Wiltshire - the home of the BBQ
Stone-age pilgrims 'held barbecues at Stonehenge' - Telegraph
Analysis of animal remains found near to Stonehenge has shown that cattle were brought to the area from as far away as Wales or even the Scottish Highlands.
Dr Jane Evans, from the British Geological Survey who carried out the research, said: "It looks like people were driving cattle to the area from a significant distance away.
"The area must have been an important place for rituals and gatherings long before the first stones were laid at Stonehenge itself.
"People are coming from considerable distances and dispersion in order to have feasts and were bringing their own food supplies for what must have been a kind of bring your own beef barbecue."
As I have blogged before about slightly more recent remains in the same area:
An Englishman's Castle: Conspicuous Consumption and Global Warming
The East Chisenbury midden is a famous example of a large dump, dating to the 1st millennium BCE. Sited on Salisbury Plain in the United Kingdom, the midden mound contains discrete layer upon layer of flint, charcoal, bones, pottery and excrement. It survives to a height of 2.5m and measures 140m in width despite 2,500 years of weathering. The accumulation is believed by some archaeologists to have a ritual basis, with ritual deposition of produce and waste being suggested as an explanation for its size and longevity.
Sampling of the site suggests that it was produced in less than a hundred years and contains half a million butchered sheep remains, plus some cows and a few pigs. That is some feasting! - Look at the size of it again. My compost heap rots down to a couple of inches high very quickly - this one is still over two metres thick after 2500 years, and it covers the area of 6 football pits.
All Cannings Cross is the same, and so it seems is another one less than half a mile away from All Cannings Cross, and there is probably a third one where my house is built!
And how could Iron Age Wiltshire man afford such extravagance? - the climate was a couple of degrees warmer than now and a bit dryer, so agriculture was more productive. When that little episode of global warming stopped and the climate went wet and cold again it all stopped!