Couldn't they have been filled with pigs and be sacred? The seperation of the sacred and the secular is a fairly recent thing - even in these islands. The nave of old St Paul's cathedral was used as a market place with records of people weeing in dark corners and cows running amok.
The parable of Jesus and the tax collectors in the temple probably put paid to a lot of that generally speaking here but previously maybe there might have been a range of uses with the purely ritual at one end and the purely social at the other but most sites existing somewhere between
And pigs are holy somewhere still I am sure..
