Mysterious giant holes dating back to the Stone Age amaze archaeologists

“There are very few Mesolithic sites in Britain as large as this one,” Mola archaeologists say. The Guardian.

“Finds from this period are often limited to flint tools and sometimes animal bones,” they add.

A lot of work has gone into digging the 25 holes, which are up to 5 meters in diameter and 1.85 meters deep. The question now is how and why early hunter-gatherers went to such lengths to dig these large pits.

From routine work to the big find

Finding the holes was a surprise. The first excavations took place in 2019, as part of a construction project. It was purely routine work, as no major discoveries had been made in the area before.

But as the excavations progressed, more and more holes emerged. In 2021 Mola returned to work and it was decided to open an even larger area.

At first, archaeologists thought the holes were used as a storage shed in the Middle Ages – or to trap animals, because of the animal bones found there. But then the archaeologists noticed that the holes were dug with precise coordinates: they extend in long straight lines that can be up to 500 meters long.

However, carbon-14 dating showed the animal bones to be around 8,000 years old – and the holes were suddenly even more mysterious. Archaeologists now faced a massive construction project that relatively primitive hunter-gatherer societies might have carried out 3,000 years before Stonehenge.

“It was fantastic for the whole team to work on such an important Stone Age excavation. It really shows how important carbon-14 dating is alongside fieldwork. Without it, we wouldn’t have not realize the significance of our discovery,” says project leader Yvonne Wolframm-Murray.

The holes may have had religious significance

Archaeologists believe the holes had a spiritual purpose, so it will now be investigated whether they were placed in relation to prominent stars or the orbit of the sun.

Unlike other Mesolithic pits in Britain, the Linmere pits appear to have been linked to ancient waterways.

The pits found cover a wide area and excavations are continuing as there may be more to discover. Archaeologists hope to find out if the pits were all dug at the same time and to gather information about plants growing nearby.

“This will help us understand the environment these people lived in and hopefully answer the question: What were these pits used for?” said Wolframm-Murray.