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6 - Further Conspicious Construction*

Neolithic people were adept at making their *artifacts* out of flint and
stone before the coming of metal. They were the heirs of a long
tradition of working in these materials that stretched back millions of
years to early hominids in Africa. The commonest shaping technique was
by chipping but a method of grinding which resulted in a smooth,
polished surface was introduced during the Neolithic period. This was
certainly done with sand, water and a leather.

It is probably the only major addition to the technology which was
basically a continuation of the Mesolithic traditions of the earlier
period. *Flint artifacts* were made from narrow blades struck from a
specially-shaped core. The most characteristic Neolithic artifact (the
type-fossil, in the jargon), is a bifacially-worked leaf-shaped
arrowhead. This means that it was chipped on both sides and is in the
shape of a birch leaf, for example. Other, larger, leaf-shaped forms
referred to as laurel leaves were used for other tools. Other forms were
single-piece sickle blades, various forms of knives, scrapers, borers
and tools made out of narrow blades. Of the polished tools, the axehead,
made out of flint and stone, is the best-known. But this implement,
despite its name, was multi-purpose, being used as a wedge for
splitting, and as an adze for shaping, wood.

This tradition seems to be a homogeneous unity throughout Britain
whatever the different styles of pottery might be or the variety of
megalithic tomb or long barrows or the presence or absence of different
kinds of enclosures or houses. The only variation in the stone tradition
comes with time as it gradually distances itself from its mesolithic
ancestry from which in the early period it is difficult to distinguish
it. This is certainly true with particular implements in north-west
Wiltshire.

We do not have a very large collection of neolithic flintwork in our
museums which is rather surprising when we remember that it was the
major material used for tools. It is only in southern Britain that we
find large assemblages. Perhaps we should draw from this the conclusion
that a great many artifacts were made from materials that were more
perishable and so have not survived very well in archaeological contexts.

If we look in museum collections in southern England we find some of
these materials used for a *bone* chisel and gouge, both found in long
barrows, an *antler* pick and rake and shoulder blades of oxen used for
scraping up material that was dug out of a ditch or pit. These last two
together with baskets were the tools used to dig the enormous ditches
and pile up the towering mounds that make up monuments like Avebury and
Silbury Hill. Antler picks and shoulder-blade shovels are found in
quantities in the flint mines also.

*Timber* must have played a major part as a manufacturing material. Our
problem is that wood does not survive in archaeological contexts unless
the context is a waterlogged one. The most informative site of this kind
is in the north Somerset Levels where wooden tracks have been uncovered
in what was marshland.

Nearly 6000 years ago the *Sweet Track* was built using coppiced wood
and oaken planks which make it clear that the polished axehead was used
as a general woodworking tool and not simply as an axe. It must have
doubled as a wedge for splitting large timbers radially and smaller
trees tangentially and cutting down the coppiced poles and as an adze.

The coppiced rods were woven into a form of hurdling which was laid flat
onto the surface of the marsh and pinned into place with pegs and
stakes. The use of planks in north Somerset is a reminder of the use of
them to construct the walls of the hut at *Ballynagilly* in Co Tyrone
which was built at about the same time as the Sweet Track.

Other materials that we are told were used in the Neolithic were those
twisted into *basketry:* reeds, vegetable fibres and so on. Although no
evidence has yet been discovered, it is assumed that the only way that
soil could have been shifted from excavation to dump (bank) was by means
of a basket. Certainly, baskets were in use in Egypt by 4000BC and
several millenia earlier in the Americas.

Fibres could also be twisted into *string or rope* which was probably a
basic necessity in an age which had no other method of easily fastening
objects together or tethering or harnessing animals.

Another necessity was cloth for *clothing*. As far as we know it was
woven from plant fibres like nettles or from animal hair neither of
which survive in most archaeological contexts except as impressions on
pottery or similar clay surfaces. *Hides* were the only waterproof
material available and we can be sure that pigskin, goat/sheepskin and
leather were used for footwear, jerkins, hats and gloves while untanned
hide could have been used for vessels, containers and fire-screens.

