Evidence of the people associated with Stonehenge has mainly come from a series of pits, known as the Aubrey Holes, dating from the first period. These form a ring inside the circular earthworks but outside the stones and most of them contained the remains of human burials or cremations.
It is now generally believed that Stonehenge was a temple and formed the ceremonial focus of a much more extensive landscape filled with sacred places. The people lived in settlements away from the sacred area around the temple which was left as grassland, in some places undisturbed to the present day. They farmed the land during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages creating a field system which can still be seen in modern aerial photographs.