Stonehenge Archer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Stonehenge Archer is the name given to a Bronze Age man whose body was discovered in the outer ditch of Stonehenge. Unlike most burials in the Stonehenge Landscape his body was not in a barrow, although it did appear to have been deliberately and carefully buried in the ditch.
Examination of the skeleton indicated that the man was local to the area, and aged about 30 when he died. Radiocarbon dating suggests that he died around 2300BC, making his death roughly contemporary with the Amesbury Archer and Boscombe Bowmen buried 3 miles away in Amesbury.
He came to be known as an archer because of the stone wrist-guard and a number of flint arrowheads buried with him. In fact evidence suggests that several of the arrowheads tips were located in the skeletons bones, indicating that the man may have been killed by them.
His body was excavated in 1978 by Richard Atkinson and John G. Evans who had been re-examining an older trench in the ditch and bank of Stonehenge. His remains are now housed in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire museum in Salisbury.
[edit] Bibliography
- Chippendale, C, Stonehenge Complete (Thames and Hudson, London, 2004) ISBN 0500284679
- English Heritage Guidebooks: "Stonehenge" (English Heritage 2005) ISBN 1850749337
