Silbury Hill late Neolithic sacred man made Mound Avebury Marlborough Wiltshire Expression of the Goddess in the landscape
Silbury Hill at dusk late Neolithic sacred man made Mound Avebury Marlborough Wiltshire Expression of the Goddess in the landscape. Silbury Hill is a prehistoric artificial chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site, and lies at grid reference SU099685. At 40 metres (131 ft) high, Silbury Hill – which is part of the complex of Neolithic monuments around Avebury, which includes the Avebury Ring and West Kennet Long Barrow – is the tallest prehistoric human-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world; it is similar in size to some of the smaller Egyptian pyramids of the Giza Necropolis. Its original purpose is still highly debated. Several other important Neolithic monuments in Wiltshire in the care of English Heritage, including Stonehenge. The base of the hill is circular and 167 metres (548 ft) in diameter. The summit is flat-topped and 30 metres (98 ft) in diameter. A smaller mound was constructed first, and in a later phase much enlarged. The initial structures at the base of the hill were perfectly circular: surveying reveals that the centre of the flat top and the centre of the cone that describes the hill lie within a metre of one another. There are indications that the top originally had a rounded profile, but this was flattened in the medieval period to provide a base for a building, perhaps with a defensive purpose. The first phase, carbon-dated to 2400 BC ±50 years, consisted of a gravel core with a revetting kerb of stakes and sarsen boulders. Alternate layers of chalk rubble and earth were placed on top of this: the second phase involved heaping further chalk on top of the core, using material excavated from an encircling ditch. At some stage during this process, the ditch was backfilled and work was concentrated on increasing the size of the mound to its final height, using material from elsewhere. Goddess culture
Size: 4287px × 2848px
Location: Silbury Hill Avebury Marlborough Wiltshire United Kingdom
Photo credit: © Roland Pargeter / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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