Avebury

Avebury is possibly the most spectacular of the ancient megalithic monuments in the British Isles, far surpassing in size the more well-known Stonehenge. Like Stonehenge, it is located in Wiltshire. Enough of the monument has survived that a picture of what it looked like when it was completed can be reconstructed.

The large ritual area is surrounded by a circular earth embankment some 1200 feet in diameter. Immediately inside of the embankment is a ditch, and on the inner edge of the ditch there once stood a circle of some 100 stones; a number of which once formed the western half of the circle remain in place. Inside the large circle were two inner circles, both of approximately 340 feet in diameter. In the center of the circle to the north is a cove, but its purpose is unknown. There was a single stone, surrounded by a rectangle of smaller stones, in the center of the southern circle. All of the stones appeared unfinished and were gathered from the surrounding countryside. Similar stones lie scattered on the landscape of the region to this day.

Avebury has been inhabited since late Neolithic times. Then, around 2600 B.C.E., the southernmost inner circle was erected, and it appears to have been used for a variety of ritual purposes. The northernmost inner circle was erected soon afterwards. It was quite different in that it had a double ring of stones. It has been suggested that it was possibly used for funeral rites. Next, a ditch was dug around the entire site and the earth taken from the excavation was used to form the rampartlike outer circle. A double line of stones, generally called West Kennet Avenue, led from Avebury to the south toward an associated monument about a mile away. There were at one time as many as 200 hundred stones along the avenue, but less than 20 remain today. Avebury probably was completed around 2000 B.C.E. and utilized for more than a millennium.

As the megaliths in Britain have been studied, Avebury has been placed in the larger context of sites scattered across the land. It has been studied in light of the alignments its stones might offer to various prominent planetary bodies. Alexander Thom, who pioneered such study, did very accurate measures of the remaining stones, and has suggested they demonstrate a quite sophisticated knowledge of the Moon's movements. Others have noted that so many stones are missing that determining alignments is quite difficult if not impossible. The circles were probably places in which a large number of the people in the surrounding countryside gathered, but their essential functions remain a matter of widespread speculation.

Sources:

Brown, Peter Lancaster. Megaliths and Masterminds. New York: Charles Scribners's Sons, 1979.

Burl, Aubrey. Rings of Stone. New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields, 1980.

——. The Stone Circles of the British Isles. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976.

Thom, Alexander. Megalithic Sites in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Avebury , 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.

Avebury a village in Wiltshire, site of one of Britain's major henge monuments of the late Neolithic period. The monument consists of a bank and ditch containing the largest known stone circle, with two smaller circles and other stone settings within it. It is the centre of a complex ritual landscape that also contains a stone avenue, chambered tombs, Silbury Hill, and various other monuments.

Avebury. Largest prehistoric monument in Britain, in north Wiltshire, 6 miles W of Marlborough. The earthworks with standing stones date from pre-Celtic times, c.4000–3000BC.

Bibliography

See Aubrey Burl , Prehistoric Avebury (New Haven, Conn., 1979);
Michael Dames , The Avebury Cycle (London, 1980).

Avebury Wilts. Aureberie 1086 (DB), Aveberia c.1180. Probably ‘stronghold of a man called Afa’. OE pers. name + burh (dative byrig).

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