Researchers discover 3,750-year-old camp where Stonehenge's architects may have stayed
Camp near monument at Larkhill could have been a meeting place or centre of commerce.
Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient camp – known as a causewayed enclosure - where the architects of Stonehenge may have once gathered.
The site is located close to the monument at Larkhill and is thought to have been a meeting place or centre of commerce. Researchers found a set of posts which closely match the layout of Stonehenge, leading them to suggest that it may have been a kind of blueprint.
Si Cleggett from Wessex archaeology thinks that the enclosure was built between 3,750 and 3,650 BC.
"The causewayed enclosure at Larkhill was constructed during the late Stone Age, a period of transition when our ancestors gradually moved away from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle and embraced a farming existence," Cleggett told the Guardian.
"My contention is there is a fair chance the people who met at the causewayed enclosure could have been the architects of the Stonehenge landscape as we understand it."
The earliest version of Stonehenge – consisting of circular ditch with timber posts - was built around 5,000 years ago . The unique stone structure that we know today was erected later, around 4,500 years ago.
