At the Sea’s Edge, a Glimpse of the Bronze Age

Stone monuments can last virtually forever, but wood is much more perishable. Unless it is carefully preserved in a tomb, it generally disintegrates and disappears in a few hundred years.

Researchers have thus been pleasantly surprised to discover two 4,000-year-old wooden monuments on a remote beach on the east coast of England. Preserved by silt and water, the Bronze Age structures remained hidden until they were uncovered by winter storms--one three years ago and one just last month.

The two structures--large circles defined by buried timbers--were built about the same time as the much more famous British monument Stonehenge. Perhaps inevitably, the first of the two to be discovered has been named Seahenge.

Archeologists hope the discoveries will tell them a great deal about the lives of the early Britons who built them.

“This is the first time we’ve ever found a timber circle intact in Britain,” said archeologist Mark Brennand of the Norfolk Archaeological Unit, which is in charge of its excavation. “The sites of timber circles are not uncommon, but up to now all we have seen are the soil markings where the timbers once stood before they crumbled away.”

The discovery has already cleared up one perplexing mystery. Some sites of previously discovered timber circles had large holes in the center, whose purpose was unknown. The center of Seahenge is occupied by the stump of a large oak tree, turned upside down so that its roots form a kind of primitive altar.

Britons of the Bronze Age are believed to have practiced a ritual called excarnation, in which the bodies of dead loved ones were left out in the open air to decay, perhaps to be picked clean by birds.

The central altar of sites like Seahenge, researchers now believe, was where bodies were laid. It was protected from predators by the surrounding wooden fence.

Many archeologists, said Brian Ayers of the Norfolk unit, believe the Bronze Age people looked on the henge as a “bridge” to the next world. The clear division at the shore between ocean and land, perhaps, reflected the division between the real world and the spirit world.

The discovery of Seahenge, he said, “raises questions about the spirituality of these people and how they were thinking.”

Seahenge was found in 1998 when residents walking the beach at Holme-Next-the-Sea stumbled upon the strange configuration of timbers after a winter storm.

The remains of 55 posts are sunk into the earth in a roughly circular pattern about 21 feet in diameter.

The wood was initially left in its original location, but the timbers began deteriorating more rapidly than expected. They were therefore dug up--over the opposition of Druid groups who claimed them as part of their heritage--and taken to a research center at nearby Flag Fen.

Carbon dating first showed the wood to be 4,000 to 4,200 years old. But dendrochronology--more commonly known as tree-ring dating--was able to narrow it down to a precise season and year.

Dendrochronology relies on the fact that trees grow more in wet years, producing a characteristic pattern of large and small rings that is unique to the region.

Once researchers have established a profile of tree rings, it is possible to compare a given piece of wood with the profile and determine precisely when it was harvested. Ayers and his colleagues determined that the central stump was harvested in the late spring or summer of 2050 BC, and the surrounding stumps were harvested during the same time of year in 2049 BC.

Because oak trees are not common near the site, they would have been imported from some distance, reinforcing the idea that this particular site was very important.

The bases of the timbers, once they were excavated, were found to be in remarkably good condition. “We can see that over three dozen different bronze tools were used,” said David Miles, chief archeologist for English Heritage, which provided funding for the excavation of Seahenge.

That group’s original goal was to conserve the timbers for a special museum that would be built to house the artifacts, but funds have not been available to do so. Instead, the plan now is to rebury the wood at or close to the original site so that it will be protected for future generations. That could happen as soon as this month.

Last August, archeologist John Lorimer spotted two flattened logs on the beach, little more than 100 yards from Seahenge. After storms in January, another timber circle emerged surrounding the two logs, this one about twice as big as Seahenge.

But while the newly revealed circle probably dates to about the same period as Seahenge, Ayers and others believe it is not a henge, but the rotting timber supports of a burial mound or barrow. Ayers said there are at least 40,000 such burial mounds around the country. Generally, they are marked by mounds of dirt, with only holes to indicate where posts once were.

“Here, if it is a barrow, we’ve lost the earth but we’ve retained the posts,” he said.

Ayers and his colleagues have no plans to excavate the new circle because they don’t believe it is as important as Sea-henge.

“When you have an exceptional feature like [Seahenge], you have to take exceptional measures,” such as digging it up for study, he said. “But the norm is simply to record things and monitor them.”

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Maugh can be reached at thomas.maugh@latimes.com

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A New Seahenge?

British archeologists recently discoverd a 4,000-year-old timber circle on the beach near Seahenge, a Bronze Age circle discovered three years ago. The circles, contemporaneous with the more famous Stonehenge, may provide new information about Bronze Age life. A more recent shipwreck lies nearby.

Source: English Heritage