Arcadia Discussion Zone

Pete Glastonbury has been collecting Stonehenge and Avebury media footage for some while. His page with links to them are not so easy to find, so I will put the link to them here. In spite of what Pete says, you can play or link to the videos directly in YouTube, you don't have to watch them on his page.

http://www.stonehenge-avebury.net/Media/Stonehenge&AveburyFilms.html

The enormous pallisaded enclosure shown on the equally enormous picture on the previous page is only just starting to be understood, but it gives us clues to the where the people who used Avebury and its surrounding monuments lived.

Pete G was telling me earlier this year that they have just taken core samples out of the top of Silbaby, just above the pallisades, to see if it is as man-made and artificial as Silbury. It's marked as a feature on old maps. Nobody knows whether it is a forgotten significant feature of the landscape or not.

http://www.avebury-web.co.uk/silbaby.html

There is no evidence as yet, in spite of digging the field beyond up, that the Beckhampton avenue extended beyond the Longstones to the west. So the extended blue line on the large picture overleaf is probably wrong. Stukeley believed it did though - perhaps there were other stones he could see in his day, but these might simply have been natural erratics, boulders deposited by glacial activity.

Thanks, that's an excellent resource to have, hours of fun! Documentaries by familiar names like Mick Aston and John Michell, and also a Neil Oliver and Bettany Hughes one on Silbury Hill, and various other intriguing sounding programmes - like Leonard Nimoy on Stonehenge, John Betjeman on Avebury (from 1958), and Midge Ure riding along the Ridgeway on a motorbike.



This is the page on Silbaby from Julian Cope's site, with the usual photos, field notes, etc.

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/6766

Whoop


Well I know what I'm going to look at in my spare time
Thanks so much!

I'm fascinated by the area becase of the cropcircle formations
and the History


A new series of slabs at Avebury stone circle in western England, discovered under a farmer's field, probably formed a causeway linking the circle, or henge, to a contemporary burial site at Beckhampton, a mile to the southwest. University of Leicester and Southampton archaeologists now believe that the complex, whose main circle was last excavated in 1930, covered a much larger area than originally thought and was probably built in several stages.


The existence of buried avenues was first suggested in the 1720s by the English antiquarian William Stukeley, although many dismissed his theories as guesswork. Some years ago, however, an avenue was uncovered leading from Avebury to nearby West Kennet, and the latest find appears to confirm Stukeley's beliefs and the notion that Avebury was connected to other ceremonial sites.

Avebury, constructed between 2800 and 2700 B.C., includes the world's largest stone circle (1,401 feet in diameter), numerous barrows, and the 130-foot-tall Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. Evidence of a "woodhenge" has also been unearthed at the site.

this has a resemblance to Cahokia Mounds
which is by the Mississippi
this is the woodhenge



I've seen some of the archeological finds they found there clay pots with the spiral on them
the artwork was similiar to the Celts
It isn't as old as Avebury but the same kind of concept can be seen
they were mound builders

http://www.archaeology.org/0001/newsbriefs/avebury.html

thanks for those links

The children of the stones used to terrify us when we were young kids

http://www.stonehenge-avebury.net/Media ... COTs1.html

This might make you laugh. I call it 'The case of the curious curve.'

While I was looking at the southern inner circle at Avebury, trying to decide for myself if there were 29 or 30 stones originally, I looked at the historical maps on Google for 2003 and seemed to see a definite curve marked out on the ground:



I looked also at the Google map for 2002 and sure enough, there it was again:



Now this line is in a clear open field and there is no reason for any modern person to walk this exact line to the extent that it makes itself visible from a satellite picture, several years running.

I concluded that the track was ancient, probably dating from a time when there were more stones in the circle. At the north-east, the track seems to curve in more. I assumed that this was because the existing stones gave out at this point and people made a bee-line for the corner of the garden and exited that way. I thought the curve in the grass might be because of a change in vegetation. Perhaps the stones were fenced off, so the undergrowth grew outside the circle of stones and people walked around that and we can still see it, just like we can still see the ancient pasture boundaries in these pictures.

Now my putative circle of 30 stones, rather than a smaller circle of 29 stones, seemed to fit this crop feature better. I know the next diagram below is confusing, but the red lines and orange numbered stones are the conventional 29 stone solution published everywhere, whereas the white hatched lines and white circles are where I think a 30 stone circle really went. There are only those five stones left today in the south west:



The curious curve followed my white line very well until the stone marked 125 where it tracks in.

