Avebury

The Monument

The monument is composed of several stone circles. The external circle has a diameter of 335 meters. It was composed in the beginning of 98 stones, of which some weigh more than 40 tons. The size of these stones varies between 3,6 and 4,2 meters. The carbon dating the place enters years 2800 and 2400 av. J. - C.

Close to the center of the external circle two other circles are laid out of stones. The circle of north measures 98 meters in diameter, although only some stones remain about it. The circle of the south, almost entirely destroyed has a diameter of 108 meters. Certain sections of this circle are now disseminated between the houses of this picturesque village.

The unit is surrounded by an immense deep ditch of 11 meters and of a 9 meters high slope. The ditch is inside the slope what excludes any defensive role with this unit.

With the immediate surroundings are large Alignement S of Menhir S and the Silbury Hill, higher Tumulus of Europe.

Situation of alignments of menhirs: departure, then extending in long avenue until Avebury.

Situation of Silbury Hill:

Destruction of the stones

A great number of the original stones were destroyed starting from the E century in order to be used as construction materials, or to make place with agriculture. The stones were also destroyed of fear of ritual pagan associated with the site. John Aubrey then William Stukeley visited the site and reported the destruction of it. Stukeley passed most of the years 1720 to study the ruins of Avebury and surrounding monuments. Without its work, we would have today an idea much less clear of the provision of the site, in particular of the internal circles.

Only 27 of the stones of the Extérieur circle remain nowadays, and most of those are the substitutions set up by Alexander Keiller in the years 1930. Indeed, since the beginning of the the Middle Ages, certain people regarding them as pagan tried to move them or to bury them. This fact is reported in a popular local history entitled The Barber sucker off Avebury .

Pillars of Béton mark now the site of the missing stones, and it is probable that other stones remain hidden under the site.

Excavations

The excavations undertaken with Avebury were limited. The site was inspected and updated in an intermittent way of 1908 at 1922 by a team directed by Harold St-George Gray. It succeeded in showing that the builders of the monument knew to dig 11 meters in chalk natural to construct the ditch, thus producing the external slope high of 9 meters around the perimeter of the site. Their principal tool would have been deer wood. Few objects were discovered, but of the human bones were found scattered on the site. The team of Gray also put at the day the whole skeleton of a size of 1,5 meters and which had been buried on the site.

Later, Keiller also carried out excavations under the stones which it rectified, and dug still more when it had bought the site in 1934 and forced a programme of visual improvement of the places. The construction of a new school, in 1969, still complicated the excavations. In 1982 of new research were undertaken in order to gather environmental data, and to produce contents likely to be dated with the carbon-14.

Various assumptions

A great interest was carried to the shape of the stones of Avebury. Those are described as being either high and fine, or small and squat. Largest are regarded as being the “males” and shortest the “females”. That gave birth to from many theories concerning the importance of the sexual membership at the time British Neolithic era. The stones were probably selected for their esthetic forms. Many individuals identified what they assert like forms carved on the surface of the stones, some of the layouts being more convincing than others.

The human bones found by Gray indicate that the place could play a part in funerary ceremonies. The Culte of the ancestors could be another of the made uses of the place.

Avebury being a circular construction Mégalithique, the assumption of astronomical alignments was advanced to explain the positioning of the stones. According to the British researcher and prolific author Alan Butler, Avebury, just like Stonehenge, would be on a Méridien Lignes of salt, one of the 366 lines supposed to materialize on the ground the Géométrie with 366 degrees or megalithic Géométrie, which would have preceded the current geometry with 360 degrees.

As it is the case for Stonehenge, the absence of modern excavations as well as the difficulty in establishing scientifically reliable dates do not facilitate the study and the comprehension of the monument.

Avebury, spiritual center

Avebury is considered by many followers of Paganisme, Wicca or druidism as being an important spiritual center. The annual pagan festivals, and particularly the summer solstice, gather pagan druids, believers and curious spectators. Many a agroglyphes having been located in the neighborhoods of Avebury and Stonehenge, other theories relating to an intervention Extra-terrestre or super-natural were suggested.

The area of North-Wiltshire: the triangle Avebury-Alton Barnes-Marlborough is the White horse country , this area where white horses and other characters were cut in the hills at one unspecified time.

See too

Megalith ~ Dolmen ~ Menhir ~ Cromlech ~ Stonehenge

External bonds

Avebury, Stonehenge and other sites associated (UNESCO)
The text and images off William Stukeley' S survey
Information deepened on Avebury
Calendar with the pagan events of Avebury
Seen air (Google Map)

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