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Few archaeological sites in Britain have provoked such scholarly interest and public controversy in recent years as the prehistoric monuments of Avebury in southern England. Academics are debating the work of 17th-and 18th-century antiquarians, who recorded this unique collection of earthworks, standing stones and megalithic tombs. And conservationists who want to preserve this important tourist site are fighting those who want to develop the area.

The historical records, though sometimes confusing, show that the henge of Avebury comprises a huge ditch and bank, within which lie the remains of Britain’s largest stone circle, with a diameter of 331 metres. The ring is made of partly re-erected sarsen stones, which were originally scattered much more widely over this part of Wiltshire. A village founded by the Saxons in the 10th century and the remains of two smaller stone circles, lie inside the ring. The northernmost of these two smaller circles contains two huge megaliths, part of a structure known as the cove. Four entrances in the ditched bank lead to the monument. A twin line of standing stones, known as Kennet Avenue, runs from the southern entrance southwards.

Impressive in its own right, Avebury is surrounded by other roughly contemporary and equally impressive monuments, all within a few kilometres distance. These include Europe’s largest artificial earthen mound at Silbury Hill, the megalithic tombs of West and East Kennet Long Barrows, a causewayed camp at Windmill Hill, and the ‘Sanctuary’ on Overton Hill. To the east, the ancient Ridgeway track snakes its way across the Marlborough Downs, past ancient field systems, outcrops of sarsen, and clusters of round burial mounds.

Avebury was built around 2000 BC. Its diversity is a result of the impressive efforts of an agricultural and pastoralist society. Archaeologists estimate, for example, that it could have taken Avebury’s Neolithic builders 1.5 million working hours to move the 100 000 tonnes of chalk that make up the bank and ditch. Their tools were antler picks and shovels made from the shoulder blades of oxen as well as axes and hammers of flint and stone. The builders also dragged about 4000 tonnes of sarsen from the nearby downs. They were able to spend this considerable time and effort on the building because the surrounding land had, then as now, a rich pastoral and agricultural potential, as well as accessible supplies of water and flint.

Antiquarian views

In historical times Avebury lay on or near the main London to Bristol thoroughfares, but little was recorded of its extraordinary prehistoric remains until the 17th century. From this time, however, the recording activities and interpretive conclusions of John Aubrey in the 17th century, and William Stukeley in the 18th, have been the mainstay of modern scholars. While extremely valuable, the antiquarian record has shaped our perceptions of Avebury in such a way as to dominate virtually all attempts to understand and reconstruct the complexities of the site.

The influence of these records highlights the problem of how to keep archaeological interpretations objective, for Avebury as it appears today is largely the result of excavation and reconstruction carried out by one
man. Between 1934 and 1939, the archaeologist Alexander Keiller cleared away many of the buildings of recent centuries to restore – perhaps create – a monument in the image of the early historical plans. Apparently he was not overly worried that his interpretations might be misconceptions.

In 1988 the discovery of two previously overlooked plans of the site, dating back to 1663, led to a fundamental and critical re-evaluation of the work of these early antiquarians. Over the next two years, Peter Ucko
of the University of Southampton, Michael Hunter of Birkbeck College, London, Alan Clark of the Royal Society and Andrew David of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage carried out new scientific investigations. They revealed that the historical records are complex and often contradictory, which calls into question their accuracy. They also assessed the influence of the intellectual climate within which Aubrey, Stukeley and others had worked. Their results were recently published in Avebury Reconsidered.

The two newly discovered plans had been in the archives of the Royal Society in London since July 1663. One was a drawing by Walter Charleton and the other was by Aubrey. Both men were present during a visit to Avebury by Charles II in August that year. It was during this visit that the king asked Aubrey to excavate the site in an attempt to find human bones – a request that reinforced Charleton’s earlier thoughts that Avebury was a monument to a dead Danish king. So began the idea that the site had a funerary purpose.

