Avebury

 

(ā'bərē) , village, Wiltshire, S central England. The village, with a medieval church and Elizabethan manor house, lies within Avebury Circle, a Neolithic circular group of upright stones that is older and larger than Stonehenge but not so well preserved. The village and the circle have belonged to the nation since 1943 and are administered by the National Trust. To the south of Avebury is the similarly ancient Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric artificial mound in Europe, 130 ft (39.6 m) high and covering more than 5 acres (2 hectares) at its base.

Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, ii, iii
Reference	373
Region†	Europe and North America
Inscription History
Inscription	1986  (10th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO.

Avebury is the site of a large henge and several stone circles in the English county of Wiltshire surrounding the village of Avebury. It is one of the finest and largest Neolithic monuments in Europe dating to around 5000 years ago. It is older than the megalithic stages of Stonehenge, which is located about 32 km (20 miles) to the south, although the two monuments are broadly contemporary overall. It lies approximately midway between the towns of Marlborough and Calne, just off the A4 national route on the northbound A361 towards Wroughton.

Avebury is a National Trust property.

The monument

Most of the surviving structure consists of earthworks, known as the dykes. A massive ditch and external bank henge 421 m in diameter and 1.35 km in circumference enclose an area of 115,000 square metres (28.5 acres). The only known comparable sites of similar date (Stonehenge and Flagstones in Dorset) are only a quarter of the size of Avebury. The ditch alone was 21 m wide and 11m deep with its primary fill carbon dated to between 3400 and 2625 BCE. A later date in this period is more likely although excavation of the bank has demonstrated that people enlarged it at one stage in its lifetime, presumably using material excavated from the ditch. The fill at the bottom of the final ditch would therefore post-date any in an earlier, shallower ditch that no longer exists.

Within the henge is a great Outer Circle constituting prehistory's largest stone circle with a diameter of 335 m (1100 ft). It was contemporary with or built around four or five centuries after the earthworks. There were originally 98 sarsen standing stones some weighing in excess of 40 tons. They varied in height from 3.6 to 4.2 m as exemplified at the north and south entrances. Carbon dates from the fills of the stoneholes date between 2800 and 2400 BCE.

Nearer the middle of the monument are two other, separate stone circles. The Northern inner ring measures 98 m in diameter, although only two of its standing stones remain with two further, fallen ones. A cove of three stones stood in the middle, its entrance pointing northeast.

The Southern inner ring was 108 m in diameter before its destruction. The remaining sections of its arc now lie beneath the village buildings. A single large monolith, 5.5 m high, stood in the centre along with an alignment of smaller stones until their destruction in the eighteenth century. There is an avenue of paired stones, the West Kennet Avenue, leading from the south eastern entrance of the henge and traces of a second, the Beckhampton Avenue lead out from the western one.

Aubrey Burl conjectures a sequence of construction beginning with the North and South Circles erected around 2800 BCE, followed by the Outer Circle and henge around two hundred years later and the two avenues added around 2400 BCE.

A timber circle of two concentric rings, identified through archaeological geophysics possibly stood in the northeast sector of the outer circle, although this awaits testing by excavation. A ploughed barrow is also visible from the air in the northwestern quadrant.

The henge had four entrances, two opposing ones on a north by northwest and south by southeast line, and two on an east by northeast and west by southwest line.

Despite being a manmade structure, it was featured on the 2005 TV programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the West Country because it consists of natural components.

Destruction of the stones

Many of the original stones were destroyed from the early 14th century onwards^[1] to provide local building materials and to make room for agriculture. The stones were also destroyed due to a fear of the pagan rituals that were associated with the site. Both John Aubrey and later, William Stukeley visited the site and described the destruction. Stukeley spent much of the 1720s recording what remained of Avebury and the surrounding monuments. Without his work we would have a much poorer idea of how the site looked and especially little information on the inner rings.

Only 27 stones of the Outer Circle survive and many of these are examples re-erected by Alexander Keiller in the 1930s. Concrete pylons now mark the former locations of the missing stones and it is likely that more stones are buried on the site. English Heritage are currently considering whether to dig up and re-erect these stones.

According to William Stukeley, one of the larger stones was taken apart and used to construct a pub.^{[citation needed]}

Excavations

Excavation at Avebury itself has been limited. Sir Henry Meux put a trench through the bank in 1894, which gave the first indication that the earthwork was built in two phases.

The site was surveyed and excavated intermittently between 1908 and 1922 by a team of workmen under Harold St George Gray. He was able to demonstrate that the Avebury builders had dug down 11 m into the natural chalk in excavating the henge ditch, producing an outer bank 9 m high around the whole perimeter of the henge and using red deer antler as their primary digging tool. Gray recorded the base of the ditch as being flat and 4 m wide although some later archaeologists have questioned his use of untrained labour to excavate the ditch and suggested that its form may have been different. Gray found few artefacts in the ditch fill but did recover scattered human bones, jawbones being particularly well represented. At a depth of about 2 m, Gray encountered a complete skeleton of a woman only 1.5 m tall who had been buried there.

Keiller excavated beneath the stones he righted and dug further during the programme of beautification he forced onto the villagers after buying the site in 1934. When a new village school was built in 1969 there was also limited further opportunity to examine the site and an excavation to produce carbon dating material and environmental data was undertaken in 1982.

