A new international study, conducted by a multidisciplinary team from the universities of Bradford, Birmingham, Warwick, Trinity Saint David, and St. Andrews, in the United Kingdom, as well as Vienna and Beijing-Hong Kong, has identified and studied a series of enormous pits dating back to the Neolithic not far from the famous site of Stonehenge. It was believed that these anomalies in the ground, arranged in concentric rings, were natural, but the different prospecting techniques used demonstrated their artificial origin.
3 km from Stonehenge, in the south-west of England, is the site of Durrington Walls, part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. In 2020, a series of archaeological surveys identified a set of large holes, subsequently filled with earth. This series of holes (with a diameter of up to 20 meters) is arranged on two arches, which form a large ring with a diameter of 2 km. The research group that studied these large pits wanted to use different analysis techniques to establish whether they were natural or anthropic formations.
Firstly, electromagnetic prospecting techniques were used. By measuring the electrical conductivity of the soil, it is possible to establish whether the sediment present within these formations is actually a fill, different from the surrounding soil. Electromagnetic analyzes have indeed reported differences in the electrical conductivity of the soil.
Another technique used by researchers, the Electrical Resistance Tomography (measures the resistance to electrical impulses of different types of soil), made it possible to measure the depth and shape of these supposed holes. The analysis has in fact shown that these are pits between 4 and 5 meters deep, with inclined sides and flat bottoms, all elements which suggest their non-natural origin.
Subsequently, core samples were carried out, which demonstrated how the filling of the holes is composed of a succession of different layers, even with gravel of origin not compatible with the surrounding soil, and therefore certainly brought inside from somewhere else. Chemical analyzes of the soil also contributed to supporting the anthropic origin of the filling sediments, demonstrating how these fillings occurred over time, in several phases.
Through another technique, the OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence), which allows us to date the formation of the sediments by estimating the last moment in which the samples were exposed to sunlight (therefore before their burial), the authors of the study proposed a dating and sequence for these large holes. They may have been excavated around 2500 BC. C. (therefore they would be coeval with some phases of use of Stonehenge, at the end of the Neolithic) and that they were in use (with a series of progressive burials) throughout the Bronze Age and part of the Iron Age, at least until the mid-5th century. to. C. In the subsequent phases, during the Roman and medieval times, the use of these pits would have ended, and the artificial fillings would have been progressively buried by a natural fill.
Within the various filling levels there were numerous animal remains, especially of cattle and sheep. These were subjected to DNA analysis, to establish whether there was a certain coherence between the remains found in the different layers, or whether they had ended up randomly within the different burial grounds. In fact, within the oldest fills, those dating back to the Neolithic and Bronze Age, a greater quantity of coherent animal remains was found, indicating that activities related to animals probably took place near the holes during this long period, it is not clear whether rituals or practices.
The hypothesis presented by the British researchers is the first. Considering how it is a short distance from Stonehenge, and how the landscape was a reflection of the rituality of the populations of Neolithic England, it is probable that rites linked to these large pits took place near Durrington Walls, in some way associated with the large megalithic complex.
