AVEBURY:
THE OTHER STONEHENGE
by
Bruce Burnett
Thirty
kilometers (18 miles) north of world-famous Stonehenge in Wiltshire,
England, is its lesser known, but larger cousin, Avebury.
Built at the same time as the second phase of Stonehenge, around 1600-2000BC,
the stone circle at Avebury is the largest in the world.
Neolithic inhabitants of Britain built the first phase of Stonehenge
about 500 years earlier. The second phase and the henge at Avebury were
the work of the "Beaker" people, immigrants from continental
Europe who may have introduced the idea of sun or sky worship. They
were named after their habit of burying pottery-drinking vessels with
their dead.
The Beaker people quickly established dominance over the indigenous
tribes, partly due to their facility with metal, the main source of
which was in Ireland. To maintain a supply of these metals they established
trade routes, one of which followed the south coast of Wales. This probably
accounts for the Beaker traders' familiarity with the Pembrokeshire
bluestone, which they selected for use at Stonehenge.
The stones at Avebury which, unlike those at Stonehenge, have not been
dressed to shape are a very hard sandstone occurring naturally on the
local downs. They are called Sarsen Stones, possibly from the word "Saracen"
meaning heathen.
In its original form the main circle of 98 stones surrounded two smaller
circles of about 30 stones each, and there were still smaller arrangements
of stones within these. The banks and ditches form a circle 1.5 kilometers
(almost one mile) in circumference. The ditches, before thousands of
years of erosion, used to be twice as deep and the bank, made up of
chalk rubble from the ditches, was considerably higher and deeper. Originally,
the henge would have been encircled by a startling white bank and ditch.
People without machines or the wheel carried out the great task of building
Avebury. Ditches were dug with picks and rakes made of antlers, bone
shovels and wooden tools. The chalk was moved in baskets.
The great stones themselves, from the Marlborough Downs, five kilometers
(three miles) away, were probably dragged with leather ropes, wooden
levers, tree trunk sledges and considerable manpower. As many as 100
men would have taken several days to drag one stone to Avebury.
The largest stone still standing weights about 67 tons. The Devil's
Chair, standing by the road to Marlborough, is the second largest at
about 56 tons.
There has been far more destruction of the stones at Avebury than at
Stonehenge. Most of the wrecking was done in the 18th-century, either
to clear the ground for cultivation or to use the stone as building
material. The stones were broken up by lighting fires beneath them and
then pouring water over them.
The
Snug, a small room at
The Wheatsheaf pub in Avebury, Wiltshire
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In
the 14th century some of the stones were buried. In fact one man,
a barber or surgeon, was killed when one of the stones he was attempting
to demolish or bury fell on him. A pair of scissors and a lancet
were found next to his skeleton and the stone is now called the
Barber's Stone.
The henge at Avebury is now a National Trust property and boasts
an information center, a National Trust shop, the Alexander Keiler
Museum and a restaurant. In the village of Avebury itself, encircled
by the henge, good food and ale is available at the local pub, The
Wheat Sheaf. To get there from London, take the M4 west and turn
south on the A4361 just past Swindon, a distance of about 140km
(85 miles). Bristol is 50km (30 miles) due west on the old A4.
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AVEBURY:
THE OTHER STONEHENGE
was first published in the Kelowna Capital News
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