Stonehenge used as burial site for hundreds of years

WASHINGTON (AFP) - England's Stonehenge was used as a burial site from its inception 5,000 years ago and remained so for more than 500 years, says a study that may shed some light on the ancient monument.

Radiocarbon dating of cremated human remains from the site show that Stonehenge was used as a cemetery at its inception around 3,000 BC until 2,500 BC, a British archeologist said Thursday. "It's now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages," said Mike Parker Pearson, archeology professor at the University of Sheffield. "Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid-third millennium BC," said Parker Pearson, who with support of the National Geographic Society leads the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project

Up to now, archeologists believed that people had been buried at Stonehenge only between 2,700 and 2,600 BC, before its large stones, known as sarsens, were put in place.

But a small pile of burned bones and teeth from one of the pits around Stonehenge's edge known as the Aubrey Holes dates to 3,030-2,880 BC, the study found.