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| A drawing by Stukeley, a antiquarian and archaeologist in the 1600s of his interpretation of how Avebury once looked. |
Whereas Stonehenge's structural feats are impressive, Avebury's sheer size is what sets it apart from others in the UK. However when you take into consideration not only the henge and avenues, but instead look at the entire complex, it is a truly breathtaking area. Silbury hill for example, Europe's largest prehistoric mound, would have been incredibly difficult to build, and there are scores of smaller stone circles and burial chambers dotted about the landscape, many of which now no longer exist because of years of abuse from disinterested or ignorant farmers, or over-zealous, Christian superstition. Taking the entire area, including as far south as Stonehenge and Old Sarum, and as far west as Stanton Drew into consideration, it is clear that the tens of thousands of man-hours that it took to construct these monuments is proof that these builders were not the stereotypical 'cavemen' we were taught to laugh at by the popular (but incorrect) view of ancient history. In fact their society at the time must have included a great deal of organisation, trade and cooperation to complete such tasks.
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| 'Stone 106', Avebury's Vulva stone which would have originally have lined up with the 'the obelisk's' shadow come May sunrise. Note the appearance of female genitals. |
The one thing you get from the experience when you walk about Avebury, is a sense of the scale of workmanship that went into the monuments. This was not simply a henge lobbed up with no concise purpose, it obviously had a very real connection with the everyday lives of the neolithic tribesmen and women who lived in such a time and place. It was built, stone by stone, over the course of many hundreds of years, each generation knowing they would never see it completed. It may seem strange to us today, why anyone would start a construction project you know you would never see completed. With the average age expectancy at that time of late twenties to early thirties, it's fascinating to think how many generations took up this project. It wasn't designed of course, but every generation must have contributed to it in some way or another, and thought along the same lines of aesthetic or practical use.
The act of adding to or beginning the construction of something, despite knowing they would never have any hope of seeing the finished results, is in my personal opinion the result of a superior worldview. The world view of our ancestors was not linear like ours. They did not see birth as the start, nor death as an end, to them everything was a renewing cycle. It seems pretty alien to us, most likely because of a hangover from a Christian world view, but the ancient worldview really would have some outstanding benefit for us today if we was to take up a similar philosophy.
Today, we are very narcisstic as a society. We ask, "what can benefit me"? We shun community and celebrate the cult of the individual. We put off starting projects like renewable energy which we know we could do today with our current level of technology, but shy away from it because we know it would impede our own personal comfort, without much thought given to the next generation. How many times have we heard someone say "oh well, it won't happen in my life time", apparently carelessly condeming their own grandchildren into poverty or at risk of some ecological or economic disaster.
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| The midsummer 'coupling' at Stonehenge. A simulated 'sunrise' position showing the 'phallic' stone's shadow being cast into Stonehenge itself. |
To pre-Christian societies, the dead lived on in the lives on the living. Death was not a resting place, but instead was an escape into another form. Now even if you took out everything spiritual, even from a scientific point of view we have to agree that in many ways, we are immortal. I mean to say, we are all made of elements forged in the heart of a star, which was then expelled across the universe in the explosion of a supernova. Our DNA has been passed on, ever changing but still with some degree of direct linage for four billion years, and when we die, our children continue this trend on until ultimately there is nothing left of Earth but a few scraps of carbon. In the short term our own bodies are either cremated or rot in the ground, and our nitrates go back into the soil to be reused in an ever replenishing cycle. Yes, we might lose consciousness, but then does that matter? Are plants not alive, or jellyfish? Our immortality it could be argued is not won through some form of strict religious doctrine, but through the realisation that our children, families and communities are an extension of ourselves. In the case of our children that is even more true, biologically speaking. In doing what is right for our kids to ensure their survival, we are in our own small part living on through the consequences of our own actions.
So by this point you maybe wondering what these morbid points have to do with Beltane, which is meant to be a happy affair! Well the evidence is in the Avebury landscape, and although we find the place only partially complete, the remaining pieces are enough to give us some explanation.
The overall symbolism of the Avebury complex is of rebirth and fertility. Long Barrows (open tombs) look to the rising sun, others look to the rising moon, and just like Christian churches which also point East, this imagery is to evoke a sense of a life force arisen from the dead (although in Christianity this is only really seen as Christ's attribute.) But most importantly, many of the stones at Avebury cast shadows which fulfill a symbollic sexual communion of a sky God and a Earth Goddess.
There are quite a number of 'Adam' and 'Eve' stones, consisting of lozenge shaped stones that have holes carved in them as a representation of the female vulva, whilst other stones were selected for their phallic-like appearance. The most important stone, which I have already meantioned, was the 'the obelisk'. (A historian recording the destruction of a great deal of Avebury's stones during the 1600s named Stukeley, named this stone, and if it were not for his invaluable illustrations we would have far less informaton on the site.) This large phallic stone during the May Day sunrise cast a long shadow upon a stone that was either selected because of, or was carved to look like female genitals.
This symbolic communion represented by the spring-time sunrise, was a representation of a male Sun God impregnating a now fertile Mother Earth deity. The shadow's alignment was proven through experiments undertaken, and is available to read in a book called 'The Secrets of The Avebury Stones' by Terence Meaden. In fact, May Day is not the only aligned consummation, another set of stones at Avebury and at Stonehenge line up the sunrise on the summer solstice too, presumably to represent when the fertility of the Sun God is at it's strongest.
