Avebury Cosmos by Nicholas Mann

Author:Nicholas Mann [MANN, NICHOLAS R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978 1 84694 680 6
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

West Kennet Avenue

Throughout the Neolithic era it seems likely that people came to the Upper Kennet valley from far and wide, travelling along already ancient trackways, to congregate at the great ‘temple’ of Avebury. Avebury’s status must have benefited from its location on a confluence of many different ancient paths. Numerous visitors, bearing offerings, their tools, trade and exchange items, must have walked along these tracks, probably in the autumn after the harvest, in search of the blessings that this strange and powerful place had to offer. Some of the travellers may have come to obtain the great sarsen stones, or more likely, to seek good quality flint from the Avebury area or other good stone that had found its way there. They may have brought with them raw antler, ochres, shell, jet and amber; highly polished and prized axes from East Anglia, Cornwall, Sussex, Cumbria, Wales and the Continent; worked goods, including hides, carved bone, harpoons, needles, tusks, maceheads, beads, jewellery and ceramics. Their herds of cattle, their high-status bulls and hunting dogs, sheep, goats and pigs would most likely have accompanied them. By whichever route they came, it seems likely they would have come first to the Sanctuary.

If these Neolithic travellers had journeyed up the ancient Ridgeway from the south, they would have crossed the Vale of Pewsey and passed between the highly impressive causewayed enclosure on Knap Hill and the immense barrow now known as Adam’s Grave—the one a ring, the other a nipple of earth—on their respective hills. There were few places quite like this in the Wessex landscape, and they must have walked this part of the way respectfully. They would have proceeded due north, until, on descending a stretch of the Ridgeway, the great long barrow at East Kennet (now covered in trees) would have appeared to their left, on a line of sight to Windmill Hill, the ancestral gathering-place of the people of the area. The widest end of the long barrow was oriented toward them, while its great length— the longest in the country—pointed to the ancestral hill behind.8 Shortly after this, they would have crossed the River Kennet into the Avebury temenos, the sacred domain proper, and climbed the hill to the Sanctuary. If they had travelled from the north or east along the Ridgeway, the passage through the sarsen fields of Fyfield Down—the main source of Avebury’s stones—would also have directed them to the Sanctuary.

Once they had arrived, the visitors would have set down whatever they had brought with them and organised their animals and temporary shelters. This was probably near or in the palisade enclosures on the valley floor by the River Kennet and its springs. At some point, according to their status, they must have been appropriately welcomed and inducted into the protocols of the great landscape temple. These ritual processes of meeting and greeting would surely have been very complex, especially when large numbers were involved; probably the palisade enclosures would also have assisted in this process.

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