Whether objects were decorated or not we cannot say but it is likely
when we think of objects that have survived to us from later times or,
indeed, modern objects like Indian bead costumes or the polychrome
pottery from Mexico and South America. Dyes were available from plants
and earth pigments had been used for thousands of years for skin and
rock painting.

We can get some idea of traditional patterns from the *pottery* of the
latter Neolithic which was decorated and also from the megalithic art
mentioned above on the kerbstones of the great passage graves of the
*Boyne* *valley* in Ireland and elsewhere. There has been some argument
as to whether this art was ornamental or symbolical. The latest student
of it (Claire O'Kelly) says /'I feel that it/ /is much more likely that
the symbolic element was originally the important one but that, as time
went on, and tomb-builders became more experienced and sophisticated,
aesthetic considerations began to enter in, though perhaps never
entirely overruling the/ /symbolism, latent or otherwise/.'

The earliest pottery of the Neolithic British Isles was a varied group
of fine-ware burnished round- bottomed bowls which are collectively
called the *Grimston-Lyles* Hill series. (Grimston, a site in Yorkshire
and Lyles Hill, a site in Northern Ireland). They are found in ritual
sites like causewayed enclosures and in long barrows but do not seem to
have been used for ordinary, everyday purposes. Apparently the housewife
went on using the skin or wooden containers that her ancestors had
always used.

It seems that pottery for the housewife was not made until round about
3500BC and the vessels were pottery bowls decorated around the neck
above the break in profile which is described as a carination. Regional
variations crept in and this pottery is given different names in
different parts e.g. *Abingdon* and *Hembury*, the latter having a
distribution from Cornwall to Sussex, and *Ebbsfleet*, an ill-defined type.

The tradition for round bottomed bowls was coming to an end when various
flat-bottomed types appeared, the earliest a very narrow-flat base on
pottery described as *Fengate*, dated at around 3000BC. Proper
flat-based pottery appears with types like *Grooved Ware*, widely
distributed from Orkney down to southern England and found in all types
of contexts ranging from domestic, burials, pit deposits and, in
Wiltshire, in the great henge monuments like *Durrington Walls*.

Surprisingly, one type of round-based bowl hangs on. This is the style
known as *Mortlake*, the most elaborately decorated of neolithic pottery
which is still around after 2500BC. It is found in contexts like the
*West Kennet* megalithic long barrow which suggests that it is not a
domestic type and is a descendant of the early ritual round-bottomed
Grimston/Lyles Hill series. In this connection, one remembers that the
ritual stone basins in the great Boyne passage-graves are also
round-bottomed.

In Ireland, a representative of the *Grimston-Lyles* Hill tradition is
found around Lough Gur and called *Limerick* *Ware* while the later
decorated pottery is classed as *Sandhills Ware* with a number of
regional variations. In Ireland the Grimston-Lyles Hill style is
referred to as *Neolithic A ware*.

In Scotland, along with the *Grooved Ware*, the later pottery is all
decorated with impressions of different sorts but problems remain with
chronology because of the lack of radio-carbon dates.

No manufacturing site has so far been discovered for neolithic pottery
and we must presume that it was all made by its users in a domestic
situation. It varies a good deal in quality but almost invariably
contains a good deal of filler.

*Fillers* consist of ground-up materials which are mixed with the clay
before it is shaped and which make the transmission of heat through the
thickness of the clay easier during the firing stage in the bonfires in
which the early pots were fired. The fillers can be ground-up minerals
like calcite, quartz, flint, chert, mica or fossil shells all contained
in common rocks like limestone and sandstone, or organic matter which is
reduced to carbon in the firing stage, sand or ground up pottery (grog).
These fillers (sometimes called *'temper*') can be identified under a
microscope and this can allow the area of manufacture of the pottery to
be pinned down to a certain extent.

