51°27N 1°51W. Village in North Wiltshire district, Wiltshire, S England, UK; on the R Kennet, c.110 km/70 mi W of London; the largest megalithic monument in England, a world heritage site; in use c.26001600 BC; consists of a 427 m/1400 ft diameter earthwork, with a 9 m/30 ft-deep ditch and a 5 m/16 ft-high outer bank; entrances at the cardinal points, and approached by a 2·4 km/1½ mi avenue of 100 paired stones; three stone circles within the enclosure, the largest of nearly 100 boulders; nearby Silbury Hill is the largest prehistoric construction in Europe; also nearby, West Kennet long barrow, containing 30 burials in five chambers, the largest chambered tomb in England; Windmill Hill, one of the oldest known Neolithic sites, with remains dating back to about 3100 BC.
This article is about the Avebury prehistoric site; for an article on the modern village and civil parish containing it, see Avebury (village).Avebury is the site of a large henge and several stone circles in the English county of Wiltshire at grid reference SU103699, surrounding the village of Avebury.
Avebury is National Trust property.
The monument
Most of the surviving structure consists of earthworks, known as the dykes. The only known comparable sites of similar date (Stonehenge and Flagstones in Dorset) are only a quarter of the size of Avebury.
Within the henge is a great Outer Circle constituting prehistory's largest stone circle with a diameter of 335 m (1100 ft).
Nearer the middle of the monument are two other, separate stone circles. The Northern inner ring measures 98 m in diameter although only of two of its standing stones remain with two further, fallen ones.
The Southern inner ring was 108 m in diameter. A single large monolith, 5.5 m high, stood in the centre along with an alignment of smaller stones until they were destroyed 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 being erected around 2800 BC, followed by the Outer Circle and henge around two hundred years later and the two avenues being added around 2400 BC.
A timber circle, of two concentric rings, identified through archaeological geophysics may also have stood in the north east of the outer circle although this has yet to be tested by excavation.
The henge had four entrances, two opposing ones on a north north west- south south east line and two on an east north east- west south west line.
Despite being an artificial structure, it was featured on the 2005 TV programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the West Country.
Destruction of the stones
Many of the original stones were destroyed from the 16th century onwards 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.
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.
Excavations
Excavation at Avebury itself has been limited.
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.
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.
Theories about Avebury
A great deal of interest has surrounded the stones at the monument which are often described as being in one of two categories;
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.
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. Michael Dames (see References) put forward a composite theory of seasonal rituals, in an attempt to explain the henge and its associated sites (West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill, The Sanctuary and Windmill Hill).
As with Stonehenge, the lack of modern excavation work and reliable scientific dating make studying and explaining the monument difficult.
The Avebury Triangle
The small village of Avebury, complete with public house, is enclosed within the monument.
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.
As with Stonehenge, though, access regarding both interpretation and physical presence is contested. 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 own and protect the site 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.
Film and television
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.
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