henge

The people and the landscape

What the app says about the land around Stonehenge and the people who used it: the pits under the old car park, Blick Mead, the Cursus, Durrington Walls and who gathered there, and who built the monument. Drafted, refuted and revised in research/lore-landscape-draft-2026-10.md (revision 2, issues #42, #43, #45, #46) and landed under the owner’s answers of 2026-10-05 (“all recomended”, items 11–13).

In the app these notes are read under their own Landscape heading in the lore panel, after the wheel of the year and the monument (item 11). Tappable labels on the horizon at each place are a later follow-up. Every note ships in all nine languages. Place names follow one tested glossary: the Latin-script languages keep the English names (Durrington Walls, Blick Mead, Vespasian’s Camp, Beacon Hill, the Cursus, Amesbury) and translate only the descriptive words (“Greater”, “Lesser”, “River”), and Japanese, Korean and Chinese write each name the same way every time (item 12; LoreTranslationTests). Each figure is held to its source by LoreLandscapeTests.

Before the stones — #42

Note	Tier	Says	Rests on
`landscape.carParkPits`	Established	Three pits in a line under the old car park and one 100 m east; pine charcoal dated from 8580–7645 to 7520–6820 cal BC, the first and last dated events	Parker Pearson et al. 2020 pp 28, 472; Marshall et al. 2012 p 12; Brace et al. 2019
`landscape.carParkPits.reading`	Debated	Sockets for pine posts on a place already sacred? Argued; heartwood or sapwood unknown; one specialist says they never held posts	Parker Pearson et al. 2020 pp 472–473; Marshall et al. 2012
`landscape.blickMead`	Established	A clearing by a spring on the Avon, used c. 8000–3400 BC; “more than 100,000” flints (the excavators’ count); 57 % of 271 identified bones aurochs	Hudson et al. 2022; Jacques & Phillips 2014 p 7
`landscape.blickMead.continuity`	Debated	Did Blick Mead hand the place on? Its excavators argue so; the animal bones and the ancient DNA argue otherwise	Hudson et al. 2022; Serjeantson 2014; Brace et al. 2019; Parker Pearson et al. 2020 p 473
`landscape.vespasiansCamp`	Established	An Iron Age hillfort of 16 ha; Camden’s name, nothing to do with the emperor	Hunter-Mann 1999 p 39; Jacques & Phillips 2014 p 8

The flint count is attributed because the sources differ: Jacques & Phillips 2014 count 11,727 from their trenches, Parker Pearson et al. 2020 “some 40,000”, Hudson et al. 2022 more than 100,000.

The Cursus — #43

Note	Tier	Says	Rests on
`landscape.cursus`	Established	Nearly 3 km long, 100–150 m wide, recorded by Stukeley in 1723; dug 3630–3370 cal BC, centuries before Stonehenge’s first ditch; the younger date once taken for it came from a later pit; the Lesser Cursus extended 3500–3340 cal BC	Parker Pearson et al. 2020 pp 30, 53, 63, 66, 73; Thomas et al. 2009
`landscape.cursus.purpose`	Debated	What it was for is not known; not accurate to the equinox, it points at Beacon Hill; pits dug into it when the sarsens went up	Parker Pearson et al. 2020 pp 53, 58, 97; Darvill et al. 2013 p 63

It sits beside the shipped wheel.equinox note (“No feature of Stonehenge points at the equinoctial sunrise”) without contradicting it: the Cursus is not part of the monument.

Durrington Walls and who gathered — #45

Note	Tier	Says	Rests on
`landscape.durringtonWalls`	Established	Houses around two timber circles, c. 2515–2470 cal BC, “broadly contemporaneously” with the sarsens; the Southern Circle faces the midwinter sunrise; then a henge bank 440 m across over the houses	Parker Pearson et al. 2020 p 33; Parker Pearson et al. 2007; Darvill et al. 2012 p 1034
`landscape.durringtonPigs`	Established	Of 131 pigs, only 13 (15 %) fit a local origin, an overestimate by the authors’ own account; 59 (66 %) the wider region; feasts mostly in winter	Madgwick et al. 2019; Wright et al. 2014
`landscape.durringtonPigs.whoGathered`	Debated	If most of the pigs were not local, by inference most of the people were not; the living and the ancestors; both go beyond the bones	Madgwick et al. 2019; Parker Pearson et al. 2020 p 477
`landscape.durringtonPits`	Debated	What may be huge pits in an arc over 2 km across; the three cored were shaped by people; the rest uninvestigated	Gaffney et al. 2020 §4

The 15 % local figure is given only with its definition and its wider range, because either alone misleads. “Thousands gathered” is cut; it could return only as “perhaps more than 4000, seasonally”, cited to Parker Pearson 2012.

Who built it, and the Beaker question — #46

Note	Tier	Says	Rests on
`landscape.firstFarmers`	Established	Farming came c. 4000 BC with people from the continent; Neolithic Britons descended mostly from farmers of Aegean ancestry	Brace et al. 2019
`landscape.sarsenBuilders`	Established	The sarsens are associated with users of Grooved Ware, and came before the first Beaker burials (2475–2360 cal BC)	Darvill et al. 2012 p 1034; Parker Pearson et al. 2016 p 622; Parker Pearson et al. 2007
`landscape.beakerAncestry`	Established	From c. 2450 BC people associated with Beaker pottery came from the continent and mixed with those here; by the Middle Bronze Age, ~1500–1000 BC, a turnover of at least 90±2 % in ancestry	Olalde et al. 2018
`landscape.beakerAtStonehenge`	Established	Beaker users reworked Stonehenge in Stage 4 (and perhaps Stage 3); the Amesbury Archer, 2380–2290 cal BC	Darvill et al. 2012 pp 1036–1037; Parker Pearson et al. 2016 p 621
`landscape.continuityOrChange`	Debated	Ancestry changed; much else carried on; 10–16 generations with Neolithic-descended groups persisting; migration or emulation still argued	Booth et al. 2021; Parker Pearson et al. 2016; Olalde et al. 2018

The rules for #46, each tested:

Genetic ancestry and cultural continuity are in separate notes, the first Established, the second Debated.
Olalde et al.’s figure is the paper’s own: “a minimum of 90±2% local population turnover by the Middle Bronze Age (~1500–1000 BCE)”, not the abstract’s “~90% … within a few hundred years”. Every language carries “90±2” and “~1500–1000” as written.
The ancestry note ends with the sentence the owner kept: “This is a statement about ancestry: it says who people’s forebears were, not what they believed or how they lived.”
“Replacement”, “invasion”, “Beaker folk” and the rest of the draft’s list (conquest, takeover, wiped out, “the Beaker people”) appear in no landscape note, in English or, in their own words, in any of the eight translations.

Held back

The aurochs hunting-ground idea, the pink flints, the Blick Mead dog and the “Neolithic settlement beyond Vespasian’s Camp” (unpublished or speculative); the Cursus-end pits on the solstice line, Durrington’s “Superhenge” stones and the Archer as a builder or “King of Stonehenge” (press only); the Archer’s Alpine origin (the monograph’s isotope chapter is unread); and the Madagascar model behind “the living and the ancestors” is not cited on its own: the note cites Parker Pearson et al. 2020 p 477, which sets it out. Olalde et al. 2018 and Brace et al. 2019 were read in their author manuscripts; their quoted sentences are still to be checked against the published versions.