When the pot has been shaped it was left to dry in the sun or by a fire.
Pots were shaped by hand for thousand of years before the potter's wheel
was introduced and often decorated by finger-pressing, incision,
addition of strips or blobs of clay to the wet surface, puncturing or
engraving. When the pot was thoroughly dry it was fired. If clay is
fired to its maturing temperature it becomes impervious to water but
early kilns could not reach such a high temperature so the pottery
remained porous.

No doubt early pottery was coated with fats or tree resins to make it
less porous. On the other hand, a pot that allows water to permeate
through its walls and evaporate on the outside was a natural 'cool- box'.

The colour of prehistoric pottery depended largely on the iron content
of the clay and on the firing conditions. If the clay is fired under
oxidizing conditions (with plenty of air) the pot is generally red or
brown in colour. If the clay contains no iron, or only small amounts, it
may fire to a buff hue. Under reducing conditions (with a very smoky
fire and no oxgygen surrounding the pot), the organic matter in the clay
may not be burnt out, but reduced to carbon. This produces a black or
grey pot. Sometimes in poorly-fired pottery there is a 'sandwich' effect
in which the interior of the walls of the pot is black and the outside
oxidised and red.

If enough sherds belonging to a particular pot come to light then it is
possible to attempt a reconstruction. It is a skilled business and
requires a knowledge of the original shape of the pot but most pots are
recorded with the aid of a drawn reconstruction which can be published
together with information about provenance(where the pot was found),
scale, description of fabric and a note of other types of pottery found
in the same context and therefore contemporary. However, some pottery,
like Roman samian ware, is so standardised that it is only necessary to
quote the number attached to a particular form in the published
*Dragendorf catalogue* of samian pottery.

The latter part of the Neolithic period is a period of *conspicuous
construction* when the largest monuments that decorate our landscape
were built. One marvels at the amount of labour that was needed to
construct them today, built as they were with antler picks and scapula
(shoulder blade) scrapers and two questions immediately spring to mind.

1. Who had the power to order and organise the work?

2. Why were they built?

Both these questions have to be attempted without the aid of historical
(documentary) evidence but we can use ethnological, ethnographical or
ethnoarchaeological parallels in which living cultures and their
artifacts are studied and compared with the archaeological evidence.

It is often suggested that the segmental society that existed during the
earlier part of the British Neolithic period had changed or developed by
the later part of the period. The segmental society consisted of settled
farmers living in small hamlets or individual farmsteads, perhaps linked
to other settlements by kinship ties but each independent and equal.
When they co-operated in communal activities they did so voluntarily.
They were the groups responsible for the causewayed enclosures and the
earthen and megalithic barrows.

They would have not been capable of building the great monuments of the
neolithic Wessex landscape like *Durrington Walls* henge with an
enclosure bank thirty metres wide and three metres high dug out of a
ditch 9.8 metres wide and 5.4 metres deep around an area of twelve
hectares. This would be a major engineering work today with modern
earth-moving machinery. Calculations of the number of man-hours involved
have varied from 500 to 900 thousand.

Such large-scale works would have required a large labour force of
several hundred and supervision over a long period. Food would have to
have been produced for them and their absence from the agricultural
workforce compensated for. And, at the beginning of the operation the
site would have had to have been chosen, acquired and the design and
layout of the monument settled.

These matters are not likely to have been within the capabilities of the
segmental society of the earlier Neolithic.

The next stage in the development of society is usually into a
*chiefdom* where there are ranks - differences in social status between
people. The head of the senior family has become the chief and rank is
determined by how close is the relationship to the chief. Surpluses of
agricultural products are given as tribute to the chief who uses them to
support his retinue of retainers, priests and craftsmen or perhaps to
invest in public monuments that were necessary for religious or social
purposes. Centres of ceremony are established where rituals are
performed that reinforce the authority of the chief and the gods. These
centres become the focus of the whole community and can come to
symbolise it as Westminster Abbey does today for the English establishment.

This is probably the sort of context in which the conspicuous
constructions of the later Neolithic period appeared. In order to
validate this hypothesis we need to find other characteristics of
chiefdom societies like rich burials or chieftains' residences or the
work of craft specialists. This we have found impossible to do so far
and it is one of the great problems that we have in understanding
late-Neolithic society.

