England's famous Stonehenge monument was used as a burial site from its inception around 3000 BC until well after the massive stones were erected there around 2500 BC, scientists said. Archaeologists previously be-lieved that people had been buried at Stonehenge only between 2700 and 2600 BC, before the large stones, known as sarsens, were put in place.

英國遠近馳名的史前巨石群遺址，從公元前3000年開始就被當成墓地。科學家指出，直到公元前2500年巨石陣豎立起來為止，這裡一直被當成死人葬身之地。考古學家原先以為，只有在公元前2700年至2600年才被當成墓地，也就是在巨石陣這個史前建築物之沙岩怪石遺跡出土之前。

The new dates, estimated using the latest in carbon dating research, provide strong clues that the original purpose of the ancient monument was as a cemetery, and that it was used as a burial site for more than 500 years. "It's now clear that burials were a major compo-nent of Stonehenge in all its main stages," said Mike Parker Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield in England, who worked with National Geographic Magazine on the study.

新的日期，是使用最新的碳年代測定法研究推估所得。這提供有力的線索，指出這個古老的遺址原始目的就是要當墓地，而且被當成墓地達500年以上。「現在已經很清楚，埋葬是巨石陣在它最重要的階段一個重大的元素，」英國雪菲爾大學考古教授皮爾森說，他是和國家地理雜誌一起進行研究。

"Stonehenge was a place of burial from its beginning to its zenith in the mid-third millennium BC," the ar-chaeologist Parker Pearson said. "The cremation burial dating to Stonehenge's sarsen stones phase is likely just one of many from this later period of the monument's use, and demonstrates that it was still very much a 'do-main of the dead'."

「從開始到公元前第三個千禧年中期達到全盛期，史前巨石群一直是個埋葬地點，」考古學家皮爾森說。「火葬可以上溯到巨石陣沙岩怪石遺跡時期，這可能只是這個遺址晚期諸多用途之一，同時也證明，它當時極可能還是『死者的領域』。」

The research marks the first time any of the crema-tion burial sites from Stonehenge have been radiocar-bon dated. The artifacts dated by Parker Pearson's team were excavated from the UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1950s and have been kept at the nearby Sal-isbury Museum.

這項研究也是史前巨石群火葬墓地第一次接受放射性碳年代測定。由皮爾森團隊所測定年代的古物，是1950年代由聯合國教科文組織世界遺產地所挖掘出土，並一直保存在附近的索爾茲伯里美術館。

Stonehenge is one of the world's best preserved pre-historic monuments. In around 2,600 BC, 80 giant standing stones were arranged on Salisbury Plain, where there was already a 400-year-old stone circle. Around two centuries later, even bigger stones were brought to the plain.Today, only 40 percent of the o-riginals remain. But around 850,000 visitors per year come to marvel at the 17 stones which are still intact.

巨石陣是世界上保存最好的史前遺址之一。在大約公元前2600年，80根巨大的石柱布置在索爾茲伯里平原，當時當地已有400年歷史的石柱群。大約兩世紀後，更巨大的石頭再被搬到平原。今天，只有40%最早的石柱群仍屹立不搖。每年大約有85萬遊客到這裡欣賞仍完好無損的17根石柱。