Both plans differed significantly from two better known ones; a later, surveyed drawing by Aubrey that appeared as part of his Monumenta Britannica compiled from 1663 on (but not published until the 1980s) and an even more detailed one by William Stukeley, published in 1743 as the frontispiece to his Avebury: A Temple of the British Druids. The divergence between the two ‘new’ earlier plans and the two better known but later ones was significant because it cast doubts on the reliability of the later plans, and so on their value as an interpretive framework for all modern investigations.

Charleton’s plan was only intended as a general idea, rather than a detailed survey, of the site, but it clearly suggested the possibility that there had once been pairs of portal stones outside each of Avebury’s four
entrances. It also implied that the much discussed cove had once had four, and not three, sarsen stones. The ‘new’ Aubrey plan corroborated these details with the exception that it showed only three of the entrances had portal stones. By contrast, neither of Aubrey’s or Stukeley’s later and well known plans recorded any of these features.

Aubrey’s new plan, with its four concentric stone rings centred on a perfect crossroads, was admittedly more impressionistic than his later revision based on a plane-table survey, using a form of theodolite and chains, with which he placed the position of the stones and the form of the crossroads more accurately. Nevertheless no one had expected the new features. Ucko and his colleagues discovered as they compared the plans that the early map avoided some of the drawbacks of Aubrey’s later plan. It did not underestimate the overall size of Avebury, nor did it distort the spatial relationships between component parts. Significantly, Aubrey’s later plan showed the cove to have only three stones where the earlier version preserves a margin illustration depicting what appears to be four stones-an interpretation corroborated by Charleton’s plan, which definitely shows four megaliths.

The nature and direction of the two stone avenues that led from the southern and western entrances respectively also illustrates the complex relationship between Stukeley’s frontispiece plan and his adherence to preconceived explanations. Kennet Avenue was supposed by Aubrey and Stukeley to have been a ceremonial pathway to the Sanctuary on Overton Hill, though neither were able to prove its exact route. It was later partly excavated and reconstructed by Keiller.

Ucko and his collaborators conducted a resistivity survey to find the form and direction of the avenue beyond the section restored by Keiller. Today it ends abruptly at a fence separating the avenue from farmland. By plotting changes in the electrical resistance of the soil, they hoped to find where sockets for stones had been dug or to discover buried stones. They managed to plot the course of the avenue for a farther 150 metres southwards, but beyond that distance the evidence was inconclusive. Questions concerning the existence of a cove in Kennet Avenue, and whether one was supposed to walk between or outside the stones, either from Avebury to the Sanctuary, vice versa, or both, remain unanswered.

Druidic allure

While archaeologists agree on the existence of Kennet Avenue, if not on its entire course, the same cannot be said of a second line of stones, the proposed Beckhampton Avenue. In the 1660s Aubrey had failed to recognise an avenue beyond the site’s western entrance. Stukeley first suggested its existence in 1724. Up until that time, he had championed a celestial theory to explain the existence of Avebury, saying that its monuments were lunar and solar temples-a notion which reflected his fascination with Druidism and the symbolism of and correlations between Celtic and Egyptian religions. But he was unable to prove the existence of a Beckhampton temple that would balance that of the Sanctuary, and so indicate a degree of geometrical symmetry. Instead, he seems to have changed his mind and adopted the idea of Avebury as a ‘Dracontium’, or serpent temple. He now thought that Avebury’s stone monuments depicted a giant snake traversing a circle, with the western BeckhamptonAvenue forming the serpent’s tail.

Many investigators have suggested that the Beckhampton Avenue was simply an ophidian figment of Stukeley’s imagination. But the details with which he recorded some of the features, combined with later observations of stones in the area, led others to suggest that Stukeley had seen the remains of an independent stone circle and avenue. This time a resistivity survey found no regular pattern of anomalies to suggest that an avenue had existed. But the difficulty of differentiating naturally occurring sarsens or their original pits and deliberately placed stones means that the survey results cannot rule out the existence of an avenue.

