Party Like It's 2500 B.C.: Feasts At Stonehenge Were Epic Barbecues

A Neolithic village at Durrington Walls. Drawing by Kazuhiko Sano, National Geographic Creative

If you had traveled to visit Stonehenge around 4,500 years ago, you might have stayed in a village called Durrington Walls, just a couple of miles east of the monument of standing stones. You might have gone to this site in southern England because it was getting close to the winter solstice — and the celebrations at Durrington Walls would have included some pretty incredible feasts.

British researchers studying animal bone remains and pottery fragments at Durrington Walls have reconstructed those prehistoric menus: The two main courses very likely would have been fire-roasted pork and beef stew, the researchers reported this fall in the journal Antiquity.

"The bones on the pig carcasses look like they were spit-roasted," says Lisa-Marie Shillito, an archaeologist at the U.K.'s Newcastle University and one of the study's co-authors. "The cows were more likely to be butchered and prepared in the pots." [...] The Salt : NPR / Link 2