**Breaking News** Stone square found at Avebury stone circle!
Posted On: Jun 29th, 2017 at 23:57
**Breaking News**
England
Avebury is the site I have visited the most since I have lived very close to it my whole life. I’ve been there at least a hundred times, and most recently was a few weeks ago. These days I usually go around four or five times a year, but back in the 1990s it was a weekly occurrence during the summer for many years. It is a very special place, and certainly my favourite ancient site (BC). I know a lot about Avebury and have spent many years studying it, so to hear the sudden news of a stone square is a rather life-altering piece of information!
A stone square inside Avebury stone circle! I just cannot get used to that sentence.
The area within the southern inner circle was excavated in 1939 by Alexander Keiller, and what he found was a series of stones that appeared to be in a straight line. This finding had been dismissed as it was not seen as Neolithic, but rather a more modern building of some kind (Avebury circle is so large – the largest in the world – that most of the modern village lies within its ditches, so the stones were seen as a disused building). What these findings now show is that the stones were indeed in use during the neolithic period and, wham!, everything we thought we knew about Avebury is blown out of the window.
Why, you may ask?
Although no one has any clue as to what Avebury was built for, the general gist is that it was a ‘place of the dead’, and most theories centre around the idea of an area only used for ritualistic death worship. It’s even been thought that the area was used to allow the dead to be naturally defleshed by birds, by placing the bodies on wooden platforms. Once the birds had finished their meals, the bones were then removed and used in ritual. The reason this idea came about is because of the huge ditch and embankment that surrounds Avebury henge. In its heyday it was completely white due to the chalk that the land is made from, and the ditch itself was at least 90 feet (30 metres) deep. So, basically, it was assumed it was out of bounds to the living. There is a whole lot more to this theory and it would take me a week to write about it so I’ll leave it there. It is also one of many theories about Avebury.
Now we have an entire game changer. A complete spanner in the works.
Britain is covered in stone circles. There are thousands of them. But a stone square is a rather bizarre finding. So, to logically deduce this new discovery, the archaeologists come up with what they see as the only logical explanation they can come up with – this square must have marked the place where there was once a neolithic building. Of course I am going to dismiss that idea! I do not believe there was a 100-foot long building standing in that spot 4,500 years ago. If there was, then every theory about Avebury needs to be completely dismissed and we have to start all over again. So, my bet is that this square has some connection with the wider circles. I think we need to look into this a lot more before we assume any square structure must be a building, just because we build houses in that method and we have no other thing to relate it to. We have to stop applying our modern minds to ancient sites and, more importantly, stop the guesswork because it only muddies the waters and causes confusion. And just because ancient stone circles were used for ritual and square structures were used to live in does not mean we can apply that to Avebury.
Avebury is a very unique and special place, far more important than Stonehenge, and at least 1,000 years older.
The idea these stones simply marked the spot where a building once stood is clutching at straws in my opinion. Nope, this was definitely something else. Watch this space…
So, what am I going to do this weekend? I fancy a trip out somewhere, but I am not sure where to go… Er…
Thank you to Michael White for alerting me to this news today.