I looked at Aubrey's old plan, pre-Stukeley, the earliest plan we have:



Yup, he shows existing stones petering out exactly where I was thinking the stones petered out and the cropmark started to veer away from a nice circle.

So surely I am on the right track? No, of course not.

So what is the answer? What made that track so prominent that it shows on Google from year to year?

It was Pete Glastonbury to the rescue. "Ah, that will be Gordon", he says.

"Gordon who?", I say.

"Gordon Rhymes", says Pete.

"OK", I thought.

Pete then told me he'd showed Gordon where the missing stone depressions in the soil are, which are visible on the ground. I've looked too, you can actually see them better on the ground than in aerial photos.

Each and every day, being a pagan fluid Druid dude, Gordon dutifully walked this exact path for some years, causing the rut visible on Google. Gordon is still to be seen playing guitar in the Red Lion at Avebury on some nights, but regrettably he has ill health and no longer is able to walk the path every day.

You can enjoy Gordon walking his path here on Youtube:

http://yt.cl.nr/lQOa9SWKNsg

Now the interesting thing for me is it is a proof of some kind for my construct. Because Gordon was walking outside the visible depressions (clockwise, by the way, as all good Druids do, sunwise) he was in fact establishing for me where the stones went, which is a bigger circle than conventional estimates. So I believe Stukeley was right in saying 30 stones for this circle, not the 29 you will see on most reconstructions.

Gordon's circle and my circle of 30:

wow one man's walking can make a dent in the earth
who would have thought

Yes, as the old saying goes: 'A stitch in time distorts reality.'

It was a sobering experience for me, because I had made my mind up this feature could only be relatively old, like the pasture boundaries long since removed which are still visible. I could have clung to my old belief but somehow Pete G's answer seems to be the right one, it was Gordon.

Hey Whoop just to play around a bit
Gordon was a Druid so why do you think he walked on THAT PATH everyday ....and made his mark on the landscape?
How did he do that? GPS or just speical Druid guiding system?

I think he walked it because he'd bought a house at Avebury out of sheer love of the stones. Like many people, myself included, he feels a real affinity with the stones.

Why he walked THAT particular PATH was because, as I said before, Pete said he'd showed Gordon where the missing stone depressions in the soil are, which are visible on the ground.

When they destroyed the stones years ago, they dug around a stone until it fell over. They then dug a deep pit around the stone and especially underneath the stone, from one side to the other. They then built a wood fire under the stone and lit it. The tunnel under the stone encouraged a through draught of air so the fire burned fiercely without bellows. Throwing cold water onto the hot stone caused it to crack when hit with a heavy object.

300 years has not been long enough to destroy evidence of these burning pits, which sit as depressions in the ground.

Gordon is walking sunwise because to do otherwise is inauspicious. So he came in through the gate or over the stile and headed south-west to where he could see the first stone depression that he'd been shown by Pete. As he was eventually going to hit the five huge remaining stones and walk round the outside of those, he walked outside the places where stones were missing too.

Probably, after he and Pete walked it just once, he could see the flattened grass from the day before and he kept walking that same track, reinforcing it day by day.

Pete also told me that Gordon had told him the sheep had started to follow him around, which would add to the line.

At Stonehenge the National Trust, the custodians, don't encourage people to walk in the field where the avenue is as they don't 'Desire Lines' created. There is a name for people who do this... Meanderthals.

Druids like Adder stones
An adder stone is a perforated or glass-like stone, naturally occurring, that is traditionally believed to have magical powers. Adder stones were venerated by the Druids and are still thought to be particularly efficacious against diseases of the eye and as charms guaranteeing protection against evil. Such small stones, of various colors, have been credited with curing children of whooping cough (particularly in Scotland), with preventing nightmares, with ensuring success in legal cases and with assisting in recovery from adder bites. Superstition has it that such stones, otherwise known as "serpent's egg" or "snake eggs," are created from the hardened saliva of adders massing together at certain times of the year. According to popular belief, adder stones can be tested by throwing them into a flowing stream -- only those that float are the genuine article. The perforations are said to be caused by the tongues of snakes before the stones solidified

on the Avebury font the Bishop holds a crosier
that looks like


It is always interesting to me the dragon or serpent imagery of a Bishop's crozier
the Catholic church uses the imagery tp this day
he symbolism in the latter case is of the bronze serpent made by Moses in Numbers 21:8-9

It is also reminiscent of the caduceus or the rod of the ancient Greek god Asclepius whose worship was centered around the Aegean, including Asia Minor, indicating the role of the bishop as healer of spiritual diseases.
this is the Russians Bishop crozier


the dragon energy or ley lines of the Earth and Universe

Meanderthals


Avebury font is interesting because of the two dragons/serpents biting the Bishops feet
Druids and Dragon/serpent imagery ...the font goes way back to the 800's

The church is a delight.

