"What few will realize is that 5,000 years ago on a nearby hillside overlooking modern-day Bulford, people were doing the exact same thing," Phil Harding said as he described a discovery linked to Stonehenge. On Thursday, Wessex Archaeology said researchers uncovered two large pits at Bulford, 3 miles east of Stonehenge, that they believe once held towering wooden posts and date to around 3000 B.C.
Wessex Archaeology Finds Two Pits
Wessex Archaeology said the excavation identified 2 large pits that researchers interpret as postholes for a simpler, timber-built monument. Phil Harding, the excavation leader, said, "Up till now, our knowledge of this ancient feat of astronomy was based on Stonehenge and other monuments of a similar period," and added, "But what we’ve discovered at Bulford is 500 years earlier than the famous stones we know so well."
Researchers also reported finding pottery, flint tools and animal bones inside the pits' fills, material that helped them date the site after years of analysis. The excavation took place between 2015 and 2017, and archaeologists spent years analysing the artifacts before concluding that the Bulford site dates to around 3000 B.C.
Bulford Dates to 3000 B.C.
Wessex Archaeology and its team say the Bulford phase predates Stonehenge by around 500 years and represents an earlier local approach to marking solar events. Jennifer Wexler, curator of history at English Heritage, said, "The ancient people had quite a sophisticated knowledge about the sky, and the movements of the moon and the sun," and added, "But they had religious ideas about it too."
Wexler described those beliefs as part of communal gatherings: "celebrations linked to the solstices likely carried deep symbolic meaning." UNESCO designated Stonehenge a World Heritage Site in 1986 and called Stonehenge "the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world," framing why an earlier, timber phase nearby changes how researchers view the long arc of ceremonial construction in southern England.
Stonehenge Solstice Alignment Compared
Researchers say the Bulford posts lined up to point directly at the rising sun on the summer solstice and the setting sun on the winter solstice, matching the solar geometry later used at Stonehenge. Visitors standing at Stonehenge on Sunday will be able to watch the sun rise above the Heel Stone to the northeast, and researchers draw a functional comparison between that sightline and the Bulford alignment.
The team believes the pits once held towering wooden posts, but Harding warned of interpretive caution: he described himself as "ecstatic, but cautious," and said the archaeologists had to be "absolutely certain" their interpretations were correct. That caveat reflects the difference between finding pits and proving they once supported tall timber uprights used in ritual astronomy.
Archaeologists determine former timber settings by examining the pits' shape, the character of their fills and any packing material or related artifacts, then by measuring the line formed by multiple features against the known rising and setting points of the sun at the solstices. That combination of soil evidence, associated finds and geometric alignment is the basis for the Bulford interpretation.
The single most urgent unanswered question is: how exactly did the researchers determine that the pits once contained wooden posts aligned with the solstices?