We have suggested that the function of these great monuments was
ceremonial, rituals that involved two elements - the religious and the
secular. As the chief plays an important part in religious activity in
most primitive societies he would have played a major part in the
initiation, construction and use of them. Indeed, in many cases the
chief is both secular leader and chief priest.

The most characteristic monument of the later Neolithic period of the
British Isles is the *henge* associated in England with a particular
form of pottery - grooved ware- and large timber constructions.
Alongside the grooved ware there appear a range of new artifact types
including transverse arrowheads, polished discoidal knives and
plano-convex knives of flint with incised chalk plaques and a series of
ornate bone pins.

A henge may be defined as a circular area of variable size, varying from
some ten metres in diameter to over 300 metres, defined by a bank and
ditch, the bank normally outside the ditch, with one or two entrances.
Henges with one entrance are described as *Class I henges*, those with
two entrances are classified as *Class II* *henges*. In some cases there
are no structures inside at all but, where they exist, they can be pits,
burials and stone or timber structures.

About a hundred henges have been recognised so far, some only known from
aerial photographs, and are distributed widely. On a distribution map,
concentrations can be picked out: in the valley of the Salisbury Avon,
on Mendip in north Somerset and around Ripon in Yorkshire. There are
also examples on Scotland and Ireland.

As far as we can tell at the moment, the smaller henges are the oldest
and the big Wessex ones date to later in the period. An example of a
smaller one is *Stonehenge*, lately dated to c3000BC. Untypically, the
ditch is outside the bank. Inside the bank is a circle of holes referred
to as the *Aubrey Holes* which are thought to have been the footings for
a ring of posts. The earthwork is about 115 metres in diameter. A
smaller henge at *Arminghall* in Norfolk which also enclosed a ring of
posts has a diameter of only 30 metres and far fewer if more massive
posts, eight, compared with Stonehenge's 56 Aubrey Holes.

The finest concentration of henges in northern England are those around
Ripon in Yorkshire with diameters of about 245 metres. The most
impressive are the three *Thornborough Circles* just over three miles
east of Ripon, each with two entrances through a bank originally about
three metres high and two ditches, one each side of the bank, but
separated from it by some twelve metres. The ditches are twenty metres
wide and some three metres deep.

In Scotland the *Ring of Brodgar* is one of the finest henges. It is on
the Mainland Island in Orkney and consists of a ditch with no bank
broken by two entrances about 112 metres in diameter. Inside is a ring
originally of some sixty upright stones with an average height of two
metres. In West Lothian is *Cairnpapple* which in its destroyed second
phase consisted of a henge containing an oval setting of stones.

On Mendip at *Priddy*, a few miles north of the city of Wells, are four
henges placed in line like the Thornborough henges but having diameters
of about 180 metres. The banks are set within the ditches like
Stonehenge and each has a single entrance. Excavation of one bank shows
that the ditch material was piled up between two concentric circles of
three-metre high posts and faced with drystone walling. The ditch of the
excavated example was about four metres wide and just over a metre deep.

In Ireland there is an example in Co Down at Ballynahatty called
*'Giant's Ring'*. The diameter is 183 metres, the bank built of material
scraped up from the interior is c20 metres wide at the base and c3.5
metres in height. At *Grange* in Co Limerick the enclosure is some 65
metres in diameter with a well-defined entrance through the bank and
ring of stones set with their backs up against the inner side of the bank.

But the finest collection of henges is in the valley of the Salisbury
Avon and, as well as the big henges, includes smaller henges like
*Stonehenge*, *Knowlton* in Dorset and *Maumbury Rings* outside
Dorchester. At Knowlton, in an area that was apparently sacred at the
time, three henges arranged in almost a straight line are surrounded by
groups of round barrows. A south circle has a diameter of c240 metres
with a ditch on the inside and two entrances. The central circle to the
north has a diameter of around 105 metres with two entrances. Its bank
today is about four metres high and the ditch about 10.5 metres wide. In
the middle of the enclosure stands the ruins of a medieval church. The
north circle which can only be seen from the air is D-shaped with a long
axis measuring about 82 metres.

