Digging Up the Past - Avebury A Lady In Waiting

It appears that in comparison to Stonehenge, the Avebury Complex and surrounding area would not seem to have been so extensively favoured by archaeologists over the years with excavations being rather spasmodic. For such a huge area I suppose this was inevitable, but things are now beginning to balance out.

Recent work undertaken in the ‘rediscovered’ Beckhampton Avenue and the detecting of many buried sarsens in the Great Circle during a survey in 2003, along with the Palisade discovery near Silbury Hill, has further rejuvenated public interest in this World Heritage Site. Fifteen megaliths have been identified lying buried in the Great Circle and as the National Trust have identified their size, the direction in which they are lying and where they fit into the circle, it will be a major disappointment to all if they are not replaced back into their original socket holes eventually. Anything has to be better than those awful short concrete pillars seen scattered about the site and is something we would all like to see the back of as soon as possible!

part of the ground where the West Kennet Avenue was constructed in the 1930’s, that it got a head of steam up. After extensive work in the Avenue and the south and north-west sections of the Great Circle, he re-erected virtually all the stones seen today that had been buried or fallen in these areas.

Although there were previous excavations in the West Kennet Avenue by Maud Cunnington it was only when Alexander Keiller purchased the Great Circle and

Where stones were missing but their place holes discovered, he filled the gaps with small concrete markers in the hope that in the future when more efficient detection equipment became available, the missing stones, if not broken up and removed altogether, may still be found and re-instated. And save for work done to stabilise one of the two sarsens in

the Cove of the north-east section in
more recent times, precious little in comparison has been done since!

Silbury Hill on the other hand has been quite extensively investigated over the years with many tunnels dug and surface areas excavated. The first recorded excavation was in 1777 and carried out by the Duke of Northumberland and Colonel Drax when Cornish miners were employed to dig a shaft 8ft square from the top down to the original ground surface.

In all it has to be said, very little has been found to support the belief by many that Silbury Hill was a burial mound. However, the method of construction has to a certain degree been identified and the hill shown to have been built in three phases, the first begun in or round 2400BC.

Others followed - Blandford and Dean Mereweather in 1849; Reverend Wilkinson in 1867; Pass in 1886 and Sir Flinders Petrie in 1922. In the late 60’s Richard Atkinson carried out a televised dig which was recorded and sponsored by the BBC and in 2007/08 Atkinson’s tunnel was reopened and backfilled to overcome subsidence caused by it and earlier excavations.

The Sanctuary was subject to investigation by Maud Cunnington in 1930 when the remains of a youth of about 14 years of age was discovered with the crushed fragments of a beaker close to its knees against the inner-face of one of the stones in the inner-ring. An apparent less extensive but more informed excavation was carried out by Mike Pitts in 1999 when it brought fresh light on the meaning of the timber postholes and the possible building phases.

The huge ditch surrounding Silbury Hill has not been looked at with such fervour as the hill itself and that needs correcting. While professional opinions differ as to whether the ditch was purposely designed to hold water or not, nothing it would seem is being done to actually resolve this situation.

Avebury....... .........A Lady In Waiting