<
 
 
 
 
×
>
You are viewing an archived web page, collected at the request of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) using Archive-It. This page was captured on 17:32:23 Dec 19, 2015, and is part of the UNESCO collection. The information on this web page may be out of date. See All versions of this archived page.
Loading media information hide

Did You Know? A 'Stonehenge' was found in the sea off England...

A 'Stonehenge of the sea' has been found at the coast of Norfolk at Holme-next-the-Sea in the UK in 1998, and nicknamed Seahenge. It was created approximately 4,000 years ago. The actually two holy sites correctly named Holmes I (2049 BC) and II (2400-2030 BC) consist of periodically submerged timber circles at the seafront and feature small split oak trunks which form a round enclosure. Their centre was a large inverted oak stump.

The accurate dating of the creation of the sites was possible by using dendrochronology. The tree rings on the wooden relics could be correlated with other overlapping tree ring variations.

The sites were discovered due to the movement of the tide on Holme Dunes. It was wearing away the covering peat layers. The two Holmes sites were excavated in 1999 and their artefacts underwent conservation at the Mary Rose Centre in Portsmouth.

A recreated Seahenge near the original site has been installed at the Lynn Museum in King's Lynn.

© NAS/UNESCO
The so-called site of "Seahenge"