The archaeologists at Stonehenge from
Wessex Archaeology recently announced the discovery of Neolithic grooved ware pottery, Bronze age graves, the remains of a “mysterious C-shaped enclosure” and a range of ditches. An article in
The Guardian says the Neolithic pottery was discovered just to the south of the site of the Stonehenge visitor center close to the planned western end of the tunnel entrance. The remains of a baby’s ear bones were found in a small, plain pottery beaker, and in a 4,000-year-old Beaker-period burial pit grave nearby a man’s remains and “a unique shale object” were discovered. The researchers are yet unclear what this shale artifact was but its thought to have been “the tip of a ceremonial wooden staff, or a mace (club).”
It comes as campaigners have issued their legal claim in their fight to halt the project. Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) has applied for judicial review of Transport Secretary Grant Shapps’ decision to grant development consent to the eight-mile project that includes a two-mile tunnel past Stonehenge, with cuttings and tunnel entrances within the WHS. Campaigners say a pre-action letter sent by Leigh Day solicitors on behalf of SSWHS did not receive a satisfactory response , and so a claim for judicial review was filed on December 22 before the December 24 deadline. Permission for the A303 scheme was granted against the advice of a five-person panel of expert inspectors, the Examining Authority (ExA), who said the project would permanently harm the integrity of the World Heritage Site and seriously harm its authenticity .