Archaeologists used high-tech tools to uncover ancient underground pits near Stonehenge. The find may offer insights into Britain’s Stone Age culture.
Land surrounding the site of what was once an ancient village in Great Britain turned up a huge surprise: massive underground shafts. Surrounding the town, the formation has a diameter of more than two kilometers (1.2 miles). Each hole has straight sides and is filled with loose soil.
The shafts date to a time known as the Neolithic, or late Stone Age. They were dug more than 4,500 years ago near another ancient site of far greater fame — Stonehenge. Over the millennia, the shafts filled with dirt and became overgrown. From the surface, you wouldn’t know they were there.
Archaeologists had known since 1916 that some holes lurked underground. They suspected they were small sinkholes. Or maybe they had once been shallow ponds to water cattle. Ground-penetrating radar now has revealed that these were no cattle ponds. Each hole goes down five meters (16.4 feet) and spans 20 meters (65.6 feet) across. So far 20 holes have been found. These are, researchers now think, part of one of the biggest Neolithic monuments in Europe.
Researchers from the University of Bradford in England made the discovery. They were part of a Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project. This is a partnership of several universities and research organizations. A paper describing their find was published June 21 in the online journal Internet Archaeology.
