Author: David Keys - Archaeology
Correspondent
Publication: Rense.com
Date: November 26, 2000
URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/This_Britain/2000-11/temple261100.shtml
Archaeologists have discovered a
mysterious 4,700-year-old temple that is the largest Stone Age structure
ever found in Western Europe. More than a half a mile across and
covering 85 acres, the site in mid-Wales is 30 times the size of Stonehenge.
A six-year research programme has
revealed that the vast, egg-shaped religious complex consisted of 1,400
obelisks, each towering up to 23ft into the air. Made of oak, they
were arranged as an oval with a perimeter of one-and-a-half miles.
At its western end, archaeologists have discovered the site of the temple's
main entrance flanked by 6ft diameter timbers that may have stood 30ft
tall.
Despite its vast size, the site
is baffling archaeologists. They are certain that it had a religious
function - but what was being worshipped or venerated remains a mystery.
The focal point appears to have
been a natural spring - and possibly some sort of shrine. The complex
may have been built on such a grand scale to include a second possible
shrine 500 yards north-west of the spring and an area of further ritual
activity about 200 yards to the north-east. The main entrance is
oriented towards sunset on the summer solstice the point at which the sun
disappears after the longest day of the year.
Detailed examination has revealed
that the enclosed area was kept clear for almost 3,000 years. Outside
the oval, archaeologists have found a normal level of flint and other prehistoric
finds. Inside there have been almost no finds at all.
"They must have kept it extraordinarily
clean," said Dr Alex Gibson, an archaeologist who has spent much of the
past six years investigating the site for Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust.
It remained untouched by normal secular human activity from its construction
in 2700BC, through the late Neolithic and the whole of both the Bronze
Age and the Iron Age, which ended after the Roman invasion of AD43.
The absence of debris of human activity
from the earlier parts of the Neolithic era suggest the area may have been
taboo for even longer possibly from 4000BC.
After the arrangement of 1,400 oak
obelisks was constructed - just before the time that most of Stonehenge
was built - it is likely that ordinary people were not just barred from
the site, as they probably had been for generations, but were also prevented
from seeing inside it. Archaeologists believe planks were used to
close the gaps between the obelisks for at least the bottom third of their
height.
The temple was almost certainly
kept exclusively for the use of the priesthood - probably shamans whose
function was to maintain spiritual contact with ancestors and deities.
However, when the Roman invaders
arrived, its very sanctity seems to have made it a target. For, in
common with many other native British sacred sites including Stonehenge
the place appears to have been deliberately violated. The Romans
seem to have chosen to insult local sensibilities by building first a marching
camp on one part of the site and then a permanent fort on another.
The site - at Hindwell, three miles
east of New Radnor in Powys - is being seen as one of the most important
in Europe. "We were bowled over by the sheer scale of the structure
and the fact that it appears to have remained sacred for thousands of years,"
Dr Gibson said.
