Domain of the dead
Stonehenge served as an elite cemetery for more than 500 years
By Bruce Bower
Stonehenge, a set of earth, timber, and stone structures perched provocatively on England’s Salisbury Plain, has long invited lively speculation about its origin and purpose.
![New radiocarbon measurements of burned human bones excavated earlier indicate that the famous Stonehenge site in southern England served as a cemetery for half a millennium, from around 5,000 to 4,500 years ago.](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/7995.jpg?resize=300%2C164&ssl=1)
There was nothing lively about Stonehenge in its heyday, though. Ancient big-wigs used Stonehenge as a cemetery from its inception nearly 5,000 years ago until well after its large stones were put in place 500 years later, according to the directors of a 2007 investigation of the ancient site.