Lard may have been used to build Stonehenge, study suggests
A recent study from Newcastle University has suggested that lard may have been employed by the builders of Stonehenge. By studying neolithic pottery from a nearby site, archaeologists concluded that the traces of the pig far were likely not used for cooking but used as a lubricant to help move the giant strictures. The research was published in the journal Antiquity.
Stonehenge has been one of the most puzzling of all the ancient wonders, with its construction being a mystery. Many different ideas have been suggested but nobody knows for certain how the famous Wiltshire site was built. Research has found that it wasn’t built in one go, with construction beginning 3100 BC and only concluding around 1600 BC.
How the structures were moved is also uncertain but experiments over the last half century have shown that, even with the available technology, it was possible for even the largest of the stones to be moved. Sledges and rollers have long been suggested, including with some form of lubrication.
But only now, thanks to the team from Newcastle University, there is direct evidence of the latter, which so far has only been speculation. Excavations at Durrington Wells, around two miles (3.2 km) northeast of Stonehenge, researchers found 300 fragments of Grooved ware, known as Rinyo-Clacton ware, an ancient form of pottery from between 3000-2000 BC.
On the pottery were traces of what was once lard or pig fat. That on its own is not unusual, it was long assumed that the pots were used to cook food for the builders of the monuments. But reconstruction suggested that the pots were the size of buckets, too big for cooking or serving food. Pig bones in the area also didn’t support the idea of cooking.
“I was interested in the exceptional level of preservation and high quantities of lipids, or fatty residues, we recovered from the pottery,” says Senior Lecturer in Landscape Archaeology, Dr. Lisa-Marie Shillito. “I wanted to know more about why we see these high quantities of pig fat in pottery, when the animal bones that have been excavated at the site show that many of the pigs were spit-roasted rather than chopped up as you would expect if they were being cooked in the pots.”
The new idea is that the pots were used to store pig lard, which would serve to lubricate sledges and rollers. However, Dr Shillito emphasises that more work will be needed on the mystery.
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