(See related photos and maps and watch video.) New analysis of ancient human remains show that people were buried at the southern England site from about 3000 B. until after the first large stones were raised around 2500 B. "This is really exciting, because it shows that Stonehenge, from its beginning to its zenith, is being used as a place to physically put the remains of the dead," said Mike Parker Pearson of England's University of Sheffield.

"It's something that we just didn't appreciate until now." Parker Pearson heads the Stonehenge Riverside Project, a seven-year archaeological investigation of the Stonehenge area, supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

Stonehenge stood as giant tombstones to the dead for centuries—perhaps marking the cemetery of a ruling prehistoric dynasty—new radiocarbon dating suggests.

The site appears to have been intended as a cemetery from the very start, around 5,000 years ago—centuries before the giant sandstone blocks were erected—the new study says.

The unique archaeological significance of The Phoenix Park is that its landscape has remained in continuous pasture for so long.

As broad swathes of the park have been retained as open pasture, previously unrecorded monuments, or the vestigial remains of identified monuments may survive to be rediscovered just under the sod.

Ancient peoples may have been drawn to the commanding position of lands overlooking the River Liffey and to the panoramic views across the river valley to the Dublin mountains.

Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition--like a layer cake, the lowest layers must have been formed first.

In other words, artifacts found in the upper layers of a site will have been deposited more recently than those found in the lower layers.

Norway's aim is to minimize the loss of archaeological monuments.

However, reports on the state of our monuments and sites and calculations show that losses are currently running at about 1 per cent per year.