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The world recreated: redating Silbury Hill in its monumental landscape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Alex Bayliss ,
Fachtna McAvoy  and
Alasdair Whittle
Alex Bayliss
Affiliation:
1English Heritage, 1 Waterhouse Square, 138-142 Holborn, London EC1N 2ST, UK
Fachtna McAvoy
Affiliation:
2English Heritage, Fort Cumberland, Fort Cumberland Road, Eastney, Portsmouth PO4 9LD, UK
Alasdair Whittle
Affiliation:
3Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK
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Extract

A classic exposition of the difficulties of dating a major monument and why it matters. Silbury Hill, one of the world's largest prehistoric earth mounds, is too valuable to take apart, so we are reliant on samples taken from tunnels and chance exposures. Presenting a new edition of thirty radiocarbon dates, the authors offer models of short- or long-term construction, and their implications for the ritual landscape of Silbury and Stonehenge. The sequence in which monuments, and bits of monuments, were built gives us the kind and history of societies doing the building. So nothing matters more than the dates…

Keywords

EuropeLate NeolithicEarly Bronze AgeBeakerritual landscaperadiocarbon datingSilbury HillStonehenge
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 81 , Issue 311 , 1 March 2007 , pp. 26 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2007

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