Theories about Avebury

A great deal of interest surrounds the stones at the monument which people describe often as being in one of two categories; tall and slender, or short and squat. This leads to numerous theories relating to the importance of gender in Neolithic Britain with the taller stones considered 'male' and the shorter ones 'female'. The stones were not dressed in any way and may have been chosen for their pleasing natural forms. Numerous people have identified what they claim are carvings on the stones' surfaces, some carvings being more persuasive than others.

The human bones found by Gray point to some form of funerary purpose and have parallels in the disarticulated human bone often found at earlier causewayed enclosure sites. Ancestor worship, although on a huge scale, could have been one of the purposes of the monument and would not be mutually exclusive with any male/female ritual role.

The henge, although clearly forming an imposing boundary to the circle, has no defensive purpose as the ditch is on the inside. Being a henge and stone circle site, astronomical alignments are a common theory to explain the positioning of the stones at Avebury. It has been suggested (reference needed) that the bank of the henge provides a uniform horizon by which to observe the rising and setting of various heavenly bodies. Additionally, less well evidenced theories relating to aliens, ley lines, crop circles and the lost wisdom of the ancients have been suggested.

Perhaps the strangest theory is that postulated by Ralph Ellis, who suggests that Avebury looks like a diagram of the Earth floating in space, complete with 23 degree angle of obliquity. ^[2][3]

As with Stonehenge, the lack of modern excavation work and reliable scientific dating make studying and explaining the monument difficult.

The Avebury triangle

A large part of the small village of Avebury, complete with public house, is enclosed within the monument. Two local roads intersect within the monument, and visitors can walk on the earthworks.

The two stone avenues (Kennet Avenue and Beckhampton Avenue) that meet at Avebury define two sides of triangle that is designated a World Heritage site and which includes The Sanctuary, Windmill Hill, Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Long Barrow.

Alternative Avebury

Avebury is seen as a spiritual centre by many who profess beliefs such as Paganism, Wicca, Druidry and Heathenry, and indeed for some it is regarded more highly than Stonehenge. The pagan festivals all attract visitors, and the summer solstice especially draws increasingly large crowds from the religious to the idly curious.

As with Stonehenge, though, access regarding both interpretation and physical presence is contested. While Avebury henge and circles are 'open' to all, access has been controlled through closure of the car park. Pressure of numbers on this circle is an issue begging resolution, and various attempts at negotiation are underway. Avebury is increasingly important for tourism today, and how visitors relate to Avebury is part of the study of the Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights project (http://www.sacredsites.org.uk).

The National Trust, who steward and protect the site (owned by English Heritage) are also actively in dialogue with the Pagan community, who use the site as a religious temple or place of worship. This dialogue takes place through the National Trust's Avebury Sacred Sites Forum. The project has a charter and guidelines for visitors, which helps to foster understanding between the Pagan community and the general public visiting the site.

Avebury in the Media

The area was used in Children of the Stones (1976), a British television drama produced for children.

Derek Jarman's silent, 10-minute short film A Journey to Avebury (1971) is set amongst the stones.

The stones were seen in a key moment in the 1998 comedy Still Crazy, starring Billy Connolly, Stephen Rea, Jimmy Nail, Timothy Spall and Bill Nighy. The film also features a scene inside the Red Lion at Avebury.

It was featured on the 2005 TV programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the West Country.

Catherine Fisher's 2005 novel Darkhenge is set in and around Avebury.

See also

• European Megalithic Culture

References

• Vatcher, Faith de M & Vatcher, Lance 1976 The Avebury Monuments — Department of the Environment HMSO
• Dames, Michael 1977 The Avebury Cycle Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
• Dames, Michael 1976 The Silbury Treasure Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
• Francis, Evelyn 2001 Avebury Wooden Books

External links

• Avebury information at the National Trust
• Avebury Pagan Events Calendar

• Further information and over 100 images of the stones at the Megalithic Portal.
• Further information and over 100 images of the stones at the Modern Antiquarian site.
• Some buried megaliths have recently been found near the circle. Reports at: Ananova, BBC News
• 100-Ton Stone Astounds Academics (BBC News report)
• The text and images of William Stukeley's survey
• In-depth information about the Avebury complex
• Avebury-Megalithos
• Beautiful views of Avebury

World Heritage Sites in the United Kingdom
England	Blenheim Palace · Canterbury Cathedral – St. Augustine's Abbey – St. Martin's Church · Bath · Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape · Derwent Valley Mills · Durham Castle and Cathedral · Ironbridge Gorge · Jurassic Coast · Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Hadrian's Wall) · Kew Gardens · Liverpool · Maritime Greenwich · Westminster Palace – Westminster Abbey – St. Margaret's Church · Saltaire · Stonehenge and Avebury · Studley Royal Park and Fountains Abbey · Tower of London
Scotland	Edinburgh Old Town and New Town · Heart of Neolithic Orkney (Maeshowe • Ring of Brodgar • Skara Brae • Standing Stones of Stenness) · New Lanark · St. Kilda
Wales	Castles and Town Walls of King Edward I in Gwynedd (Beaumaris Castle • Caernarfon Castle • Conwy Castle • Harlech Castle) · Blaenavon
Northern Ireland	Giant's Causeway
Overseas territories	Henderson Island · Gough Island and Inaccessible Island · St. George's Town

Coordinates: 51°25′43″N, 1°51′15″W

Map sources for Avebury at grid reference SU103699

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