Here is a picture I took of the font a few months ago.



Interpretations of the winged serpents and Christ's relationship with them seem to vary.

The obelisk existed but was fallen over and nestled in the corner of a field by the time Stukeley visited in the early 1700s.

It was about 21 feet tall, with perhaps 19 feet visible above ground. It was massive, the tallest stone at the site and of course the centre of the southern inner circle.

David and I are trying to establish where the circle actually ran, so that we can start to make some astronomical observations. Before 1935 there were just three stones standing and two fallen, out of what I think were originally 30.

When Keiller excavated the area of the Obelisk, he planted a concrete marker about 4' tall which is what you see today. Keiller was upset because he wanted to be there when it was placed but the workmen did it in his absence.

I met up with David at the Equinox, March 21st. David went down the day before and stayed another day afterwards. David had mocked up a 19ft tall wooden pole which we erected at the obelisk, so we could take photographs of the shadow lengths cast on the ground. The results of this work has for now to remain private as David may publish another book.

Here is a picture of the shadows cast at sunset from the stones towards the obelisk on March 21st, the equinox, this year:



Just in case Roscoe is watching and doesn't think anyone but baggy-trouser man uses serious measuring kit, this is David Furlong earlier in the day at the Obelisk taking laser measurements to the existing stones:



With regard to the southern circle, with its Obelisk at its centre, from the south west of the circle you can clearly see the flat top of Silbury Hill on the horizon and it seems intentional, the way the top sits like that on the skyline. Tantalisingly, when you walk to the Obelisk Silbury is not visible, but it would be from higher up if you could climb the Obelisk.

Another way to put it is that the top of the Obelisk would have been visible from the top of Silbury Hill.

One of the stones at Avebury has a natural seat and you really get the feeling of the massive presence of the solid stone when you do so. I think it may be something to do with the way it blocks out any direct external sound pressure to the ear. People naturally seem to meditate in the absence of external stimuli. It's just you and nature before you.

Again I took this picture at the equinox. It was a quiet morning. A few people had arrived and slept on the banks to await the dawn. A few gaily coloured people wandered about.



I spoke to one berobed couple. The man claimed to know where buried stones were by dowsing. I said I knew where 18 buried ones were. I actually had a plan with the buried stones marked with me. I suppose, had I had time, I could have put it to the test and seen whether he found the two stones that are closer together than they should be. That would have been an interesting test of his abilities.

I asked him if he thought they should re-erect the buried stones. I got an instant "No!" I said by that token should we rebury the impressive arc of stones we see today in the south west. I got another "No!" We were actually standing among them as we spoke. Before Keiller re-erected them there was just one stone standing.

I concluded that people like Avebury just the way it was when they first discovered it. Personally, as so much of what we see today was re-erected in the 1930s we should pull all the stones up that are buried so we can get a better impression of the immensity of the construction. It's about 0.8 of a mile around the top of the bank.

The section below had one stone standing before Keiller, except for the two entrance stones far left. Picture taken at dawn, 21st March equinox this year:

very interesting posts John, and yes...i think the stones should be uncovered and re-erected.

I would second this statement.
Regards
Nic

Here is a plan of Avebury just before Keiller started work. Just 9 stones were standing in the outer circle. This is out of what were probably at least 100.

And this is Colt Hoare's plan from 1815.

Avebury was in a very sad state.

Below is a composite plan of Avebury, as complete as I can make it. Background from Google. Line drawing from plan released by RCHM.

The commented blobs on the right are notes made by me taken from the 2003 geophysical survey, only published in about April of this year. I overlaid the x-ray like geofizz plots over the plan and drew their extent, so they should be fairly accurate.

White type for buried stones
Orange type for existing visible but fallen stones
Blue type for predicted stone positions. Either because there is a hollow where the stone once was, or they found scattered stone fragments in the soil indicating where a stone was broken up.

