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The Avery Henge Monument is a large ring of stones built 5,000 years ago in Wiltshire. It is the biggest stone circle in Britain and has many different uses. Its design creates intrigue and mystery, and it is connected to other nearby monuments. However, there is still much unknown about Avery, as only a small fraction has been excavated. The monument was likely used for rituals and ceremonies, with different areas serving different purposes. Visitors today can only imagine the experiences of those who interacted with Avery in the past. The construction process was communal and involved hundreds of people over many years. Each stone was carefully selected and had unique qualities. The monument was designed to limit sightlines and create optical illusions. Overall, Avery's purpose and significance remain a mystery, but it continues to fascinate and captivate visitors. Today, I'm going to discuss a famous ring of large stones known as Avery Henge Monument, which was built in a chalkland valley in Wiltshire nearly 5,000 years ago by successive communities of Neolithic people. The first impression visitors get is of its sheer size. Each stone comfortably dwarfs the human body, and Avery is the biggest stone circle in Britain. As of any big topic, there are several routes this podcast could take. I could address its many different uses, right up to the present day, with Druids still performing rites there. Or I could talk about its design, how the stones are arranged to create visual intrigue and mystery. Or I could look beyond Avery itself to its wider connections in the landscape, with other monuments nestled nearby, like West Kennet Long Barrow, the Sanctuary, Windmill Hill, and Silbury Hill. Avery sits at the heart of all of these, encouraging visitors to move between them. One interpretation of this formation suggests that West Kennet served as a dedicated feasting place, whilst Avery attended to ancestral needs. Much about these monuments and their relationship remains unresolved, but it is likely that both structure and purpose evolved organically, over considerable time, with each responding to the other, with complementary but overlapping ceremonial and ritual functions. There is enough here to film many podcasts, but I will start by saying that we know very little about Avery. Much has been lost over the centuries, and only a fraction of what remains has been excavated, just 6% or so. Our understanding relies heavily on drawings and observations from 17th century antiquarian William Starkey. So it is unsurprising then that archaeologists today can't agree over much, even what and where Avery's stones once stood, how many avenues it had, for to match the four entrances, or just the two we can currently identify, or even why it was built to begin with, and what took place there. In prehistory, there are seldom clear answers, yet by looking at different components of Avery, and experience within it, imagining how visitors might have walked through the monument, we can start to unpick some of its mysteries. But first, what is the monument? I want to paint a broad picture for now, to let us visualise it. Avery was made from three stone circles, the biggest using roughly 100 sarsen sandstones, each set 11 metres apart. There are two smaller but still massive circles contained within, comprised of bigger stones, and at the centre sit some of the least understood, yet most intriguing and largest of the stone features, notably the cove shelter and the obelisk. Around the outside, encircling everything, is an earthwork bank and ditch, establishing a 420 metre perimeter. Sprouting from its four entrances are two avenues, Kennet and Bedcampton, extending at least two and a half kilometres towards other monuments. Originally, these were lined with smaller pairs of standing stones that helped frame and guide ritual processions. These avenues within the open grassland are closely aligned with ancient pathways that would have had earlier symbolic significance within the landscape, back when it was densely forested, and even today they serve still to preserve their memory. Now that we have described the monument, let's consider what might give value and substance to the experience of a visit to Avery. Knowledge, stories and ideas that we attach to things and places can be transformative, influencing how and what we choose to interact with to shape our experiences, our thinking and later our recollections. More than anything, it is esoteric knowledge that likely activated Avery's potency in the past, and perhaps certain groups had privileged access to understanding whilst others were left out. Modern tourists might enjoy Avery for physical or spiritual reasons, but in fundamental ways it will be far removed from Avery's original socio-spiritual context and core ideas. Past visitors developed lifelong relationships to particular stones and forged friendships and foes alike during the construction or later in ritual practice. What these entailed, we can only imagine. Avery was possibly filled with sounds and at times teeming activity. It was thought that the embankment established a sound shadow, isolating the henge interior from its surroundings, creating a sense of spiritual immersion. Different areas were probably connected to particular rituals, some spaces made to be more spiritually intense than others. For example, the structure of the cove is thought to focus sound inwardly. Drumming or singing could thus reverberate and echo through the interior of the ring, whilst only muffled, partial noises would have penetrated the spaces beyond. This sensory experience, plainly inaccessible to us now, may have been reserved to the restricted few back in the ancient past. Ancient people are thought to have cultivated deep, lifelong relationships with the ring, but also its individual stones, which were often thought to embody ancestors. There are ethnographic parallels for such ancestor worship and stone animism. For instance, in Melanesian populations where stones were believed to enclose spirits and then given names, full lives and personalities. In Avery's case, the monument's construction drew in