*Maumbury Rings* was later turned into a Roman amphitheatre but
originally consisted of an enclosure around 105 metres in diameter with
a large bank and an internal ditch constructed out of a series of
contiguous pits, some up to 10.5 metres deep. There was a single
entrance. It was part of a large sacred complex including *Mount*
*Pleasant* henge, *Flagstones* enclosure and the timber circle at
*Greyhound Yard* in Dorchester.

*Mount Pleasant* henge is one of the large Wessex hanges and lies about
a mile east of Dorchester. The bank was originally about four metres
high surrounding an egg-shaped enclosure about 370 metres along its
longer axis and about 320 metres along the shorter one. Originally the
4.8 hectare area could be accessed by four entrances. The bank is
outside the ditch which had a diameter of about 43 metres with a single
entrance.

Inside the enclosure was the remains of a circular timber structure
consisting of five concentric rings of postholes. It dates from round
about 2000BC. Later, a central setting of pits and sarsen monoliths was
set up to replace the timber setting. Animal bones and some 3000 worked
flints, antler picks and Food Vessel and Collared Urn pottery were found
in the ditch apart from the ubiquitous Grooved Ware. The date for this
phase is about 1700BC.

Inside the main ditch and running parallel to it and about twelve metres
inside it was a palisade foundation ditch. The palisade must have been a
major engineering job as some 1600 oaken posts would have been required
to construct it. Either side of the two entrances were large timber door
jambs. It has been estimated that the palisade could have been six
metres high snd the posts nine metres long. The excavator suggests that
this amazing construction dates to around 1700BC. The sequence of
activity on the Mount Pleasant hilltop is therefore:

1. Around 2100BC the henge was built and the concentric timber structure
erected.

2. Around 2000BC the timber palisade built and the timber structure
replaced by the stone monument.

In the same area the henge at *Maumbury Rings* was built around 2000BC,
Around the same time the enclosure at *Flagstones* appeared consisting
of a circular, segmented ditch some 100 metres in diameter in which were
found five burials. At four points in the side of the ditch carvings of
lines, arcs and circles were scratched on the chalk surface. The ditch
is dated at round about 2100BC and in the middle of the enclosure were
the remains of a round barrow over a pit with a crouched inhumation. At
*Greyhound Yard* in Dorchester and in *Church Street* parts of a large
timber circle have been discovered surrounding a projected area of
around 380 metres in diameter. Apparently some 600 mature oak tree
trunks would have been required for its construction. A radiocarbon date
for it is about 2100BC.

*Durrington Walls* is in Wiltshire to the north of Amesbury. It consists
of a nearly oval enclosure surrounded by a ditch with an external bank
about 30 metres wide and about three metres high. There are two
entrances. Across the longer diameter the distance is 487 metres and 472
metres along the shorter. A strip excavation in 1967 uncovered two
timber post complexes. The southern pattern of postholes represented the
remains of a circular structure of two phases:

1. Four nearly concentric circles with a facade to the south east of it.

2. A large structure consisting of six nearly concentric circles of more
massive posts with a single entrance with two large postholes. Outside
it was a platform with an extensive area of burning and a litter of
pottery, flints, animal bone and antler.

The northern circle stood around 120 metres north of the southern and
consisted of a double circle of postholes approached by a rough avenue
passing through a facade of posts. Radiocarbon dates for Durrington
Walls centre around 2400BC.

*Woodhenge* is a site 60 metres south of Durrington Walls. The ditch
surrounding it is approximately circular with a diameter around 86
metres and a single entrance. Traces of a bank outside were very slight.
Excavation showed that the ditch was between 1.8 and 2.1 metres in depth
with a broad bottom some 3.6 to 4.8 metres wide. Inside were six
concentric egg-shaped rings of postholes. Near the centre of this
structure was a small pit with the crouched skelton of a three-year old
child with a cleft skull. Dug into the floor of the surrounding ditch
the crouched burial of a young man was found. Amongst the finds were
fragments of a polished greenstone axehead from Cornwall which matched a
similar find from Durrington Walls.

