Another Centre Of The Universe

[poliphilo]

Silbury Hill really is a mystery. They've recently completed a dig which established that it was built in three stages- over a period corresponding to a long lifetime- but they're still no closer to establishing what it's for- or how it relates to the rest of Avebury's neolithic landscape. 

Michael Dames- whose books first got me interested in Avebury- argues that the hill represents the pregnant belly of the Mother Goddess. His work is unscholarly and largely discredited now, but his guess remains as good as any.  Maybe it's a centotaph (we can rule out burial mound because there's nothing buried there) or a ritual platform or an observatory or merely an extravagant piece of self-assertion by some forgotten tribal warlord-  "Gaze on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Looking again at these photographs, I'm struck by how anomalous it is.  A smooth-sided hill rising out of a valley bottom- it doesn't fit; it's against Nature. It's as if some gigantic child with a bucket and spade had just dumped it there. 

It's made of chalk. In its original state- like the ditch and walls of Avebury- it would have gleamed an unearthy white.

Comments

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

Michael Dames- whose books first got me interested in Avebury- argues that the hill represents the pregnant belly of the Mother Goddess.

Peculiar theory. I haven't seen too many pregnant women whose bellies are conical.

I saw one of those half-baked TV documentaries recently about pagan sites in Britain, that claimed that Silbury Hill was a platform used to coordinate rituals at three nearby ritual sites (Avebury, I think, and two others whose names I don't now remember). This theory was based (solely, it seems) on the fact that the top of Silbury Hill is visible from all three of the other locations.

Re: It is...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's an extraordinary concentration of prehistoric sites in the Avebury area. It's not totally crazy to suggest the hill was designed as a ritual command centre- it's just that there's no real evidence to support this or any other theory.

Re: It is...

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's just it. I had no objection to the theory itself, just to the way the programme presented it: "Here's our theory, and we're going to ignore all the others and present this one as if we've actually proved it because there's no evidence to disprove it." That's what bugs me about the whole genre of archaeological documentary television programmes. There's so rarely any acknowledgement that we just don't really know and ultimately probably can't know. Intellectual dishonesty irritates me.

I kind of liked one thing they said, though -- that if the hill was originally not covered with dirt and grass, the bare chalk would have gleamed brilliantly in the moonlight. What a sight that must have been!

Re: It is...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I agree. Those programmes annoy me too. Not only are they thoroughly unscholarly, but they stretch a paragraph's worth of (often dubious) information so it lasts an hour. They're a complete waste of time.

You've probably seen pictures of Newgrange in the Republic of Ireland- which has been restored to its former shining glory. The only difference is that the prehistoric Irish, not having any chalk, used quartz.