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A prehistoric circle made almost entirely of mammoth bones has been found in Russia. The 鈥渂onehenge鈥� was built near the peak of the last glacial period, but it isn鈥檛 clear why.

Stone Age people made many bone circles in eastern Europe and northern Asia in the last 22,000 years. One of the best-known sites is Kostenki 11, south of Voronezh in Russia. Two circles of mammoth bones were found there in 1951 and 1970, and have been studied ever since.

Then in 2014 a third circle was found. Alex Pryor at the University of Exeter in the UK and his colleagues have now investigated it.

The circle is about 12.5 metres across. Mammoth bones have been piled up to form a wall 1 to 2 metres thick, with no obvious entrance. We can鈥檛 be sure how tall the wall was, says Pryor, but 鈥渕y hunch would be no more than, say, 50 centimetres high鈥�. The internal space was about 8 metres across.

The circle is about 20,000 years old, according to studies that dated the bones. At that time, ice sheets had advanced far to the south and the local climate was harsh.

Bone circles at other sites have been interpreted as dwellings. 鈥淭he way these things have sometimes been reconstructed is with a whole framework of mammoth bones, used to weight down hide roofs with some kind of wooden supports,鈥� says Pryor.

However, Pryor says that is unlikely in this case. The internal space is so large, it would be difficult to build a roof with prehistoric materials. 鈥淚n the museum in Kiev, they鈥檝e tried to build a reconstruction of one of these things, and they had to use steel girders,鈥� he says. Also, people only seem to have used the circle intermittently.

It may have been used for processing food 鈥� perhaps tuber vegetables, similar to parsnips, that could survive in the frigid climate. The team has found charcoal from fires, flakes of rock produced when stone tools are repaired, and plant remains within the circle.

Alternatively, the bone circle could have had a ritual significance. It is virtually impossible to determine what this might have been, says Pryor. 鈥淭his is why archaeologists tend to use the word 鈥榬itual monument鈥� and then speculate wildly.鈥� For instance, it could have been a demonstration of hunting prowess, highlighting to rivals how many mammoths the group had killed, but this is pure conjecture.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e really enigmatic sites,鈥� says Pryor. 鈥淭here鈥檚 been a long history of debate in the archaeological literature as to what these sites represent.鈥�

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