to the earth bank and ditch at Stonehenge is reproduced at similar sites with rings of timber postholes. That the holes appear to have been filled soon after excavation and then possibly redug does not exclude the possibility that they held timber posts which were replaced intermittently. No evidence of postpipes has been recovered with the holes although modern archaeological excavation techniques have not been applied to the pits. If the putative timbers were purposefully removed when they fell out of use, then even this evidence would be difficult to spot however. The lack of full documentation from the early Stonehenge digs in the twentieth century and the disturbance caused by the insertion of the later cremations during Stonehenge 2 have also added to the uncertainty over the function of the holes. In a survey of twentieth-century excavations at Stonehenge, English Heritage's Stonehenge in its landscape, archaeologist Karen Walker collated and studied the surviving records from all the earlier work on the holes and concluded that "Although the evidence is inconclusive, and will no doubt be the subject of continued debate, the authors are inclined to support the view that the Aubrey Holes held posts, which were removed, rather than burnt in situ or left to decay." In August 2008, further excavation of Aubrey Hole 7 by Mike Parker Pearson, Mike Pitts and Julian Richards led the archaeologists to suggest that the 56 holes had held Welsh bluestones, since they are too shallow to be postholes. In fact the holes are identical in width, depth, and shape to the bluestones located elsewhere in Stonehenge. They are confident that the Aubrey holes belong to Stonehenge's initial phase of construction. Professor Parker Pearson said: "It's very exciting that we have evidence for stones right from its beginnings around 3000 BC. That's almost 500 years earlier than anyone had thought." Archaeoastronomy and the Aubrey Holes The astronomical readings of the holes are largely a product of the interpretation of them as being simple pits without any structural features. This approach has required finding an explanation which tends towards the theory that the holes were repeatedly dug, filled and redug and excludes possibilities relating to any possible timber posts standing in them. The theory that they may have been used to hold temporary markers for use in astronomical observations gained credence in the 1960s. An early attempt to analyse the positions of the Aubrey