In general it can be said that the material remains from Woodhenge are
very similar to those from the southern circle in Durrington Walls. A
date for Woodhenge would lie around 2250BC.

Limited excavations at the henge monument of *Marden* in the Pewsey Vale
of north Wiltshire took place in 1969. The ditch terminal and bank
terminals at the north entrance, one of the two entrances, were examined
and a timber structure located in the interior. Marden is an incomplete
enclosure with the south-eastern perimeter closed off by the River Avon.
About 14 hectares are enclosed with internal dimensions of 530 metres
from north to south and 360 metres from east to west. Radiocarbon
determinations suggest a date of around 2400BC for its construction.

The timber structure inside was in the form of a circle of postholes
some 10.5 metres in diameter. The average depth of the postholes was
some 15 centimetres which suggests that the structure could not have
been very substantial and certainly could not have been the remains of a
building.

It is clear from what we have said that there is a definite association
between *timber structures* and henge monuments. Later, we find timber
structures being replaced in this association by standing stones. This
link is strengthened by the fact that the stone trilithons at Stonehenge
were put together using carpentry techniques. One is tempted in this
circumstance to suggest that the timber structures we have been
describing could have been designed as tripartite structures (the wooden
equivalent of stone trilithons) and that the timber circles were joined
at the tops with a continuous lintel as with the stone circle at
Stonehenge.

The latest discovery of a wooden structure at this time is at *Stanton
Drew* in Somerset where it consisted of nine concentric circles with a
diameter of c93m and dated from c3000BC. This was later replaced
(c26/2500BC) by the present stones in the same way as the site of the
*Sanctuary *near Avebury.

Timber settings have been discovered elsewhere. At *Balfarg* in
Fifeshire an earthwork enclosure surrounded a timber circle 25 metres in
diameter was associated with *Grooved Ware* pottery. Outside it there
was some evidence for five concentric circles and an outer ring which
may have been palisade-type structures. Dates range from 2465BC to
2085BC. Also in Scotland, at *Strathallan* in Perthshire, twenty-four
large, ramped postholes (postholes with the groove alongside in which
the post was slid into position) formed a ring enclosed by a ditch with
an external bank which had two opposed entrances. Dates ranged from
2090BC and 2155BC. In a commanding position at the head of the
*Kilmartin Valley* in Argyll was a timber circle some 46m across
approached ftom the valley itself by a timber avenue. At *Moncrieffe* in
Perthshire and at *Milfield North* in Northumberland similar, smaller,
timber rings have been found. Excavations at *Dorchester-on-Thames*
found an egg-shaped timber circle which was aligned along the axis of a
cursus and was dated to around 2000BC. Horseshoes of timbers have been
found at *Croft Moraig* in Perthshire and *Arminghall* where the eight
ramped postholes were two metres deep and were around a metre in
diameter. How people at the time were able to cut down and work such
large timbers is something we still do not know. The date for the site
is around 2500BC.

So far the excavations inside these large henges have been limited and
it is difficult to draw any conclusions about their functions until we
know what other and how many other structures remain to be investigated
inside them. Electro-magnetic survey at *Durrington Walls* has
established that there are a number of other features lying outside the
excavation area.

Perhaps the best guess we can make at the moment is that they were
*'central places'* where people congregated on a number of different
occasions for ritual or trading exchange or other communal activities.
But were they the centre of 'special areas' with other monuments in the
vicinity that were certainly connected with rites of death and burial
like the round barrows?

The remaining monuments of conspicuous construction are *bank barrows*,
*cursus monuments* and *Silbury Hill*. The bank barrows are long mounds
and about ten are so far known. No doubt more will be discovered by
aerial survey. The best known examples are in Dorset, one on *St
Martin's* *Down*, Long Bredy, which is 196.6 metres long and about 1.8
metres high with a ditch along each side. Not far off is a long barrow
which 35.4 metres long and 1.5 metres high which rivals West Kennet long
barrow in the size of its mound. The other example of a bank barrow is
within the ramparts of *Maiden Castle* Iron Age fort. It is 545.6 metres
long and flanked by ditches. It was excavated by Mortimer Wheeler in the
1930s and yielded burials at its eastern end of two small children with
a small cup beside them.

