This is the most common suggestion we get. Definitely not pens. The long walls are often not high. Some mustatil have gaps in the walls. Others run up the side of volcanos or steep hill. The entrance into the structures are tiny, most people would need to walk through sideways. Basically, we are positive that they couldn’t hold animals. We also have animal pens from later periods(and perhaps some now from same time) and they are very different. We have excavated 5 mustatil now, of a few different types. Other teams in the region have collectively excavated 4 and we compare results. We have also visited or photographed hundreds more. So we can be really certain about the ritual function. But you are right- the people who made these were shepherds. Moving around the area to take advantage of available grasslands etc. very similar to some of the Bedouin still today. Thanks for the question.

So we have performed Carbon 14 testing on the animal remains and charcoal present inside. They all came back around 5300–4900 BCE- so roughly 7000 years ago. We have also done a technique called OSL- which is where you can test the last time a grain of sand saw sunlight. So you get sediment from under the structure, that was trapped when it was built- and determine the age pretty accurately.

So these structures wee first identified in the 70s. They weren’t studied until 2008 but that was just people taking photos. The first one was excavated in 2018. It’s a big world. There is a lot out there that is still to be found.

I actually think the mustatil have changed my view of world archaeology. These are 7000 years old. They cover an area of 350,000 square kilometres(at present). Some are made of over 12,000 tonnes of stone. This suggests a Neolithic period that is so much more complex than I ever imagined. Shared culture, language, and more over such a massive area. Blows my mind.

Yep, cattle cults are common around the world. You can see them in places like Yemen or the corbeilles in Saharan Africa. All I can say is we know one of the horns appears to have burning inside- almost like it was a torch. But we also find little hearths inside the mustatil, so that could be why. Unfortunately, we can’t answer the question as to whether the horns were used elsewhere first. I’d doubt it but you can’t discount it. We just gotta dig more!!!

They did slaughter them, just not inside the structure. Where exactly, we aren't sure. We find cut marks on a number of the horns/teeth, so we can see evidence of butchering. But the non-cranial parts of the body haven't been found and were presumably part of a feast somewhere else. Some of the horns we have found appear like they may have been 'treated' as a way to remove the keratin horn sheath from the bone core. So that could indicate they have come from further away and the horn core was removed in order to be transpored.

They definitely had large herds, we can tell that from the rock art and the fact that they are sacrificing bulls that are more mature.

So over the course of the next 2 years, we are going to excavation a mustatil that is in close association with a nearby Neolithic settlement. The idea being to see whether the animal remains in the mustatil match those in the houses.

Important to state, we have identified 1600 mustatil and have excavated 5. So still a LOT more research to go.

We have found bone tools, but they are very small points probably used for aspects of working with skins/leather. The only 'weapons' we have found are arrowheads which were made out of stone and used for hunting. No shields- bone would not be good for that.

Generally when people are 'feasting' on food like animal, you find burnt scraps of bones which are really obvious as they often have butchering marks on it. We have some Neolithic houses and they are chock full of bone fragments from peoples dinner.

Our project performed remote sensing(satellite imagery survey) and helicopter aerial photography of thousands of sites in the region. The site we excavated was then visited on the ground by 4x4 and subsequently selected to be excavated.

We have had a lot of Saudi students be mentored by us during our seasons. The article also was co-written by an academic at a local University.

My pleasure. If you want to read more about it - you can download our academic paper on it for free https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281904

Just to say, the academic paper this article is based on is open source and free for people to read and download.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281904

Hi, I am one of the coauthors of the paper. In a sense they were community bbq. We theorise that these were built by communities coming together(rather than just family groups). Cattle provide a lot of meat, based off previous studies, one could easily feed hundreds of people.
One thing that is fascinating is we haven't found the remains of the bbq yet. We have only ever found horns and upper cranial elements- never the body. Our new project is focusing on trying to work out where that ritual feasting would have taken place.

Hi, I am one of the co-authors of the piece. Happy to answer any questions.