New Stonehenge discovery: Huge "pit structure" presents another Neolithic mystery

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New Stonehenge discovery: Huge "pit structure" presents another Neolithic mystery

Archaeologists have discovered a massive series of Neolithic-era pits very close to the Stonehenge site in southern England. As with Stonehenge itself its purpose remains a

 

mystery, but the mere detection of the 4,000-5,000-year-old structure, on such a vast scale and so close to one of the world's most recognized prehistoric sites, has left scientists

 

in awe.

An image created by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes archaeological team for a paper published by Internet Archaeology shows the location (red markers) of 20 late Neolithic

 

period pits around the Durrington Walls site in southern England, just a couple miles from Stonehenge, which is visible in the upper left. 

 

The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes team, a cooperative archaeological effort by a handful of British universities, found 20 of the pits altogether, forming most of a circle around

 

the already-known, smaller Neolithic circular site known as Durrington Walls. The pits, or shafts, were each about 20 yards across and five yards deep, according to the team's

 

research, which used a combination of high-tech imaging and traditional excavation techniques.

 

The "Late Neolithic Pit Structure" appears to have encircled the smaller Durrington Walls"superhenge" site, which is still a large structure compared to the familiar circle at

 

Stonehenge. The newly discovered structure is more than a mile wide, and its relation to the other structures in the area from the same time period indicate, "an even more

 

complex society than we could ever imagine," according to one of the scientists who led the research.

 

"Clearly sophisticated practices demonstrate that the people were so in tune with natural events to an extent that we can barely conceive in the modern world," Dr. Richard

 

Bates, from St Andrews University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, told BBC News about the new discovery.

 

An animated digital map created by the research team, and shared online by the European Association of Archaeologists, shows the location of the pits in relation to Durrington

 

Walls superhenge site, all of which sits only about two miles from Stonehenge itself.

 

 

According to the research, published in the online scientific journal Internet Archaeology, the team found manipulated flint and bone fragments in the soil near the bottom of at

 

least one of the pits that dated it to the Late Neolithic period.

 

"The degree of similarity across the 20 features (pits) identified suggests that they could have formed part of a circuit of large pits around Durrington Walls," the paper says.

 

A digital artwork reconstruction shows the settlement at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge in about 2500 BC, shown in midwinter, looking west towards the southern and

 

northern timber circles, with the River Avon in the foreground.

 

Professor Vincent Gaffney, one of the leading archaeologists on the Hidden Landscapes team, told The Guardian that the pits were "an unprecedented find of major significance

 

within the U.K.," saying experts on Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape were, "taken aback by the scale of the structure and the fact that it hadn't been discovered until

 

now so close" to the iconic stone circle.

 

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