AVEBURY ANCIENT STONE CIRCLES

Avebury  is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. 

Picture opposite: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury

'Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites' is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Wiltshire, England. The WHS covers two large areas of land separated by nearly 30 miles (48 km), rather than a specific monument or building. The sites were inscribed as co-listings in 1986. 

Unique amongst megalithic monuments, Avebury contains the largest stone circle in Europe, and is one of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain. 

Constructed around 2600 BCE during the Neolithic, or 'New Stone Age', the monument comprises a large henge (that is a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. 

Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony. 

The Avebury monument was a part of a larger prehistoric landscape containing several older monuments nearby, including West Kennet Long Barrow and Silbury Hill.

Based on anthropological studies of recent and contemporary societies, Gillings and Pollard suggest that forests, clearings, and stones were important in Neolithic culture, not only as resources but as symbols; the site of Avebury occupied a convergence of these three elements. 

Neolithic activity at Avebury is evidenced by flint, animal bones, and pottery such as Peterborough ware dating from the early 4th and 3rd millennia BCE.

Picture opposite: The Avesbury circles are surrounded by downs.


Henge

The Avebury monument is a henge, a type of monument consisting of a large circular bank with an internal ditch. Although the henge is not perfectly circular, it has a diameter of about 420 metres (460 yd) across. 

The only known comparable sites of similar date are only a quarter of the size of Avebury. The ditch alone was 21 metres (69 ft) wide and 11 metres (36 ft) deep, with a sample from its primary fill carbon dated to 3300–2630 BCE. 

Within the henge is a great outer circle. This is one of Europe's largest stone circles, with a diameter of 331.6 metres (1,088 ft), Britain's largest stone circle. 

It was either contemporary with, or built around four or five centuries after the earthworks. 

There were originally 98 sarsen standing stones, some weighing in excess of 40 tons. The stones varied in height from 3.6 to 4.2 m, as exemplified at the north and south entrances. 

The fill from two of the stoneholes has been carbon dated to between 2900 and 2600 BCE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge,_Avebury_and_Associated_Sites