Older than Stonehenge, the Seven Sisters Round Barrow, Copt Hill, Houghton-le-Spring was excavated in 1877. They found objects from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. A burial urn that they found is now in the British Museum.
In 2003 a sample of charcoal was taken from one of the pits which showed that human activity at the site dated from at least the late Mesolithic period (8500-4000 BC).