Meat Feasts

Around 2500 BC, the people who built and used Stonehenge probably lived at Durrington Walls, a large settlement about 2 miles away. Over 38,000 discarded animal bones have been found there – probably representing at least 1,000 animals. Analysis of these bones can tell us a great deal about where the food came from, and how people prepared their meals.

Of the bones and teeth excavated at the site, 90% were from pigs, and the rest mostly from cattle. Many still had meat attached to them when they were discarded, suggesting that there was more than enough food to go round. Some of the bones have cut-marks made by flint tools, showing that beef was cut up into pieces. Burnt foot bones suggest that pigs were often roasted over open fires.

This was not regular, everyday consumption. Many of the pigs had been killed at about nine months old. Since the piglets were most probably born in the spring, they were therefore all being slaughtered at midwinter. This suggests that people were gathering for feasts at this time of year. Both Stonehenge and some of the timber monuments at Durrington Walls were built to align with the movements of the midwinter and midsummer sun. Were people feasting at Durrington Walls, before processing to witness the midwinter sunset at Stonehenge?

Daily Diet

How did this feasting at Durrington Walls contrast with people’s everyday diet? By the late Neolithic period (3000–2300 BC), people in Britain had been farming for over 1,000 years, so they were expert at raising domestic animals for meat and milk, which seem to have been the most important elements of their diet and economy. They also cultivated and processed cereals, although not on a large scale. The earliest field systems and permanent settlements date from the Bronze Age, around 1500 BC. People also continued to gather wild foods such as mushrooms, berries and plants, and to hunt wild animals.

Domestic animals and plants had arrived in Britain in about 4000 BC, brought from the Continent as part of the much wider spread of agriculture across Europe. Over time, domestication changed the body shapes and behaviours of animals. There is also some evidence of interbreeding, for example between prehistoric aurochs and domesticated cattle.

What’s Cooking?

The people living at Durrington Walls used a type of pottery now known as Grooved Ware because of its geometric grooved decoration. It is often found at henges and ceremonial sites and seems to have been made with feasting and serving in mind.

When a pot is used for cooking, some of the food molecules seep into the porous ceramic material. Scientists have recently developed new ways of chemically analysing pottery fragments to extract these trace residues and identify them. At Durrington Walls, the pots were mostly found to contain pork and beef fats.

Feasting in later Prehistory

The late Neolithic period, when the stone circle at Stonehenge was built, wasn’t the only time in prehistory that communities gathered to hold large feasts. Later, at the end of the Bronze Age and in the early Iron Age (1000–600 BC), large midden sites (waste dumps) were created by people gathering for feasts across southern England and Wales. They survive today as deep build-ups of dark soils (which is why they are sometimes known as black earth sites) and usually contain ash, manure, food remains and pottery.

These mounds of dark earth, made of fertile organic remains, were not spread on the fields as would normally be expected, but appear to have been deliberately kept and built up into huge mounds. These may have become markers of community identity and symbols of fertility. At least 30 such midden sites are known and their size can be quite extraordinary – the small part of the midden excavated at Potterne, Wiltshire, has produced about 134,000 animal bones. Archaeologists often find fragments of cauldrons, smaller bronze bowls and ladles in middens, suggesting that display and serving with style were important parts of the feasting ceremonies.

The earliest Iron Age midden sites also contain many fragments of pottery, much of it highly decorated. Some of the vessels from All Cannings Cross in Wiltshire, for example, were burnished, possibly to imitate cauldrons. Sharing food from such vessels may have been a way of negotiating friendships and alliances in the community.