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Britain was pulled closer towards a renewed cold war with Russia when David Cameron announced UK military trainers are to be deployed to help Ukraine forces stave off further Russian backed incursions into its sovereign territory. The decision – announced on Tuesday but under consideration by the UK national security council since before Christmas – represents the first deployment of British troops to the country since the near civil war in eastern Ukraine began more than a year ago. Downing Street said the deployment was not just a practical bilateral response to a request for support, but a signal to...

Ancient Stonehenge Houses Unearthed Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Oct. 13, 2006 —Nine Neolithic-era buildings have been excavated in the Stonehenge world heritage site, according to a report in the journal British Archaeology. The structures, which appear to have been homes, date to 2,600-2,500 B.C. and were contemporary with the earliest stone settings at the site's famous megalith. They are the first house-like structures discovered there. Julian Thomas, who worked on the project and is chair of the archaeology department at Manchester University in England, said Stonehenge could have been a key gathering place at the Neolithic era's version of a...

Is Stonehenge Roman? Geoffrey Wainwright, the co-Director of the excavations. Geoffrey's friends will be glad to note that he has now recovered from his hip replacement, though he can still not get down the deep holes After a gap of some forty four years, Stonehenge is once again being excavated. Admittedly, this time it is only a very small hole, and is only being dug for a fortnight, but it is a very important hole, and on April the 9th, we were invited down to Stonehenge to inspect it. It was a wonderful trip, not least because the weather was...

The teams, from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Bournemouth and University College London, all working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP), explored not just Stonehenge and its landscape but also the wider social and economic context of the monument's main stages of construction around 3,000 BC and 2,500 BC... Previous theories have suggested the great stone circle was used as a prehistoric observatory, a sun temple, a place of healing, and a temple of the ancient druids. The Stonehenge Riverside Project's researchers have rejected all these possibilities after the largest programme of archaeological research ever mounted on this iconic...

Today we travel to southern Illinois, where just across the Mississippi River is located the Cahokia Archaeological Zone. Cahokia was the largest known Native American city north of Mexico. At its peak population around 1250 AD, it was larger that London, England. Of course, Cahokia was not its real name. No one knows its real name. Unlike the ancient towns in the Southeast, where direct descendants of the original occupants still live, no one even knows yet what happened to the population of Cahokia, after it was abandoned. There was an indigenous village in the vicinity of Cahokia as early...

New wooden henge, a circular ditch that aligns with world-famous monument, deemed site's most exciting find in a lifetime -- Without a sod of earth being dug up, a new henge, a circular ditch which probably enclosed a ring of timber posts and may have been used for feasting, has been discovered...only 900 metres away and apparently contemporary to the 5,000-year-old stone circle, as the most exciting find at Stonehenge in a lifetime... The henge was revealed within a fortnight of an international team beginning fieldwork on the three-year Stonehenge Hidden Landscape project, which aims to survey and map 14...

A prehistoric village has been discovered in southern England that was likely home to the builders of Stonehenge, archaeologists announced on January 30, 2007 (read the full story). The village, located 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the famous stone circle, includes eight wooden houses dated back to around 2500 B.C. The remains of a cluster of homes include the outlines of floors, beds, and cupboards. Tools, jewelry, pottery, and human and animal bones were also found. The excavated houses formed part of a much bigger settlement dating back to the Late Stone Age, according to project leader Mike Parker Pearson...

The team who worked on the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2009 are to return to their findings to explain the eating habits of the people who built and worshipped at the stone circle over four thousand years ago... the new 'Feeding Stonehenge' project will analyse a range of materials including cattle bones and plant residue... Initial research suggests the animals were brought considerable distances to the ceremonial site.. The original Stonehenge Riverside project, which strengthened the idea that nearby Durrington Walls was part of the Stonehenge complex, yielded a surprisingly wide range of material ranging from ancient tools to animal...

Stone age people drove animals hundreds of miles to a site close to Stonehenge to be slaughtered for ritual feasts, according to scientists who have examined the chemical signatures of animal remains buried there... Durrington Walls is a stone-age village containing the remains of numerous cattle and pigs which are thought to have been buried there after successive ritual feasts. The site is two miles north east of Stonehenge and dates from around 3000 BC, 500 years before the first stones were erected... The evidence points to groups of people driving animals from as far away as Wales for the...

Archaeologists at the University of Sheffield have revealed new radiocarbon dates of human cremation burials at Stonehenge, which indicate that the monument was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3000 B.C. until well after the large stones went up around 2500 B.C. The Sheffield archaeologists, Professor Mike Parker-Pearson and Professor Andrew Chamberlain, believe that the cremation burials could represent the natural deaths of a single elite family and its descendants, perhaps a ruling dynasty. One clue to this is the small number of burials in Stonehenge´s earliest phase, a number that grows larger in subsequent centuries, as...

