Time Team's timber circles reconstruction

For the Durrington Walls programme, Time Team embarked on an ambitious project to reconstruct one of the two timber circles that excavations have revealed once stood inside the henge. This was not only the biggest reconstruction project ever attempted by Time Team: it was also the biggest project of its kind ever to take place in Britain.

The Southern Circle at Durrington Walls consisted of two huge entrance posts and 166 other posts of varying sizes, arranged in five concentric circles. The circle was 40 metres across and aligned so that the midwinter sun would rise between the entrance posts. The excavated postholes, about 2-2.5 metres across, give an indication of the size of the timbers, which were probably oak.

The largest post in Time Team's reconstruction weighed five tons, and it was decided to erect this one manually, without the aid of modern machinery, to give an idea of the scale of the task facing the Neolithic henge builders. To carry out the task, the Team brought in 20 soldiers, led by Major Adam Neale, from the 14th Regiment Royal Artillery. Organised by project manager John Kropacsy, and advised by Professor Julian Thomas of Manchester University, they used an A-frame to hoist the massive post into position.

It isn't known if this was the method used by the builders of Durrington Walls, but there is evidence of A-frames being used in other parts of the world during this period and it seems like the most logical way to get a post up. What became clear during the reconstruction, however, was that it would have taken many more than 20 men to carry out the task. Time Team substituted the use of pulleys for raw muscle power in this case: calculations show that it would have required 100 or more men to erect the entrance post had pulleys not been used.

Time Team used machines to complete the task in the week available, and the timbers were supplied ready-felled from managed woodland. For the Neolithic builders, though, there would have been no such luxury. They would have had to cut down around five acres of forest with primitive tools, drag the timbers across land and rivers and erect them using ropes and manpower alone. It was Neolithic engineering and architecture on an epic scale, and would have taken hundreds of people many decades to plan and execute.

Clearly they would only have done so for an important purpose. And that, as Clive Ruggles, an archaeoastronomer from Leicester University, was able to confirm in plotting the reconstruction, was connected with the midwinter sunrise. Archaeologists are often divided over whether henge monuments and what took place at them are connected with midwinter or midsummer. At sites such as Stonehenge, where the opposite horizons are in the same position relative to each other, it could be either or both. At Durrington Walls, where the opposite horizons are different, it is clear that the site was aligned towards the midwinter sunrise so that that any festivals or ceremonies that took place there were connected with that time of year. (This was also confirmed by the evidence of pigs' teeth found on the site, which were those of animals born about nine months previously.)

The reconstruction of the timber circle at Durrington Walls provided insights into a number of issues to do with how such monuments were built and what they might have been used for. Above all, perhaps, it gave a sense of the scale of the monument and what it might have looked like 4,500 years ago. Unfortunately, it didn't last for anything like as long as the real thing. The timbers had only been borrowed for the purpose, and not long after they had been erected, they all had to come down again.

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