Avebury Henge: Meeting Place of Earth and Sky

By Nicholas R. Mann

For one brief moment in the third millennium BCE the galaxy levelled around the horizon, bringing into view stars that would not be visible again in the northern hemisphere for twenty thousand years. The spectacular Southern Cross dominated the night sky, and it is the contention of this book that this event was marked by the Neolithic people of Britain by monuments such as Avebury.

Avebury Henge marries archaeology with astronomy to show that the people who built Avebury, West Kennet long barrow and Silbury Hill aligned them not only with the cycles of the sun, moon and planets, but also with the stars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Temple Publications
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9780957211346

Nicholas R. Mann

is a Geomancer and the author of Glastonbury Tor, The Isle of Avalon, Energy Secrets of Glastonbury Tor, Druid Magic, The Silver Branch Cards and The Sacred Geometry of Washington DC and The Star Temple of Avalon.

Book preview

Published by The Temple Publications 01/05/2017

The Temple Publications.

Somerset

United Kingdom

www.thetemplepublications.co.uk

Email: [e-mail]

All rights reserved. No part of the publications may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, with out written permission from the publisher

Acknowledgements: ………….

Cover design by Nicholas R. Mann

Page set up and preparation by The Temple Publications.

Contents

Avebury Henge

The Main Axis of the Monument

The View from the Obelisk

Southern Stars

The ‘D’ Feature Stone Row

The Obelisk-Silbury Alignment

The Cove & Primary Alignments to the Stars

Avebury: Mirror of the Milky Way

Avebury as Axis Mundi

A Lunar Calendar?

A Spirit-filled World

Silbury Hill

Windmill Hill

Windmill Hill & West Kennet

West Kennet Long Barrow

The Western Avenue & the Longstones Cove

The West Kennet Avenue

The Sanctuary

The Sanctuary & Silbury Hill

Avebury & the Galaxy

The Art of Neolithic Avebury

Social Development at the Great Ritual Centres

Avebury: a Comparative Chronology

Postscript: Stonehenge

Bibliography

Reconstruction of Avebury henge in an ideal and ‘complete’ state c. 2400 BCE. Avebury may never have looked like this, always remaining in a state of construction.

Avebury Henge

The little village of Avebury in Wiltshire is host to a collection of prehistoric monuments that can claim the largest stone circle, the tallest mound, the biggest megalith, the longest avenue and the greatest henge earthwork in the Britain. Beginning as early as 3400 BCE, the monument builders added earth, timber and stone settings for well over a thousand years to create a landscape so striking that in 2013, even in its ruined state, it was voted the second-best heritage site in the world. Attracting 250,000 visitors a year, Avebury is a UNESCO World Heritage Site owned by the National Trust.

The Southern Cross rising over Waden Hill: reconstruction of the view from Obelisk through the southern entrance of Avebury (2:30 am, midwinter) c. 2400 BCE.

The Swindon Stone beside the Northern Entrance.

Avebury henge is an approximately circular bank and ditch enclosing an area over a quarter of a mile in diameter. The ditch is inside the bank, which means the builders did not enclose the central table-like area for defensive purposes. Avebury is part of a series of henge monuments constructed as sacred and ritual space in the late fourth and third millennium BCE, the Middle Neolithic, that includes the far smaller Stonehenge.

The builders created four entrances to Avebury henge. Inside the henge they set up a great, if irregular circle of about one hundred stones, and two inner circles of probably twenty-seven and twenty-nine stones. Avenues of paired stones lead from the southern and western entrances. Many of the internal stones—especially at the entrances—were on a massive scale.

They built Avebury in phases and even then work was discontinuous. It is generally thought the first phase of the henge came around 3300 BCE, and the second and final ditch and bank that we see today came several hundred years later. Using antler picks and bone shovels the builders came on a seasonal basis to cut steeply into the white chalk, in places achieving a depth of nearly forty feet, before reaching the winter water table. They carried the chalk out in baskets to create the outer bank. The sides of the ditch were so steep they must have fallen in quickly, especially if the bank was scoured regularly to keep it clean and white. Human remains and several bodies were found in the small sections of ditch that have been excavated.

It is possible that the builders set up the first stones on the site, including the Cove, the Obelisk, the Swindon Stone at the northern entrance, and the huge Devil’s Chair at the southern entrance, before building the second phase of the henge. In other words, these immense stones may have been in place before 3000 BCE. Although the exact sequence is unclear, the builders began adding the internal circles, including a timber circle in the northern segment, and the three stone circles in the middle of