Message in the Stones Why transport 82 two-tonne megaliths across more than 250 miles of mountain, river and sea to build a stone circle at Stonehenge? This is one of the greatest mysteries of Britain’s best-known, but least understood, prehistoric monument. Now Tim Darvill thinks he has the answer: the famous bluestones had healing powers, and the builders of Stonehenge were creating a prehistoric Lourdes. The latest issue of CA tells all. Despite centuries of study, we seem no nearer to answering such basic questions as what is Stonehenge, who built it and why. The publication in 1965 of Stonehenge...

Evidence of a large settlement full of houses dating back to 2,600 BC has been discovered near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge in southwest England, scientists said on Tuesday. They suspect inhabitants of the houses, forming the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, built the stone circle at Stonehenge -- generally thought to have been a temple, burial ground or an astronomy site -- between 3,000 and 1,600 BC. "We found the remains of eight houses," Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of archaeology at Sheffield University, said in a teleconference to announce the discovery. "We think they are...

Stonehenge builders' houses found The village would have housed hundreds of people (Image: National Geographic) Archaeologists say they have found a huge ancient settlement used by the people who built Stonehenge. Excavations at Durrington Walls, near the legendary Salisbury Plain monument, uncovered remains of ancient houses. People seem to have occupied the sites seasonally, using them for ritual feasting and funeral ceremonies. In ancient times, this settlement would have housed hundreds of people, making it the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain. The dwellings date back to 2,600-2,500 BC, the same period that Stonehenge was built. "In what were...

A team of 100 archaeologists, from various universities around Britain, along with Wessex Archaeology, has been carrying out excavations as part of the seven-year Riverside Project at Woodhenge, Durrington Walls and Stonehenge Cursus to find out more about the sites and their links with Stonehenge in the 26th Century BC... Professor of archaeology at Sheffield University Mike Parker- Pearson is leading the dig: "I think our most exciting discovery is the ceremonial avenue which leads from Durrington Walls to the river." ...The road, which formed an avenue aligned on the Midsummer Solstice sunset, suggested that Durrington Walls and Woodhenge were...

Stonehenge druids 'mark wrong solstice' By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 21/06/2005) Modern-day druids, hippies and revellers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival as they believe. The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice. Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered. Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University...

A Valentine's Day cinema screening of Fifty Shades of Grey ended in chaos when three women were arrested for attacking a man. Witnesses claim the bust-up started after the victim asked the "worse for the wear" women to quieten down during a viewing on Saturday evening. Police then rushed to Grosvenor Cinema in Glasgow's west end where they arrested three women. Cinema visitors also claimed the man had been glassed and that staff were forced to wipe blood from seats before the next screening of the film.

Republican White House hopefuls have long treated London as a useful backdrop. Ronald Reagan met Margaret Thatcher three times there before he won his party’s nomination (and before she had moved into Downing Street). But this time the parade of aspirants is faster and thicker than before. Staging a London photo-op conveys two messages — it shows foreign policy credentials and asserts the value of old alliances. Both are qualities President Barack Obama supposedly lacks. Visiting the UK is shorthand for a resurgent post-Obama America. In practice, however, London-as-prop is only highlighting the dearth of thinking on both sides of...

Ukip leader will speak at CPAC summit where plastic fetuses are handed out by anti-abortion activists. Nigel Farage will speak alongside some of the most extreme conservatives in US politics Nigel Farage will speak alongside Sarah Palin and some of America's most extreme Right-wing conservatives at a conference in Washington next week. The Ukip leader will share a stage with a host of gun activists, Tea Party leaders and anti-abortion campaigners at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Visitors to the summit are sometimes handed plastic fetuses by Evangelical Christian activists as a symbol of their opposition to abortion,...

Mohammed Ammer Ali, 31, was arrested in a joint raid by north-west counter terrorism unit and Merseyside police.A man from Liverpool has been charged with attempting to obtain a chemical weapon, police have said. The 31-year-old was arrested following a joint raid by the north-west counter-terrorism unit (NWCTU) and Merseyside police. He was named as Mohammed Ammer Ali, of Prescot Road, Liverpool, and will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday. The charge followed an investigation by NWCTU and Merseyside police, according to Greater Manchester police (GMP). He is accused of attempting to have a chemical weapon in his possession...

The Conservatives have opened up a four-point lead over Labour after the biggest surge in their support for two years, a poll has suggested. A Guardian/ ICM poll showed that the Tories are six points up to 36 per cent, only one point short of their result in the 2010 General Election. Labour support fell one point to 32 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats were also down a point to 10 per cent.