favoured elements from the landscape, collecting their myriad associations and placing them all within a condensed world. Yet at the same time, the construction process could be reimagined as a gathering together or nurturing of beloved, perhaps recently deceased, members of the community. These dead ancestors were perhaps made visible through the fossilised roots that can be made out in the inner circle's linear features and stones from that, which look remarkably like bone. In Madagascan societies, the living asked their ancestors to provide blessings or protections before doing important ceremonies for the community, like marriage and circumcision. Something similar may have been part of Avery's purpose too. Visitors today can reimagine the monument. They can experience it afresh by projecting their own cultural and worldviews, or they might engage in more literal ways with the physicality of the monument as it relates to their bodies. But it takes some imagination, I believe, for us to appreciate that experience ran deeper and formed over the course of lifetimes for Avery's makers. Modern viewers tend to think of monuments as static, as sculpture or architecture made with a clear plan and then only at this point to be properly experienced as the finished article. But I invite us to look at Avery in a different way, designed to be conceptually flexible, its form and perception allowed to drift and self-define through the gathering of experiences. Each soaking new meanings directly into the fabric and all within a landscape of other evolving monuments. Better to exist in a state of perpetual becoming than to reach completion. Avery wasn't conceived and constructed as one whole. Rather, it evolved in successive stages between 2850 BC and 2200 BC. The archaeology indicates that even those features which remained unaltered over time were later reconceived. Those stones first believed to house ancestors then became locations for leaving ritual gifts. The stones physical, symbolic properties, that of durability and permanence, then took on central importance, overriding perhaps the living ancestral embodiments that were once capable of agency. These later visitors, those responsible for this change, were perhaps unaware of Avery's older systems, withheld, forgotten, or cast aside as the new needs arose. Recasting the stones as fixed metaphors for stability would perhaps be comforting in a world of increasing uncertainty and social change. Let's turn focus now to the true beginnings of the Avery experience, construction work. Process itself can be immensely significant in a community, bringing a common drive. Moving sarsens, breaking the ground, shaping the sockets, and hauling the stones, it all must have been highly communal, listing the help of hundreds of people and taking thousands of man hours. It was surely all a great big spectacle. Alongside this, everyone, including women and children, will have made their contribution. Basket making, chalk carrying, timber and rope preparation, cooking food for the workforce, and maybe even rallying to enlist and persuade more helpers to remain over the many years of construction. The sense of collective endeavour and ownership would establish lasting relationships thereafter, tethering the monument to its makers and the makers to the monument. Considerable thought was invested in selecting stones from the local surroundings, each associated with innumerable past experiences and encounters. The largest stones found in the cove and at the entrances may have previously been recognisable landmarks. Others had distinctive surface markings reflecting their past human interactions, of sharpening and polishing axe heads, for example. Others still displayed pleasing colours. Every stone is remarkably and intentionally singular, they were not chosen at random. For the makers, the stone's uniqueness possibly echoed the personalities of their resident ancestors, but today, just like in the past, these colours, textures and shapes all added subtle new aspects to experience through touch and through sight. Many components of Avery were intentionally designed to channel visitor experience, mainly through restricting sightlines. From any vantage, walking around the perimeter of Avery's biggest stone circle, a large part of the other side of the monument would have been obscured. It can even be difficult to distinguish the monument from its landscape, since the ridges of the downland follow closely the profile of the bank. Compact ground around Kennet Avenue suggests it had repeated use, and it is here, before even entering the monument, that the optical tricks begin. The avenue gives the impression that it will deliver visitors to another monument instead, before sharply changing course towards Avery. The limestones also increase in height with the rising of the landscape, in a visual game of impending urgency. Even today, visitors can't see into the monument until they are nearly through the entrance, thus engendering a sense of curiosity and mystery about what lies ahead. Only the inner circle provides extensive views, making the visitor aware of Avery's circularity and centrality, and grants clear sight of both Windmill Hill and Silbury Hill. Was this lived experience really its priority? It's not clear how often and who was allowed to enter the monument. Perhaps only selected groups were granted entrance, or maybe only during rare ritual events. Avery's principal intention, according to some, was to comfort the ancestors it housed. Recreating the world and replicating the undulations of the chalked downlands and river valleys would establish a calm familiarity for these ancestors. Avery notably lacks bone and pottery material, suggesting sanctity was preserved within the monument itself. So, was Avery a monument for the dead, or a place of ritual and ceremony for the living? Of course, we will never know. Avery is a monument with a long and complex history. What I hope is clear from this podcast, my take-home message, is that Avery champions process above completion. Its presence is permanent, but its purpose changes in response to shifting society. It certainly holds more secrets than we have yet to unravel.