Archaeologists have established that the construction of circles of stone, earth and timber is an essentially British practice, which began around 2000 BC, although there are some European analogies. It is the largest known henge. But in some ways this has become a conceptual straightjacket, shaping expectations and explanations. The effect of this at Avebury is to lead investigators to believe that perfect circles of regularly spaced stones exist, often on the slenderest of evidence. For example, Harold St George Gray’s investigations during the early 1900s, while topographically scrupulous, nevertheless followed Stukeley in assuming that each of the two smaller interior circles had secondary circles within them, despite the lack of any convincing evidence.

A further resistivity survey in the northeast quadrant of the site not only confirmed that the northern interior circle had but a single ring of stones, it also revealed that the circle may not have been geometrically exact. There was no evidence to support the idea that a third interior stone circle, as first proposed by Keiller, had ever existed. However, there was faint and ambiguous evidence to suggest the existence of one or two hitherto unrecognised concentric circles, perhaps of wooden posts. Outside the eastern entrance to the earthwork a resistivity survey found no evidence for the portal stones suggested by Charleton and Aubrey. But it did reveal a road leading away from the bank towards the Ridgeway.

It seems certain, as the authors of Avebury Reconsidered conclude, that no modern archaeologists have freed themselves entirely from the interpretive structure of the antiquarian record. However, despite the faults of the four main plans of Avebury, each preserves valuable evidence for archaeology, as they were produced before the mass destruction of stones which took place during the 17th and 18th centuries. Indeed, it was only due to Stukeley’s recording efforts that modern archaeology located and then excavated the Sanctuary site. While the value of the antiquarians’ efforts are undeniable, the assumption that they were usually correct is suspect.

Monumental crisis

It is ironic at a time when the status of previous interpretations of Avebury and its surroundings are being called into question, and new evidence of hitherto unsuspected features has come to light, that the issue of preserving and managing the site has also arisen. Due to its increasing popularity with tourists, three locally inspired and commercially motivated proposals have recently threatened the fragile integrity of Avebury’s unique archaeological landscape. Visitors to the site are also a serious problem: they erode the banks and ditches they climb.

In 1988 a hotel development was proposed for a site opposite the Sanctuary, and another was being discussed for the land between Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow – the exact spot where excavations have recently located the remains of a huge palisaded structure. At Avebury itself unauthorised works were being carried out in the grounds of Avebury Manor to convert 22 acres into a Tudor Theme Park. Despite the fact that, in the view of Lord Kennet, any of these three developments could so change the nature of Avebury that it might lose its status as a World Heritage site, the government has refused to allow a planning enquiry commission as these are considered appropriate only for developments of national importance.

The Sanctuary development was thwarted and the plot has been acquired by the National Trust for £250 000. Developments at Avebury Manor have also ceased-as the National Trust has recently bought it. Archaeologists evidently need to reassess their preconceptions about the significance and extent of the site, at a time when there are increasing demands on the area from ‘cultural tourism’ and the heritage management industry. If Avebury is to achieve the balance between preservation and display that is only now being reconsidered for Stonehenge, it is perhaps appropriate to recall John Aubrey’s famous comment that Avebury ‘does as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge as a Cathedral doeth a parish Church’.

Further reading

• Avebury Reconsidered: From the 1660s to the 1990s by P. J. Ucko, M. Hunter, A. J. Clark and A. David, Unwin Hyman, pp 293, £60.
• Prehistoric Avebury by Aubrey Burl, Yale, pp 272, £10.95 pbk (1986)
• The English Heritage Book of Avebury by Caroline Mallone, Batsford, pp144, £25 hbk, £12.95 pbk (1989)
• Ancient Britons and The Antiquarian Imagination by Stuart Piggott, Thames and Hudson, pp 196, £14.95 (1989)