Prehistoric Avebury
Aubrey Burl
Yale University Press
By far the largest of the many British stone circles, the multiple circles and earthworks of Avebury stand on the Marlborough Downs, eighteen miles from Stonehenge. A mile away is Silbury Hill which is itself a construction as big as the Egyptian pyramids, and the largest man-made hill in Europe. This complex of prehistoric remains with its many associated tombs and relics has long fascinated archaeologists and the quarter-million visitors who come to it each year.

The stone circles and enormous earthwork at Avebury continually attract uncontrolled speculation by the illinformed. Hence this book presents the archaeological facts on Avebury and demonstrates how it fits into the general context of prehistoric Britain what its landscape was like, how the monument gradually developed over the centuries how the civil engineering was carried out, and (a central concern of the book) what was the daily life of the people who built it and used it. Some fresh interpretations are offered, and use is made of ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the likely kinds of ceremonial employed. Attention is drawn to the great mounds at Marlborough and Marden, and scepticism expressed at the more extreme mensurational and astronomical propositions made in recent years.