From the Christian Science Monitor:

Without digging up one shovel of earth, or dusting off one rock with a toothbrush, Gaffney and the other members of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project have uncovered an incredible find — a mere two weeks into a three-year mission to map 5.5 square miles of land around Stonehenge.

The find, discovered 3,000 feet away from the ancient stone structures, is nothing less than a whole new henge — that is, a circular ditch enclosing a ring which could possibly be the remains of another — but this time wooden — monument.

Archeologists excavated the site using radar imaging and left all the dirt and grass (and holes in the earth that used to hold things that decayed) alone:

“What we are doing is mapping out what remains of what used to exist. The structures must once have held posts, for example, and those posts have gone — but the pits that held them remain and we can see them,” explains Gaffney. “You can argue what the shapes mean, but in most cases you are fairly confident you know what you are dealing with.”

Essentially the team goes around the land with what looks like big lawnmowers and take a giant x-ray of the area — with the intention of creating an image of the site as it was in 4000 BC. Unlike traditional archeology, proponents of this work argue that the shovel-less excavation does not “kill the witnesses,” which means that future archeologists can come back and re-survey, probably with ever better technology. that future archeologists can come back and re-survey, probably with ever better technology.

No matter how old and mysterious it is, no matter what wonders they find next door, Stonehenge will always be best remembered like this: