EAST YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND—The Yorkshire Post reports that traces of a 4,000-year-old wooden henge have been unearthed at the Little Catwick Quarry, located near the North Sea coast. The wooden posts were encircled with a ditch and bank with entrances facing northwest and southeast. A pit in the middle of the circle contained heavily burned stones. Additional burned stones were found discarded in the entrances. “It is possible that bodies were brought there to be cremated and then the remains buried elsewhere,” said lead archaeologist John Tibbles. A cemetery dating to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age periods has been found about a mile away from the henge site. Tibbles thinks the two sites could be linked. But the burned stones could also have been used to heat a sauna, he explained. Stones may have been heated at a fire and carried into a sauna building with a hearth surrounded by ledge-style seating. To read about another henge site in England, go to “The Square Inside Avebury’s Circles.”
