parties fail to think of is that the summer solstice may have been used to locate something other than the Sun. Something that appeared in the sky around midsummer, a few days adrift. It was proposed by a group of young British astronomers in the 1990s that the June Taurid meteor stream posed a risk to all the inhabitants of the earth. Not just those on Salisbury Plain. Unlike the autumn Taurid stream, which came at night, and was central to the origin of Halloween, and All Hallows, the June stream came during daylight hours. This would explain why so many of those remote stone circles in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain did not exactly align with the solstice itself. This was put down as a rough alignment that undermined Thom’s insistence that people were able to precisely align their monuments with objects in the heavens. There is a tendency among academics to regard all our ancient ancestors as a bit on the thick side. They were happy with the idea of a rough alignment as it suited their view of Neolithic people. It also was the first step in cancelling the work of the Thom’s, father and son.
The C14 window at Bulford was the back end of the Piorra Oscillation. Look that up on the Net. It also coincided with the beginning of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, a period in which civilisation thrived. In contrast, the situation during the Piorra Oscillation involved a drop in global temperatures, mass migrations around the world, and an outbreak of bubonic plague that also spread widely. We may note the period 2400 to 2100, or even 1900 BC, was a similar sort of affair to that of the 3200-2900 BC event, and there was a similar state of affairs – migrations and fiery conflagrations, the plague and a general disruption from Cosmos to Chaos. In the Clube and Napier model the Earth passed through a dense part of the Taurid meteor stream where large pieces of cometary material were lodged. The rest of the time the Earth only encountered, annually, the more benign part of the stream, composed of small pieces of debris and dust. Over time the stream dissipated into a wider and wider area of space and the large pieces gradually broke up and became less destructive. The stream had an origin in a comet shedding material as it rounded the Sun. Proto Encke or Comet Halley, both originally very large objects. Currently, Halley is thought to have broken up again so what that means for its next encounter in 2061 we don’t know. Astronomers will get a better idea as it starts to come closer again.
See the next post in a couple of days time.