Durrington Walls: Huge Pits Confirmed as Man-Made

In June last year it was reprted that a 1.2 mile-wide (2km) circle of large shafts measuring more than 10m (30ft) in diameter and 5m (15ft) in depth centred on Durrington Walls had been discovered in the Stonehenge landscape as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, led by the University of Bradford. [Ring of Shafts Discovered Centred on Durrington Walls]

The team from the universities of St Andrews, Birmingham, Warwick, Bradford, Glasgow and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David suggested that the 20 or more shafts may have served as a boundary to a sacred area connected to the henge.

As a man-made feature the ring of pits would be the largest prehistoric structure found in Britain, but some were sceptical and dismissed the pits as mere natural features.

The pits were first noticed by archaeologists in the early 20th century but they assumed the structures were dew ponds, or shallow artificial pools created to hold cattle’s drinking water. Others suggested that the pits were natural sinkholes.

Now Professor Vincent Gaffney, of Bradford University, an archaeologist who headed the team that made the discovery, said science had proved that this was indeed a huge Neolithic monument.

While part of the circle has not survived, owing to modern development, Gaffney said the latest fieldwork involved scientific analysis of nine of the pits which has proved that those gaping pits, each evenly spaced and aligned to form a huge circle spanning 1.2 miles in diameter, centred precisely on Durrington Walls, were definitely man-made, dug into the sacred landscape almost 4,500 years ago.

Gaffney said, “We’ve now looked at nearly half of them and they’re all the same. So effectively this really does say this is one enormous structure. It may have evolved from a natural feature, but we haven’t located that. So it’s the largest prehistoric structure found in Britain.”

Using modern remote sensing technology they searched below the surface and pinpointed where the ground has been disturbed even after thousands of years combined with dating evidence determined by the use of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), which is able to date the last time that sediment was exposed to daylight.

The underground analysis was carried out by Dr Tim Kinnaird, of the school of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews, who said: “These proved beyond doubt that the pits date to around 2400BC.”

He added: “It’s confirmed that the [pits] are all very similar, which is fascinating.” If these were natural features such as sinkholes, they would be different sizes.“

The data showed that the pits were being used from the late Neolithic until the Middle Bronze Age, which suggests they were being maintained beyond the monumental phases of Stonehenge.

According to Gaffney, the discovery makes the site the largest prehistoric structure in all of Great Britain and perhaps Europe.

The discovery is explored in a Channel 5 documentary titled Stonehenge: The New Revelations, to be aired on 9 December (9pm).

 

L&M Comment: It is difficult to envisage the purpose of these massive pits; too large to hold an individual stone or timber post but clearly forming some sort of demarcation around Durrington Walls. Requiring massive effort to produce, would these huge empty pits have been easily recognised as boundary markers to a no-go sacred zone? Surely if this was their purpose then a simple ring of spaced wooden posts would be more visually effective and easier to construct.

Further reading:

Gaffney, V. et al. 2020 A Massive, Late Neolithic Pit Structure associated with Durrington Walls Henge, Internet Archaeology 55

New tests show neolithic pits near Stonehenge were human-made – The Guardian 23 Nov 2021

Stonehenge pits ARE man-made – The Mail Online 24 Nov 2021