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A SKELETON found in a shallow grave at Stonehenge is of a man who was
executed, say archaeologists. The find has shifted their ideas about what
Stonehenge was used for, and when.

The skeleton shows definite signs of decapitation with a metal sword. “It has
completely changed the way I think about Stonehenge,” says Mike Pitts, an
independent archaeologist who examined it. The bones were unearthed in 1923, but
were misplaced during the Second World War. Until last year they were hidden
away in a cardboard box in the stores of London’s Natural History Museum.

Jacqueline McKinley of the organisation Wessex Archaeology says it is obvious
that the skeleton’s fourth neck vertebra had been chopped. The angle of the
break is aligned with a nick on its chin, showing that the victim had been
attacked from behind. And because the cut was a clean one, it must have been
inflicted by a narrow blade slicing through bone—a clear sign of an
execution. The use of a metal sword puts the death sometime between 100 BC and
1000 AD. The finding has surprised archaeologists, who thought Stonehenge, on
Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, was not used after about 1500 BC.

Pitts is scrambling to carbon date the bones, and hopes to have the results
soon. Meanwhile, Paul Budd at the University of Bradford has analysed the ratios
of lead, strontium and oxygen isotopes in the skeleton’s tooth enamel to
determine the geology of the victim’s home territory. So far they have a picture
of a thirty-something 1.65-metre man who grew up in southern England. He also
had protruding front teeth.