The *cursus* are monuments that are not at all well understood and have
remained enigmas for many years. We know they date from the late
Neolithic period: some excavation has been carried out on the Stonehenge
Cursus which, like other examples, is a lengthy enclosure, measuring
some three kilometres in length with enclosed ends where the banks are
at their most obvious. It varies in width from 100 metres to 150 metres.
The bank is about 6.5 metres across and 0.4 metres high dug out of a
ditch of comparable size. A small cursus lies not far off.

The largest cursus is the Dorset Cursus running for 9.6 km from Bokerley
Down to Thickthorn Down. Its banks are about 91 metres apart and, like
the Stonehenge example, has enclosed ends. Investigations have shown
that it was built in two parts. Incorporated into it are some long
barrows which suggests that the monument may have had some relationship
with the ancestor cult. It is aligned on the winter solstice. At
Thornborough in Yorkshire a cursus underlies a henge. Springfield cursus
in Essex seems unique in having a timber circle as its focal point.
Dates for cursuses range from c3600BC and 3000BC

*Silbury Hill* in Wiltshire, not far from Avebury, is the largest
man-made hill in Europe, towering up to 39.8 metres and containing about
354,000 tons of chalk. Its base covers some 2.2 hectares with a top some
30.5 metres in diameter. The lowest 7.6 metres of the mound is solid
chalk for the mound is based on a sloping natural spur. An excavation
during the final years of the 1960s produced a sequence of construction
starting around 2500BC:

Phase 1. Within a stake ring about 19.8 metres in diameter stood a clay
mound 4.9 metres in diameter and 0.9 metres high. The centre of this
mound was destroyed in 1776 by a shaft driven down from the top of
Silbury Hill by the Duke of Newcastle.

Phase 2. The mound was enlarged by capping it with chalk quarried from a
unfinished ditch.

Phase 3. The size of the mound was further increased to 1.58 metres
diameter in a series of stepped stages.

Phase 4. The main ditch to the west was extended to provide chalk to
fill in the 'steps' to make a smooth profile. The top 'step' was left
unfilled and this can still be seen today.

As it was built at the same time as Avebury henge it may be that it had
some relationship with that monument or perhaps it was simply a very
prestigious burial mound, the burial in which has not yet been found.

To sum up what we have said about the *Neolithic Period*. It was the
period of polished stone, it was also the period of a new way of life.
People became farmers manipulating domesticated plants and animals in an
increasingly-tamed landscape in which they became permanently settled.
Pottery and developing domestic modes of production (farm equipment,
domestic artifacts, processing food) were also new. Communal monuments
and the development of what we call a society seem to go togther and
both were novelties in Britain.

We no longer believe that there was an invasion of agriculturalists. In
fact the latest research on genes shows that almost all of us are
descended from the indigenous British who were hunter-gatherers during
the Mesolithic period. This means that our ancestors had to learn the
techniques of farming and it suggests that there was a small number of
farmer/immigrants who brought their expertise and domesticated animals
and domesticated grain to this country. Presumably they passed their
knowledge on to the British. A further presumption is that people for
some time would have carried on a way of life that was a mixture of the
old and the new.

One of our problems is dating. A way in which we are going to better
understand the Neolithic is by the refinement of the techniques of
dating and the provision of many more dates. So far we have over 1100 RC
determinations which relate to artifacts and monuments. However, the
dates, particularly with monuments, are not always precise and it is
sometimes difficult to know exactly what the chronology is telling us.

Our other great problem is with understanding the perceptions that
Neolithic poeple had of the world about them and also of the spiritual
and religious world which we know from the size and number of their
ritual monuments was something that greatly concerned them.