LONDON — Stonehenge has long beguiled both scientists and awed visitors; its exact purpose lost to the ancient memory of the past. But researchers think they've got a better idea of what happened at Stonehenge — the process of building it seems to have been just as important as its existence. And it was a site for some pretty large parties, to boot.

Furthermore, Stonehenge seems to have been built on top of a cemetery where the ancient British inhabitants' elite had their cremated remains interred.

"The first Stonehenge began its life as a huge graveyard," said University College London archaeologist Parker Pearson. "The original monument was a large circular enclosure built 500 years before the Stonehenge we know today, with the remains of many of the cremated bodies originally marked by the bluestones of Stonehenge. We have also discovered that the second Stonehenge was built 200 years earlier than thought, around 2500 BC."

Not only was the complex older than they thought, it seems to have played an important role in bringing together peoples from across the whole of the British Isles. Each winter solstice, people from across the Isles would come to Stonehenge and participate in a massive feast — some coming from as far away as the Scottish Highlands to participate.

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Each year, the people would gather and a burst of construction and repairs on the site would ensue. But, Parker said this happened no more than 10 times, meaning Stonehenge took only about a decade to construct.

Roughly 4,000 people were thought to gather each year, fully 10 percent of the British population at the time, according to Pearson.

"Stonehenge was a monument that brought ancient Britain together," Pearson said. "Stonehenge was built soon after the appearance of the first pan-British culture, the only time in prehistory that the people of Britain were unified."

Parker and other researchers estimated the age of the site and the size of the festival by studying the teeth of cattle excavated from the site. Some 80,000 animal bones were found there.

The site's location also seems to have been important, according to Pearson. The mid-winter summer sunset and mid-summer sunrise coincide uncannily with parallel ridges found on the landscape, the result of water erosion during the melting that occurred during the Ice Age.

The results of roughly 10 years of research were presented March 10 on a documentary that aired on the BBC's Channel 4.

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