Geophysical survey methods have led to high-resolution mapping of subsurface remnants of ancient landscapes at continually expanding spatial scales. Yet, particularly when applied across entire archaeological landscapes, spanning hundreds of hectares, resultant datasets provide little direct information about inhabitation, environments or change over time.

Focusing on a 2.5 km² area around Stonehenge, we show how geophysical soil survey, when combined with targeted sampling and excavation, can enable reliable empirically-grounded identification of complex activity traces. Particular focus lies on anthropogenic dug pits, identification and interpretation of which are vital in European earlier prehistoric archaeology due to their close connection with inhabitation and ceremonial practices. By integrating frequency domain electromagnetic and invasive datasets, and using a semi-automated interpretation scheme, we identified previously unknown concentrations of large pits (with diameters >2.4 m) among several thousand smaller pits and natural features across the Stonehenge landscape. Excavations of a subset of identified features demonstrate that, in this area, our investigative methodology is 66% accurate for identifying large anthropogenic pits. Our results have significant implications for understanding Stonehenge and its landscape setting, revealing elusive forms of Mesolithic to later Bronze Age land use that - even within the world's most intensively researched archaeological landscape - have gone unrecognized until now.

These findings underscore both the crucial role of archaeological excavation as an essential basis for reliable interpretation of geophysical data, as well as the perils of inductive visual interpretation of features’ morphologies and their spatial configuration in non-invasive survey data.

地球物理调查方法已经导致在不断扩大的空间尺度上对古代景观的地下遗迹进行高分辨率绘图。然而，特别是当应用于跨越数百公顷的整个考古景观时，生成的数据集几乎没有提供关于居住、环境或随时间变化的直接信息。

专注于 2.5 公里²在巨石阵周围地区，我们展示了地球物理土壤调查如何与有针对性的采样和挖掘相结合，可以实现对复杂活动痕迹的可靠的基于经验的识别。特别关注人为挖坑，由于它们与居住和仪式实践密切相关，因此对欧洲早期史前考古学的识别和解释至关重要。通过整合频域电磁和侵入性数据集，并使用半自动解释方案，我们在巨石阵景观的数千个小坑和自然特征中确定了以前未知的大坑（直径 > 2.4 m）浓度。对已识别特征子集的挖掘表明，在该区域，我们的调查方法对于识别大型人为坑的准确率为 66%。我们的研究结果对理解巨石阵及其景观环境具有重要意义，揭示了中石器时代到青铜时代后期土地利用的难以捉摸的形式——即使在世界上研究最深入的考古景观中——直到现在都未被认识。

这些发现强调了考古发掘作为可靠解释地球物理数据的重要基础的关键作用，以及在非侵入性调查数据中对特征形态及其空间配置进行归纳视觉解释的危险。