I have been meaning to follow up on the Stonehenge/Avebury trip, beyond the teaser photos that we posted.

As archaeology and ancient culture junkies, Susan and I have really been wanting to see Stonehenge and other of the great standing stone monuments of the British Isles.  (Yes, I know that other countries have them too, but we’re here now, so…)  Unfortunately, they’re a bit challenging to get to for the car-free.  Fortunately, our local friends Gwen, Joe, and Gavin have a car and volunteered to take us on the sightseeing tour.

One of the secrets that we learned from the locals is that, while the English Heritage group keeps most tourists at a distance from the stones themselves (for the stones’ preservation), it is actually possible to get to go inside the circle and to touch the stones.  You have to make a reservation well in advance, because only a limited number of people are allowed in each day, in fixed, early morning time slots.  So, entirely too early on Saturday morning late in April, we hit the road, headed for the Salisbury plain.  This is a couple hours away from our end of London, so it was a bit of a trek to get there early enough.  But it was a glorious morning and an incredible experience.

The circle of Stonehenge, seen from the approach across the Salisbury Plain.

For those who aren’t familiar, Stonehenge is one of the great mysteries of Brittanic culture.  It’s a neolithic monument, dating from roughly the period of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and far before the written word had entered the isles.  It was constructed in phases, over as much as 3,000 years (depending on which parts of it you’re talking about and whom you ask).  And, unlike the Pyramids, we really have no idea what it’s about.

It’s clear that the circle has astronomical functions — the alignment captures midsummer and midwinter sunrise and sunset (respectively) precisely.  But beyond that, we know little about why or even who built it.  Given that it was built in phases over a span of time greater than that from Christ’s birth to today, it seems virtually certain that it was used by different cultural groups for different things over different eras.  What is amazing is the amount of effort that went into its construction and the fact that it remained of importance for so many millennia.  And that all of that importance is now lost in time, like tears in the rain.

It is difficult to describe the sensation of standing among the stones on a quiet, bright, sunny morning.  The sense of age and mystery is amazing and humbling.  The stones are immense — the small bluestones in the inner circle are nearly my height and weigh something like 4 tons apiece, while the great sarsens in the outer ring stand over twice my height and weigh as much as 25 tons each.  Their weight and silent mystery resonate in all the places of my soul that long to touch other times and places.  I can’t really put words to it properly, so I’ll let the stones speak for themselves.

Sun flares at Stonehenge.

A different view of the circle, showing how they've fallen over the ages.

The stones are home now to lichen and a variety of other life: birds, spiders, mice.  The lichens are fascinating — it turns out that they can do genetic studies on the lichens to determine their age and origin.  There are some lichen colonies that are, apparently, thousands of years old and live only here, on these stones.

Lichens growing on a trilithon.

New life nestles among the ancient stones.

A view of the outer ring of sarsen stones, showing the longest remaining segment of capstones.

The lintel stones in the outer ring of sarsen stones are works of high stone-shaping skill.  They’re actually assembled with tongue-and-groove construction aligning the lintels and mortise-and-tenon joints holding the lintels in place.  You can still see the tenons at the top of some of the uprights that have lost their horizontal stones:

Stone tenon, once used to align and support a lintel capstone.

Beneath the lintel stone.

Shadows of present and past: Susan framed by a trilithon.

After Stonehenge, we headed for Avebury.  The awe of the stones hung with us as we drove.

Before arriving at Avebury, we stopped briefly at Silbury mound:

Silbury mound.

Just as mysterious, and at least as ancient as Stonehenge, Silbury mound is an artificial hill, constructed by an astounding mounding clay and chalk.  While you could build it with only “modest” effort using modern earth-moving equipment, in its day, archaeologists estimate that it required 18 million man hours to move the nearly quarter-million cubic meters of earth.  And we have no idea why.  It doesn’t seem to be a barrow or burial mound, and no significant implements or artifacts have been found in the excavations of the site.

Today, it stands starkly out of the plain.  The photo doesn’t really capture just how obviously man-made it is.  It is dramatically different than all of the land features around it, and you have no doubt in your mind, as you face it, that it was built by human hands.  It’s quite a bit larger than the photo makes it look as well — it really does tower over you as you stand there.  Unfortunately, it is currently closed because some of the old excavations have collapsed, so we couldn’t get any closer than this.

Then it was on to Avebury.

Avebury is a small village in Wiltshire, not too far from Stonehenge.  It is notable now because it sits in the midst of an enormous neolithic structure — immense earthwork ditches and banks, a huge stone circle (much wider than Stonehenge’s), and a prehistoric roadway or avenue lined with standing stones.  Many of the stones were partially or entirely buried until unearthed in the Nineteenth Century, which preserved them against the depradations of those seeking building materials or fearing what they represented.  Today, they have been mostly unearthed and concrete pylons laid in to mark the positions of some of the missing stones.  The remaining stones stand an imposing sentinel around the village.

Part of the great Avebury Stone Ring. The village of Avebury can just be seen in the background.

These stones are older than Stonehenge by a good five centuries, at least, and they are just as mysterious.  They are in a very different style, being undressed stone, but they represent at least as much effort.  Some of the large stones clock in at 40 tons.

Susan and Gwen hold up one of the Avebury Stones.

Gavin, Gwen, and Joe (Joe's back, anyway) at Avebury. Yes, the grass really is that vividly green.

One theory (or at least story) told about the stones is that they are gendered — the tall, narrow stones being male, and the shorter, broader stones being female.  I don’t know that there’s any evidence supporting this, aside from the raw fact of the dimensions of the stones.  But it’s a nice story.

A "male" stone.

Part of the avenue leading into (or away from?) Avebury.

The earthworks surrounding Avebury are also monumental, even if they’re a bit less striking than the stones themselves.  I can’t find figures, offhand, about how much effort it took to construct them, but my guess is that it was well more than Silbury Mound, when you consider that they ring the entire village.  And when you consider that all that digging was done by neolithic humans, with no domesticated animals, using deer antlers for digging tools, it becomes awesome and terrifying.  What inspired them to so much effort?

After the stone tour, it was lunch at a local pub in Avebury, then back to London, tired but filled with wonder and fascination.