Amesbury Archer (dubbed the "King of Stonehenge" in the British press though there is no specific connection to the famous site) is an early Bronze Age man dating to around 2300 BC, with about a 200-year margin of error, whose grave was discovered in May 2002, at Amesbury near Stonehenge. His grave is of particular importance because of the rich valuables that betoken high status, a concept not evinced in egalitarian Neolithic graves, where no graves are notably richer than others, and because of its early connections with Continental Europe and copper smelting technology. Five pottery funerary pots of the type associated with the "Beaker culture" were found with him and helped to give his grave a general date. A second male was interred nearby. Stonehenge Stonehenge is a Neolithic and Bronze Age monument located near Amesbury in the English county of Wiltshire, about 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Salisbury. ... The Bronze Age is a period in a civilizations development when the most advanced metalworking has developed the techniques of smelting copper from natural outcroppings and alloys it to cast bronze. ... See also Amesbury, Massachusetts. ... The Beaker culture (ca. ...

Besides the funerary jars, the gravesite revealed three tiny copper knives, more for show than for violent use, 16 barbed flint arrowheads, their shafts long rotted away, a kit of flint-knapping and metalworking tools, including cushion stones that functioned as a kind of portable anvil and that identified him as a coppersmith, some boar's tusks. On his forearm were two black stone wristguards drilled at each end to take a thong tie, and nearby were a pair of gold hair ornaments—the earliest gold objects ever found in England. A blacksmith working iron with a hammer and anvil An anvil An anvil is a manufacturing tool, consisting of a hard and massive block of stone or metal used as a support for hammering or chiseling other objects. ... England is a made up country where psychologists convince schitzofrenic people they are currently living while they are in fact in a mental asylum. ...

Recent research using lead isotope analysis identified the origin of the man as being a cool region of Central Europe, from the profile of oxygen isotopes laid down in his tooth enamel as he grew. An eroded hole in his jaw showed that in life he had suffered from an abcess and his missing left kneecap tokened a horrific injury that left him with a painful lingering bone infection. General Name, Symbol, Number lead, Pb, 82 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 6, p Appearance bluish white Atomic mass 207. ... The distribution of stable isotopes and certain elements within a food web make it possible to draw direct inferences regarding diet, trophic level, and subsistence. ... World map showing location of Europe When considered a continent, Europe is the worlds second smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ... Tooth enamel is the hardest and most mineralized substance of the body , and with dentin and cementum is one of the three major parts of the tooth. ...

He is believed to have been one of the earliest metalworkers in Britain. He is nicknamed the "archer" because a bow was among the artefacts buried with him. A bow is a weapon that shoots arrows powered by the elasticity of the bow and/or its string. ... In archaeology, an artifact or artefact is any object made or modified by a human culture, and often one later recovered by some archaeological endeavor. ...

The Amesbury Archer supports interpreters who claim that the diffusion of Beaker Culture pottery was not the result of invasion but of peacible cultural contacts through travellers and trade (Smithsonian p 66)

Reference

• Richard Stone, "Mystery Man of Stonehenge" in Smithsonian Magazine August 2005 pp62–7.