Visitors are dwarfed by the Stonehenge monument in England in this Jan. 31, 2007, file photo. Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, researchers said Thursday.

Washington ? The mysterious circular stone monument at Stonehenge was a “domain of the dead,” researchers said Thursday, a burial ground downriver from a separate circle of wooden pillars that marked the “domain of the living.”

The researchers studying England’s famous circle of standing stones reported that the enigmatic structure served as a burial place from its beginning, possibly for a single prominent family.

The first radiocarbon dating for remains at Stonehenge show cremated burials there as early as 3000 B.C. and continuing for at least 500 years, said Mike Parker Pearson of England’s University of Sheffield.

The continuing research also uncovered an ancient village at nearby Durrington Walls, where the remains of a circle of wooden pillars has been dubbed the Southern Circle. Both the Southern Circle and Stonehenge connect by avenues to the River Avon.

“The Southern Circle and stone circle are very similar indeed, even though they are made of very different materials,” said Julian Thomas of Manchester University in England. “They are oriented to the river, so it becomes a process of transformation of the living or the dead moving between those two sites.”

But while Stonehenge is oriented to the midsummer sunrise, the Southern Circle faces the other way, welcoming the midwinter sunrise, the researchers pointed out.

Burials continued for at least 500 years, to the time when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

“It’s now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages,” said Parker Pearson, head of the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project.

In the past many archaeologists had thought that burials at Stonehenge continued for only about a century, the researchers said.