The orange blobs are features that showed up in an exceptionally dry summer of 1995. What the prominent circular feature in the west encroaching the back garden of The Lodge was nobody knows, but Stukeley shows the hedge clearly curving around under this although the feature itself was missing by Stukeley's time. It must have been something significant at one time for the hedge to have to go around it.

As I hope you can see, if the stones went where the cropmarks show them in the northern inner circle - and they do match up with Stukeley's plan - this was not a circle at all. It was an oval of I think 30 stones, not the estimated 27.

We can see there was once a companion to the Ringstone. The orange blob between the southern entrance and the inner circle.

The green south east region badly needs resistance testing, as does the impoverished northern sector, and David and I hope to do this if we gan get the kit. There may well be more stones to be found. The 2003 survey found one stone here that was once exposed and recorded that had later become buried again and forgotten, a rare occurrence.

This plan does not show the new stone we think we have found, nor does it show a stone that Pete Glastonbury tells me is hidden forgotten by the roadside to the north of the gate leading to the Cove, opposite the Red Lion. There is certainly a bulge there to be seen, but it is very overgrown.

The stone Pete G says is buried is under here, where I have ringed in red. Incidentally this view is from Google maps, you can walk all around Avebury in Google maps, it's the next best thing to being there. The stones shown here are the 'Cove'. There was another stone to the right, long since missing.



This pastoral view you see today is misleading. Here is another picture from my Avebury archive from 1936, showing the Cove as it was when Keiller bought the site. There was an ugly garage and the Cove was in the back yard surrounded by debris.



Also, there was once a row of cottages opposite the Red Lion pub and the end of the row's garden was slap bang up against the Cove. You can see the end wall in the brown picture above as well as in the picture below. If you look carefully you can see large blocks of sarsen stone under the windows of the cottage that were very likely pieces of a megalith.

Keiller removed both the garage and the row of cottages.

This is seriously good work.

Kind words there Sheila.

I was amazed when I found out that English Heritage have no current agenda to do any actual archaeological work at Avebury whatsoever. It's been declared a World Heritage site and that seems to mean let's charge big bucks for the car park and herd people around it like cattle. It's all about crowd control.

A big tip: it's cheaper to pay the Red Lion pub to park all day in their car park, and more central, than to park in the field outside the henge that the National Trust manage on behalf of English Heritage. If you are disabled, the old free car park in the henge is now the free disabled car park.

Actually, there is nothing legally to prevent you from parking in the High Street at Avebury, just like the locals do, but just be prepared for some foul looks from the residents and no doubt some ancient Anglo Saxon invective.

The land at Avebury, except for the small triangle I mentioned before, is owned now by the National Trust, as is Windmill Hill and the 'restored' part of the West Kennet stone avenue. The full arrangement is this:

Avebury Henge, the restored part of West Kennet Avenue and Windmill Hill, are in the freehold ownership of the National Trust and in English Heritage guardianship. They are managed by the National Trust on behalf of English Heritage and the two organisations share the cost of managing and maintaining the properties. The Sanctuary, which is owned by the nation, and West Kennet Long Barrow, which is owned privately, are also in guardianship and are managed by the National Trust under an agreement with English Heritage.

The small triangle south of the eastern entrance, still owned by the old lady and in private hands, is fenced off in the background. In the foreground is Gordon's scrying stone. They are probably his boot-marks too.

You can see one almost buried stone and then there is the fence behind.



Looking more closely, you can see how dense the undergrowth is. The 2003 Papworth survey people were pretty sure they measured the edge of something big and solid, they believe it is a buried stone, but were unable to investigate further. There may well be two of the outer stones buried in this area.

Here is a closeup of the fence where the likely stone is buried.

why?

don't tell me..i can guess.

smart looking fence btw.

As fences go, we can definitely say that is one of them and a fair example at that.

I don't think the Martin Papworth team team got as far as asking permission to go on that land. The vegetation and fence was enough. They did their entire survey in just 3 days.

The resistivity plots in the report are very grainy and I've blown them up in size here, but you can clearly see the buried stones and it's quite easy to accurately match them to the various plans available.

The stones I have ringed here are the ones that seem to be in bunches, closer to their neighbours. The southern set may just appear closer together because of how the stones dropped. Try standing a matchbox on end. Then push it over. It will not fall inside its own footprint, but to one side of it.

By existing stone, I mean stone that is currently existing above ground. The buried ones of course exist too.

....pretty convincing evidence i would say.