Grave Near Stonehenge Yields Trove of Artifacts

A 4,000-year-old grave found near Stonehenge contains the remains of an archer and a trove of artifacts that make it one of the richest early Bronze Age sites in Europe, archeologists said.

“It’s a fantastically important discovery both for the number of artifacts found in that grave and the range of artifacts. It’s absolutely unique,” said Gillian Varndell, a curator of the British Museum’s prehistory department.

About 100 objects, including a pair of rare gold earrings, were found three miles east of Stonehenge with the bones of a man who died about the time the monolithic stone circle was taking the form we see today.

“It is the single richest burial from the British Isles” at about this date, said Andrew Fitzpatrick, the Wessex Archeology project manager in charge of the site at Amesbury, 75 miles southwest of London.

The man has been identified as an archer because the objects buried with him included stone arrowheads and stone wrist guards that protected the arm from the recoil of the bow. There also were stone tools for butchering carcasses and for making more arrowheads.