> Especially since the article gives evidence that things were stored in the holes

They explain it as these holes are at the top of the mountain. Why climb the large mountain to store your grain there just to have haul it back down later? My own guess answers: safer from animals, precipitation, safe from enemies.

Storing in general could mean different things: putting baskets with grain and produce there for a minute and them someone else immediately pick it up in some bartering exchange, it's not really storing then, I guess? Or, even religious offerings can also be explained as "storing" -- they are stored in there until the "gods" (i.e. elements) destroy them (i.e. consume them) and the gods are appeased, that way ensuring good harvests and other benefits.

Yeah, they're just assuming that if you wanted to store something you'd store it at the bottom of the hill.

While I'm no archeologist/anthropologist, I have seen an ancient grainery near the green river in Utah. It was about an hour long very steep half hike half rock scramble to get up to the ledge where it was at.

So maybe ancient people had reasons to put storage sites in more difficult to access locations.

My first explanation would be offerings. The rarity of those crops in the area would mean they were more valuable and therefor likely to be used as offerings.

edit: Or heck, maybe they wanted to keep it away from wildlife or invaders.