Did Stonehenge start out as royal cemetery?

The village of Stonehenge's builders
The archaeological project has also yielded new findings about Durrington Walls, the site of an ancient village that researchers believe housed Stonehenge's builders. Excavations of several houses at the site have led Parker Pearson and his colleagues to conclude that the village ranked as one of the biggest settlements of its time in northern Europe, with 300 to 1,000 houses.

Other evidence suggests that the village was occupied only on a seasonal basis, most likely at the time of ceremonial gatherings in midsummer and midwinter. For example, animal remains indicate that pigs were culled in the village, but not born there. That would be the case if people journeyed to the site only at certain times of the year, accompanied by their animals.

There are ample signs that a wooden version of Stonehenge, nicknamed Woodhenge, existed next to Durrington Walls in Neolithic times — and that a nearly 2-mile-long ditched enclosure ran across the plain between the monuments. The project's archaeologists excavated a wooden "Southern Circle" inside Durrington Walls' circular ditches that appears to be oriented toward the midwinter sunrise, contrasting with Stonehenge's orientation toward the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset.

The project's archaeologists speculate that the area around Durrington Walls served as the "domain of the living," and that Stonehenge represented "the domain of the ancestors." Bodies of the dead may have been transported down an avenue leading from the village to the River Avon, then brought to Stonehenge.

Such a journey would symbolize the transition from life to death — "crossing the River Styx, as it were," Parker Pearson said.

He said the archaeological digs, which are due to continue this summer, are providing "intimate portraits, really, of how people lived their lives." One excavation of a house at the Durrington Walls village even turned up what appear to be two worn spots in the floor near the hearth. "Whoever was in charge of the housework and the cooking was kneeling there," Parker Pearson said.

The mystery in the parking lot
Many more mysteries have yet to be addressed: For example, the archaeologists say two oval-fenced areas along the clifftop south of Woodhenge enclosed monumental timber structures, each anchored by four large posts.

"These obviously were not domestic buildings," University of Bristol archaeologist Joshua Pollard said in a statement. "Their purpose is uncertain, but it's possible they supported raised platforms where bodies of the dead were left to decay."

Then there's the mystery over why Stonehenge was selected as a sacred site in the first place. Parker Pearson said three pits that are marked today by concrete circles in Stonehenge's parking lot once held huge posts or pine tree trunks. Those pits date back 10,000 years, he said.

"They were built 5,000 years before Stonehenge was begun," Parker Pearson said. Thus, now-vanished monuments may have existed at the site millennia before Stonehenge was even conceived.

"We either have a very long-term tradition ... or maybe they get rediscovered and reckoned to be the footprints of the ancestors," Parker Pearson said.

This report includes information from Randolph E. Schmid of The Associated Press and Alan Boyle of msnbc.com.

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