Archaeologists conducting the first dig at Stonehenge in decades say they have broken through to areas that could reveal the ancient English monument's original purpose.

Based on years of study, the team believes that Stonehenge served as a religious center and a place of healing even before its famous "goal posts" were erected. "A prehistoric 'Lourdes' was set up at Stonehenge," said Geoff Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries and a key proponent of the theory.

The current two-week excavation, funded by the BBC, is aimed at extracting samples from buried sockets where ancient builders placed the earliest stones erected at Stonehenge, known as bluestones. Figuring out more precisely when those stones were brought to the site could help confirm the theory that Stonehenge's builders thought the bluestones had healing powers.

Tim Darvill, a leading Stonehenge scholar at Bournemouth University who is working with Wainwright to lead the excavation, told the BBC that the first week's work went "really well."

"We have broken through to these key features," Darvill said in a report published Wednesday. "It is a slow process, but at the moment everything is going exactly to plan."

Three years ago, Darvill and Wainwright reported that the bluestones were apparently transported to the Salisbury Plain site from the Preseli Mountains in south Wales, 153 miles (250 kilometers) away. Now they want to compare the rock samples found in Wales with bits of bluestone from the sockets at Stonehenge. Organic material from the sockets will undergo radioisotope dating to determine when the bluestones were placed.