Book 74

Sacred Mound, Holy Rings

by A. W. R. Whittle

Published 1 December 1997
This report gives a full account of: the excavation of Silbury Hill in the late 1960s; environmental evidence from the tunnel and the ditch section; the cuttings on top of the mound; and the radiocarbon dates. Enclosures at nearby West Kennet, first seen from the air in 1950, have been the subject of research excavations since 1987. One is a nearly circular double enclosure that straddles the present Kennet, the other is a larger ellipitical enclosure. The character of the palisades, their construction, the finds and the radiocarbon dates are fully reported here. There is a discussion of the interpretation of the two monuments and of their relation to each other and to the other features of the neolithic landscape - the Sanctuary, the West Kennet Avenue and Avebury itself.