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| A digital representation on how the post and stone configuration once looked at 'The Sanctuary'. |
Putting the rest of the picture together from what we know is fairly easy. Whilst I don't think it will ever be possible to know everything about Avebury and the way in which it was used, (which is in part much of the appeal of the place) we can get a rather good picture. Strangely, I had a theory about the role of Avebury way before I had read any literature on it. Worryingly, the intellectuals not only gave credence to my theory, but more or less proved it when I read Aubury Burl's work in his book 'Prehistoric Avebury'. So I must be on the right lines to some degree!
Basically with the sexual theme running here, and with two separate avenues leading to the main henge, and with two inner rings inside the greater henge, it would make sense for one avenue to be male and the other female. Simply put, the males and the females would start off almost at an equal distance away from one another at the ends of the avenues. When they met up in the middle, one would presume they would all perform a fertility rite. Presumably they would try and time the rite so it would coincide with the coupling of the shadow cast. (I expect they hoped for good weather!) Whether this was physical or symbolic we will never know, but I do suspect it was more than likely physical. As ghastly as public orgies may seem to us today, it would have likely have had a community bonding function besides the religious use.
Now on the topic of a more morbid nature. When members of the community died the remains of relatives were placed in large longbarrows. These were specifically made chambered tombs made from sarsen stones like the stone circles, and were left open to the elements. This was until inexclibably at some point, the culture made an effort to plug the entrance with more sarsen stones before abandoning it. When excavations of the Long Barrows were underway, they found that the bones were all split up, with no way of telling which part was what person. One possible explanation is that at certain times in the year, the bones of dead relatives were taken out for use in ritual. This may seem sick to us, but to those living then, they did not believe in an outright end to life and therefore the dead were considered to still have influence in the land of the living. Similar ritual or cultural uses are still in practice today in isolated communities. The only other type of burial seems to have been by burial mound, and seems in most cases to have only been used by VIPs on account of valuable items found with skeletons. Interestingly, this burial practice was also used by the Anglo-Saxons as late as around 600AD, as seen in places such as Prittlewell and Sutton Hoo.
The stone henge atop of Overton Hill seems to have once been enclosed within wooden posts, leading some to suspect that at some point there stood a wooden structure around the stone circle. This structure named 'the sanctuary' is relatively important. The Kennet Avenue once lead all the way to 'the sanctuary' , and therefore must have had some greater importance. We don't know whether males or females started from the Overton stretch, but we can suspect its purpose. Now there are a ton of ideas about what the structure could have been, but one of the most likely theories that I've read in the past, is the idea that the building housed the remains of the recently deceased before the bones were taken up to a Long Barrow for storage. It is not completely mad to consider that maybe they thought that one of the genders would be given a fertility boost from spending time with the dead, and whilst that sounds disgusting to us (and the best way to spread disease,) the notion might not have been completely alien to our neolithic ancestors. Again this is my personal theory, and one which has also been theorised on or at least put forward by academics in this field, and isn't just my inane ramblings (although a large pecentage is, I have to be honest!)
So essentially, this is an entire landscape that was specifically built on the concepts of rebirth, fertility and a form of necromancy I suppose. It was built from the ground up as a temple to celebrate the human condition and also nature's cycles, in celebration of May Day and the Midsummer.
Some of the beliefs held by our ancestors still stick with us today. On Beltane, some couples still make the pledge of an annual love contract. In medieval times there were many cases of local customs, where for one day you could for instance have an affair with the girl you really fancied in the village without being thought of as an adulterer, and of course the May Pole itself is a representation of that same communion of the phallice and red and white ribbon symbolising the Goddesses vulva. In many ways society has changed little in terms of custom, but it is the way that we view ourselves and each other which perhaps needs addressing.
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| The male and female representation is a running theme throughout the entire monument. |
So how can people, especially pagans, make sense of it today? Well I think mankind has moved on in our understandings somewhat by this point, but we can still take on board some of the wisdom that a five-thousand year old culture can offer. Birth and death are two sides of the same coin. Nature gives with one hand and takes away with the other in a constant balance, what happens between birth and death; reproduction, is possibly the most sacred gift that we possess as a living being.
But! Unlike the modern man's linear understanding of life, I would argue that must start to appreciate that our time here on Earth is very short, and that we must live in balance and indeed work for the betterment of all life going into the future. We currently live out-of-kilter. Yes, fertility is hugely important and something to celebrate, but if we keep indulging in procreation so liberally then our descendants will not have a planet to live on which can provide for them. If we do not start thinking about ways we can improve the lives of currently unborn children, we are slitting our own throats as a species. Yes, our lives are fantastic when compared with our Neolithic ancestors, but we take too much and give too little, and we must understand that if we do not change course, then nature will take back from us what she has given, probably when we least expect it. The general theme of our own fertility and life-time here on earth is easy to grasp, as is the anthropomorphic representation of nature deities. The concept of an eternal life beyond our mortal sight however is not, and this is why spirituality, rather than dogmatic religion or even over-zealous atheism, is still healthy for society. To have no concept of a future past our own demise, is dangerous and frankly anti-human.
Avebury is without a doubt my favorite place in the UK. It's relative obscurity when compared with Avebury's smaller sibling at Stonehenge has left it less commercialised and enabled the place to retain a great deal of its original atmosphere. Albeit, much of the henge complex has been destroyed over the centuries, but you get a greater sense of the real purpose behind the union of stone and landscape here than at other sites.
