An article from Newcastle University on phys.org - Stonehenge may have been built using lard - reports on a new study suggesting that pig fat could have been used to grease the sledges used to transport the massive stones of Stonehenge into position.

A reconstruction of the stones being moved at Stonehenge. Image: Bradshaw Foundation

Fat residues on shards of pottery found at Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge, have long been assumed to be connected with feeding the many hundreds of people that came from across Britain to help construct the ancient monument.

But new analysis by archaeologists at Newcastle University in the UK suggests that because the fragments came from dishes that would have been the size and shape of buckets, not cooking or serving dishes, they could have been used for the collection and storage of tallow - a form of animal fat.

The huge megalths that make up Stonehenge were moved by human effort. Image: Bradshaw Foundation

Dr. Lisa-Marie Shillito, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Archaeology, Newcastle University, explains that she was interested in the exceptional level of preservation and high quantities of lipids - or fatty residues - being recovered from the pottery. Why were there high quantities of pig fat in pottery, when the animal bones that have been excavated at the site show that many of the pigs were 'spit roasted' rather than chopped up as you would expect if they were being cooked in the pots?

It is now generally accepted that the huge megaliths that make up Stonehenge were moved by human effort. Recent experiments have suggested that the stones - up to eight metres high and weighing as much as two tonnes - could have been moved by 20 people by placing them on a sled and sliding them over logs.

The pottery at Durrington Walls is one of the best studied for organic residues, with over 300 shards having been analysed as part of wider studies of Grooved Ware use in Britain, and more recently the Feeding Stonehenge project, on which Dr. Shillito worked.

Analysis of residues of absorbed fat is a well-established technique for revealing what foods different type of pottery was used for. But more attention needs to be paid to how this information is interpreted, Dr. Shillito argues; until now, there has been a general assumption that the traces of animal fat absorbed by these pieces of pottery were related to the cooking and consumption of food, rather than evidence of the greased sled theory. Research continues.

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