Returning from the Underworld: The West Kennet Palisades in the Avebury Monument Complex

Abstract

In recent decades some archaeologists have come to doubt key components and properties of the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age (EBA) Avebury monument complex. By site excavation of the Beckhampton Avenue, Silbury Hill, and the West Kennet Palisades the idea of an integrated group of contemporaneous monuments has been thrown into doubt. In this paper these critiques are themselves critiqued and further tested by an inter-disciplinary exercise integrating archaeology, landscape phenomenology, and archaeoastronomy. It is suggested that the emergent properties of this procedure reveal that these recent doubts are unfounded and that this monument complex was designed for rituals to initiate neophytes by simulating journeys through a virtual underworld.

Alterity, Otherness and Nomad Geometries: New Trajectories for the Interpretation of Late Neolithic Monuments

“…The proposed solar and lunar alignments at Avebury (Sims 2021) alongside the projected axes of archaeologically attested linear settings of standing stones.…”

“…Any complexity is reserved for the explanatory gymnastics that are required to explain away seeming contradictions or tensions, rather than in the careful reading of the fine-grained archaeological detail where much of the otherness can be found. Take, for example, the significant astronomical alignments argued for the Avebury henge (Sims 2021, after North 1996). Here the configuration of the monuments within the landscape is argued to have served as a model of the underworld designed to structure rituals linked to cycles of the moon.…”

“…5). Indeed, rather than follow the archaeology, the archaeology is made to follow the explanatory schema that is then retro-fitted to it (Sims 2009; 2021, 109): circles within circles. While there is explicit talk of ontology, the focus here is once again epistemological—unlocking late Neolithic ways of encoding and exploiting the cyclical movements of the heavenly bodies or transition of the seasons.…”

“…While there is explicit talk of ontology, the focus here is once again epistemological—unlocking late Neolithic ways of encoding and exploiting the cyclical movements of the heavenly bodies or transition of the seasons. In this sense the archaeo prefix of the archaeo-astronomy being touted is redundant (Sims 2021, 129). In much the same way that this ensures that Stonehenge remains the same kind of calendar (albeit more complex) as it was for Lockyer, the Avebury complex remains the same kind of cosmogram/lunar/solar temple (albeit more complex) as it was for William Stukeley in the early eighteenth century and Michael Dames in the twentieth (Dames 1977; Gillings & Pollard 2004, 156).…”

“…In much the same way that this ensures that Stonehenge remains the same kind of calendar (albeit more complex) as it was for Lockyer, the Avebury complex remains the same kind of cosmogram/lunar/solar temple (albeit more complex) as it was for William Stukeley in the early eighteenth century and Michael Dames in the twentieth (Dames 1977; Gillings & Pollard 2004, 156).

Figure 5.The proposed solar and lunar alignments at Avebury (Sims 2021) alongside the projected axes of archaeologically attested linear settings of standing stones.

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