There was an old woman
Lived under a hill
And if she's not gone
She's living there still.
--nursery rhyme
On the rolling chalk lands of Marlborough Downs, Wiltshire, England lays the World Heritage Site of Avebury. Built from stone, chalk, water and turf, the Avebury henge and its surrounding monuments are one of the most complete prehistoric complexes in Europe.
Today, the construction of so monumental a site would be a project duly dedicated upon completion. However, to the Neolithic builders of Avebury, perhaps process was ritual. Dedication was in the doing. The toil of building embankments, digging holes, transferring and erecting massive stones with the simplest of tools was the work of a lifetime for probably most that lived within the surrounding environ.
Estimates of construction time for monuments within Avebury are hard to fix but approximations range from several generations to a thousand years. The energies of its builders sanctified the area even as they moiled away within it. Purposeful deposition of tools, the interring of old, possibly sacred objects and other implements give testimony to a landscape set apart -- for the living, the dead and the otherworldly.
Neolithic life has been spoken of as a "process of becoming." There was probably little distinction between self and environment in Neolithic thought. Perhaps in their monuments we find a conviction to "become" with Nature -- by constructing symbols to invigorate and reconcile the seasons of life, death and rebirth in themselves and in the land upon which they depended for survival.
Lying low in the Kennet valley to the west of Avebury, Silbury Hill overlooks Marlborough Down. Considered the most enigmatic of the Avebury monuments, Silbury Hill is the largest man-made mound in Europe.
The name "Silbury" once thought derived from a king "Sil," more likely stems from the Old Norse word "sigla" meaning landmark or "Sil" or "Sel" relating to the time of first harvest.
Built in three phases, the mound is unusually stable. The first phase was precisely constructed with turves and sarsen stones. This original mound was 5 metres in height, 30 metres in diameter and was built around harvest - in late July or August of approximately 2900-2500 BC.
Construction on the second phase began shortly after the first was complete. Chalk rubble and large chalk blocks quarried from a surrounding ditch enlarged the mound to 25 metres and the third and final phase shortly thereafter enlarged the mound to its present height of 37 metres and diameter of 160 metres.
Interestingly, the diameter of the level summit of the mound is 30 metres -- approximately the same as the overall diameter of the Sanctuary site (another monument in the Avebury region) and the original Silbury mound that lies far beneath the final mound. In this, we find interrelatedness between Silbury and the Sanctuary and a reference in the final Silbury to its beginnings.
The Silbury site encompasses a large ditch and quarry around the mound that were further enlarged with each construction phase and water now fills that area in the wet or winter months. Carefully worked and smoothed, excavation has proven the ditch is not the careless result of the building of the mound but actually part of it.
The meaning and use of Silbury Hill has been a source of mystery and argument for years. Excavation has proven the mound was never used or intended as a burial chamber. To its Neolithic builders though, it is quite possible that the entire landform, mound and water moat are intended to represent the telluric goddess of the land.
Primitive humans considered their environment anthropomorphically. Studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes show that people living close to the earth consider it their Mother. Her superhuman body with its mountains, waterways, hills and valleys reclines along many a horizon line. Prior to the post-Neolithic rise of warrior/patriarchies, prehistoric man worshipped the Great Goddess the world over. Even today, the goddesses Britannia and Erui -- goddesses of Britain and Eire --are eponyms of the land itself.
To the Neolithic mind and to many today, the Goddess governs the principle events of a human life; birth, procreation, death, rebirth. The architecture of early man was principally concerned with the symbolic representation of these passages. At Silbury, we see the pregnant Mother, a fecund harvest goddess of life and fertility. As well, within view of Silbury we find her again in her guise as Mother of the dead.
Standing on a crest overlooking Kennet valley, West Kennet long barrow, at 100 metres in length, is one of the largest Neolithic burial chambers in Britain. Reminiscent in shape of longhouses, "long barrows" are rectangular or ovoid mounds. The mounds usually cover a chamber or chambers constructed of wood or stone and provide timeless refuge for deposits of human bone, along with chalk rubble, soil and the like.
Unlike Silbury, all six of the long barrows in the WHS region are sited upon areas of significant prior human activity, making it plausible to assume that historical significance was important in the location of these funerary monuments. In use for approximately 1500 years, West Kennet long barrow offered up the remains of 46 individuals upon excavation, many others having been plundered from the mound over the centuries for use in potions and medicines.
The barrow is entered through a forecourt of enormous sarsen stones leading past two chambers each on the north and south sides of the mound. Even as busloads of visitors arrive, walking back through the mound gives a fleeting sense of movement into mystery as one walks toward the furthermost chamber. The western transept itself is quite roomy and gives the impression that the comfort of visitors to their interred ancestors was considered as the mound was constructed.
In this house of death, bodies of the deceased were laid within the mound to decompose. After bones had dried in the western end of the monument, the skeleton was disarticulated and the small bones interred within the monument. The skull and long bones were oftentimes removed for placement beyond the mound, in locations undoubtedly important to the family or tribe of the deceased.
Much like the aerial view of Silbury, the layout of West Kennet gives us a view of a squatting goddess -- a rounded head, two arms, two legs and her vulva open to the east. Those sleeping within the Death goddess were not vanished from the earth, but into her, perhaps anticipating rebirth with the light of the rising eastern sun, much like Bru na Boinne in the Boyne River Valley in Ireland.
As Joseph Campbell writes, "[the] function of mythology is to carry the individual through the various stages of life...-- to help persons grasp the unfolding of life with integrity. This [mythology] means that individuals will experience significant events, from birth through midlife to death, as in accord with themselves, their culture and the universe and the mysterium tremendum beyond themselves and all things." By living their mythology, through the construction, celebration and ritual use of these monumentally symbolic landforms, the Avebury builders lived their Nature and ceaselessly renewed the seasons of life.
Stepping out of the shelter of West Kennet long barrow and looking toward Silbury Hill I experienced one of those rare moments out of time when it all makes sense. That it was a map, and I could feel the thick ligature between the dead and the reborn, the worlds of the living and the ancestral coexisting in the wind that blew gently across the Down -- an initiate walking out of the dark to the stunning awareness of rebirth, life and connection.
Our journey through Avebury will conclude next time with the exploration of such monuments as the Sanctuary and Windmill Hill.
