British archaeologists said on Thursday that they had discovered the remnants of an ancient site that they believe was used for solstice gatherings thousands of years ago, just three miles from Stonehenge, the world-famous rock structure in southern England.
The archaeologists announced that they had uncovered two ancient pits in the village of Bulford that they believed were used to create a structure aligned with the solstices — some 500 years before the iconic rocks at Stonehenge were erected.
The archaeologists said they believed that the pits in Bulford, some 400 feet apart, held wooden poles that formed a line that pointed toward the sun during the solstices. The pits were excavated between 2015 and 2017, but the archaeology team said it had reached its conclusions after years of analysis, including by mapping out how the sky, landscape and horizon would have interacted at the time.
“The sun was incredibly important to these prehistoric communities,” Phil Harding, who led the excavations with Wessex Archaeology, an independent British archaeology organization, said in a statement. “They could plot and record its midsummer rising to a high degree of accuracy,” he added.
Thousands are expected to gather at Stonehenge in just a few days to celebrate the summer solstice. Mr. Harding said his team’s excavations, on a nearby hillside, suggest that people were doing a similar thing some 5,000 years ago: “revering and celebrating the sunrise on Midsummer’s Day.”
Archaeologists still debate Stonehenge’s purpose, but its ties to the solstices are plain, according to English Heritage, the organization that oversees the site, because the circle appears to be aligned with the sun’s movements.
Jennifer Wexler, a historian for English Heritage who specializes in prehistoric sites, told The New York Times in 2024 that the archaeological consensus is that Stonehenge was built in stages and used differently over thousands of years, from about 3000 B.C. to 1500 B.C.
At the Bulford site, archaeologists found 48 pits, which were carbon dated to about 5,000 years ago — about the same time as the earliest traces of earthwork at Stonehenge, and some 500 years before its rocks were erected.
Mr. Harding and his team think the Bulford site was also a place for religious gatherings because they found “extensive evidence of feasting,” including pottery, animal bone, worked flints and charcoal.
Other archaeologists were intrigued but cautious about the announcement by Mr. Harding’s team, which has not released a scientific paper about the discovery.
Susan Greaney, an expert in Neolithic archaeology in the British Isles at the University of Exeter, said the entire Bulford site was significant. Designs on pottery found there indicate how much ancient people and ideas were moving around the region, she said.
But Dr. Greaney, who was not involved with the team that made the announcement on Thursday, said she needed to know more about the pits before drawing any strong conclusions about their significance.
“If they’re correct, then it is exciting because it suggests that people are erecting some form of simple monument to mark the alignment 500 years or so before the stones are put up in the middle of Stonehenge,” she said.
But she said she wanted to see more evidence that the holes were used for posts, and she said she was unsure that two holes alone could definitively indicate a solstice line.
“If there were three or four, I’d be happier,” she said.
