An eStonehenge occupied 5,000 years earlier than thoughtNew archaeological evidence from Amesbury in Wiltshire reveals traces of human settlement 3,000 years before Stonehenge was even builtxcavation funded with redundancy money shows Stonehenge was a settlement 3,000 years before it was built.
The archaeological dig, a mile from the stones, has revealed that people have occupied the area since 7,500BC.
The findings, uncovered by volunteers on a shoestring budget, are 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Dr Josh Pollard, from Southampton University, said the team had "found the community who put the first monument up at Stonehenge".
'Archaeological blind spot'
The small-scale project has been led by Open University archaeologist David Jacques, who had to plough his redundancy money into it to make it happen.
The first aerial photograph of Stonehenge was taken in 1906
He first spotted the Amesbury site in aerial photographs as a student.
The photographs, in an archive at Cambridge University, showed a site known as Vespasian's Camp just a mile from Stonehenge.
Assumed to have been completely landscaped in the 18th Century, Mr Jacques realised the area had not been and decided to investigate.
"The whole landscape is full of prehistoric monuments and it is extraordinary in a way that this has been such a blind spot for so long archaeologically," he said.
"But in 1999 a group of student friends and myself started to survey this area of Amesbury."
The site, which contains a natural spring, is the nearest source of fresh water to Stonehenge.
And Mr Jacques, with the theory it may have been a water supply for early man, believed there could be pristine and ancient archaeology waiting to be discovered.
"I suppose what my team did, which is a slightly fresher version, was look at natural places. Places in the landscape where you would imagine animals might have gone to, to have a drink," he said.
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"My thinking was where you find wild animals, you tend to find people, certainly hunter gatherer groups coming afterwards."
And he was right.
Over the past seven years, the site has yielded the earliest semi-permanent settlement in the Stonehenge area from 7,500 to 4,700BC.
And carbon dating of material found at the site show people were there during every millennium in between.
"Here we are in this little nook at the bottom of a hill with a river running round it and it probably had more people coming to it in the Mesolithic period than it's had people coming ever since," he said.
'Tip of iceberg'
For a project that has had limited funding it is already generating excitement amongst other leading archaeologists.
Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy, from Durham University, said: "The site has the potential to become one of the most important Mesolithic sites in north-western Europe."
And Dr Pollard, from the Stonehenge Riverside Project, said "being able to demonstrate that there were repeated visits to this area from the 9th to the 5th millennia BC" was significant.
"I suspect he's just hit the tip of the iceberg in terms of Mesolithic activity focussed on the Avon around present day Amesbury," he said.
The Flying Archaeologist - Stonehenge is broadcast on Friday, 19 April at 19:30 BST on BBC One West and South. The series is broadcast nationwide from Monday, 29 April at 20:30 BST on BBC Four.
The settlement’s size
and location, together with the presence of a series of shafts
containing what may be votive deposits, suggest something
more than a mere farming settlement. Geophysical survey
has revealed what may be either a mausoleum or a shrine of
the period. Evidence also exists of substantial buildings and at
least one burial on the western slopes of Waden Hill beside
the Winterbourne. To the east on Overton Hill rare Roman
barrows were built beside the road of the same period.
Saxon (c AD 410–1066)
There is evidence of an early Saxon settlement at Avebury
itself, on the site of the current visitor car park, together with
pagan Saxon barrows and other burials reusing the Bronze
Age cemetery on Overton Hill. From the late Saxon period
onwards there is documentary as well as archaeological
evidence of the development of the landscape. Saxon
charters provide evidence of the estates which came to form
the medieval parishes and identify various features which
the boundaries followed or crossed, including the Ridgeway
which cuts across the prehistoric and Roman field systems
on Overton Down. Green Street leading out of Avebury to
the east was probably part of an important east-west route
at this period if not before. 
Evidence for the Saxon origins
of Avebury church is still apparent in its fabric. In the late
Saxon period the summit of Silbury Hill was remodelled and a
wooden fortification constructed, possibly to serve as a lookout
post.
Amesbury was the centre for a widespread royal estate
during the Saxon period, and the abbey was founded in AD
979. It is probable that the town itself grew up around these
establishments but little is known of the way in which the
surrounding landscape was utilised. However, the remains
of several Saxon sunken-featured buildings were revealed at
the Countess East site which may have been an early Saxon
settlement which later shifted to the town of Amesbury.
Stonehenge itself may have become an execution site during
this period; a decapitated Saxon man was buried around
AD 645 at the monument. It is even possible that the name,
Stonehenge from the Saxon stone and heng may refer to this
function, or may mean that, to Saxon eyes, the great stone
trilithons resembled a gallows. Alternatively it may simply refer
to the extraordinary hanging lintels of the Stone Circle.
Medieval to Modern (AD 1066 onwards)
In the 12th century the alien cell of a Benedictine priory was
established at Avebury, probably on, or close to the site of the
present Avebury Manor.
A documented run of bad harvests in the early 14th century,
which resulted in the desertion of the downland farmstead
on Fyfield Down, followed by the Black Death later marked
the end of early medieval expansion. Marginal arable reverted
to pasture and there is evidence of settlement contraction or
shift in most of the settlements along the Kennet, including
Avebury itself and Avebury Trusloe.
From the 14th century onwards the practice of stone burial
reduced many of the Avebury megalithic settings significantly.
This process accelerated during the post-medieval period
with Stukeley recording a period of particularly rampant stone
destruction in the 1720s; though archaeological evidence
suggests that the destruction may have started as early as the
late 15th century.
The earliest surviving parts of Avebury Manor date to the
mid-16th century. It is at about this time and during the 17th
century that parts of the common downland pasture on West
Hill, Windmill Hill and Knoll Down were enclosed. Most of
the open fields were not enclosed until the 18th century,
but a notable exception, still extant, was the enclosure of
an area just east of the West Kennet Avenue. Parts of the
meadowland along the valley floor at Avebury were enclosed
in the 17th century, and at various points along the floor of the
valley, at Avebury and around the foot of Silbury Hill. At West
Overton and Avebury there are the earthworks of managed
water meadow systems some probably originating in the
17th century and surviving in use until the 19th or early 20th
century.
Parliamentary enclosure occurred in 1795 at Avebury and in
1813 to 1814 at Winterbourne Monkton and the Overton
group of parishes, resulting in the creation of large rectangular
fields, many bounded by quickset hedges, alongside the more
limited areas of old enclosure. The Napoleonic Wars saw a
re-expansion of arable, and this became even more marked
Amesbury – including Stonehenge – is the UK’s longest continually-occupied settlement
The dig unearthed the largest haul of worked flints from the Mesolithic period
