New excavations near Stonehenge could finally explain its reason for existence: as one half of a much larger temple built to celebrate the living and the dead.

 

A dig less than two miles away has revealed the largest neolithic village in Britain. The similar dates and designs of the sites have convinced archaeologists that they were elements of a single religious complex.

 

Stonehenge was designed as a permanent monument to the dead and constructed of rock to symbolise their enduring presence, the research suggests.

 

The nearby settlement at Durrington Walls was a shrine to the transience of life. Its houses were made of wood, as was a timber circle mirroring the design of Stonehenge.

 

These wooden structures were deliberately intended to rot away, as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of human existence, scientists say.

 

Mike Parker Pearson, of the University of Sheffield, led the study along with Julian Thomas, of the University of Manchester. Dr Parker Pearson said: “We are looking at these two monuments being complementary opposites.”

 

In 2003 the Stonehenge Riverside Project began the first extensive archaeological investigation of the World Heritage Site for a quarter of a century.

 

The dig, funded chiefly by the National Geographic Society and the Arts & Heritage Research Council, indicates that Stonehenge was used for funeral rites and solemn ancestor worship. More than 250 cremations are thought to have been performed there.

 

Durrington Walls was for celebrating life’s ephemeral pleasures. Vast quantities of animal bones, many of them half-eaten, have been found in the houses, suggesting that it was a venue for raucous feasts.

 

“This is what we would call conspicuous consumption. It is an enormous feasting assemblage,” Dr Parker Pearson said. “It was there for people to have a good time. This was the first free festival at Stonehenge.”

 

While Durrington Walls, a roughly circular area 1,400ft (425m) across enclosed by a ditch and bank, has long been known to archaeologists, its significance has only emerged from the recent digs.

 

First, a survey of magnetic anomalies at the site revealed at least 25 places where small houses appeared once to have stood.

 

Last September eight were excavated, exposing six well-preserved clay floors with oval central hearths and post-holes that once anchored wooden furniture. All were scattered with the debris of ancient feasting, such as animal bones, pottery shards and charred stones.

 

Radiocarbon dating has shown that the site was built between 4600BC and 4500BC, when the vast bluestones and sarsen stones of Stonehenge were being erected.

 

“We think we are looking at the village of the actual builders of Stonehenge,” Dr Parker Pearson said. “It would then have been occupied by people visiting for festivals in the succeeding decades and possibly centuries.”

 

Three pieces of evidence support the theory that Durrington Walls was the ceremonial counterpart of Stonehenge.

 

Dr Thomas has excavated two other houses set apart from the other eight, which are devoid of debris. “We might speculate that chiefs, priests or wise women might have been living here in seclusion,” he said. “Or the cleanliness might mean these were not dwellings, but shrines or cult houses.”

 

The scientists have also established that a circle of concentric holes, once thought to have been the foundation of a covered structure, was actually a timber circle designed as counterpart to Stonehenge. From it, a ceremonial avenue leads to the River Avon, very similar to another at Stonehenge.

 

At Stonehenge, the circle and walls line up with sunrise at the midsummer solstice and sunset at the midwinter solstice, while at Durrington Wells they frame the midwinter solstice sunrise and the midsummer solstice sunset. “There is a single pattern of movement,” Dr Thomas said. “One is permanent, one is transient; one is stone, one is wood.”

 

The twin avenues connecting each monument to the river suggest that each was used by worshippers moving from one site to the other. The Durrington Walls timber circle’s foundation holes are filled with what appear to be offerings of food and pottery, further suggesting that the circle was always designed to decay.