Landscape of the Megaliths: Excavation and Fieldwork on the Avebury Monuments, 1997-2003This volume describes the results of the Longstones Project , a joint-universities programme of excavation and survey designed to develop a fuller understanding of the context and dynamics of monument construction in the later Neolithic (3rd millennium BC) of the Avebury region, Wiltshire. Several elements of this internationally important prehistoric monument complex were investigated: an early-mid 3rd millennium BC enclosure at Beckhampton; the recently re-discovered Beckhampton Avenue and Longstones Cove; a section of the West Kennet Avenue; the Falkner's stone circle; and the Cove within Avebury's Northern Inner Circle. The research sheds new light on the complexities and development of this monument rich area and consideration is given to the questions of how and why ceremonial centres such as that at Avebury came into being in the 3rd millennium BC. The importance of understanding the agency - the affective and perceived inherent qualities - of materials and landscapes is stressed; and the unusual character of the Wessex monument complexes is highlighted by comparison with the format and sequences of other ceremonial centres in southern Britain. The second part of the monograph tracks the later, post-prehistoric, lives of Avebury's megalithic monuments including a detailed account of the early 18th-century records of the Beckhampton Avenue made by the antiquary William Stukeley. |
Contents
The Longstones Project and its context | 1 |
POLLARD | 2 |
PARKES SCHWENNINGER | 3 |
Copyright | |
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3rd millennium BC 4th millennium BC activity anomalies assemblage Avebury henge Avebury landscape backfill base Beaker Beckhampton Avenue Bronze Age burial pit buried soil burning pit century chalk rubble charcoal Cleal clearance construction context core deposits destruction pit ditch fills Durrington Walls earlier Neolithic early earthwork edge enclosure ditch evidence excavation Falkner's Circle Figure flakes flint fragments geophysical survey Gough Maps grassland Grooved Ware Keiller later Neolithic layer lithics long barrow Longstones Cove Longstones enclosure Longstones Field material medieval molluscan monument complex Neolithic monuments northern perhaps phase pieces ploughsoil Pollard post-medieval pottery prehistoric present recovered retouch sarsen sequence shallow sherds side Silbury Silbury Hill silty clay Smith South Street south-west southern species standing stones stone burial stone destruction stone settings stone-hole Stonehenge Stukeley Stukeley's suggests surface Table timber circles topsoil Trusloe Ucko valley West Kennet Avenue Whittle Windmill Hill