| ISSN 1357-4442 | Editor: Simon Denison |
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| ESSAY |
The hunt for Avebury's second avenue could easily have produced nothing - again. David Wheatley reports
Some people believe that, each time something happens that might have happened differently, the alternatives actually come to exist somewhere. Like strings fanning out from a single point in space and time, all the possible outcomes of all the events lead to parallel universes, populated by people whose history is different from that moment on.
If this is so, then there is another universe in which Josh Pollard and I clean up a shallow scoop of chalk (representing `nothing there') with a sinking sense of déjà vu while discussing how to go about a career change in our thirties, and how to break this news to our co-director Mark Gillings. In this parallel universe, the three of us would be coming to the end of a second season of excavation in Longstones field at Avebury, in which we have yet again failed to find the strange crop mark seen in 1997 bisecting the two huge standing stones.
In my universe, though, Josh says `let me have a go' and gets a bit more vigorous with the mattock. The chalky smear goes away, and the slightly darker streak that we could see after the machine had removed the topsoil proves to be a ditch over a metre deep, with a crude, flat-bottomed, segmented form. All of which is typical of the earlier Neolithic - a little earlier, in other words, than the henge and stone circle at Avebury. The primary fill gives us one single big sherd of flint-tempered pottery that is a dead ringer for some Early NeolithicWindmill Hill wares.
It isn't the early ditch, though, that caused the real stir. The main discovery turned up a few hours later, when the bucket of the excavator clanged rather obviously on a buried sarsen. By the end of the day, we had cleared enough topsoil to see the tops of four pits and, the following day, an extension revealed a further pair of stone pits. That was when I agreed that it was time to open the champagne. After all, four stone pits are a `feature', but six begin to look like an avenue, very likely contemporary with the West Kennet Avenue and the Avebury circle.
So William Stukeley, the 18th century antiquary, seems to have been right. Alone among the early researchers who visited and recorded Avebury, he claimed to see, in addition to the West Kennet Avenue, a second avenue of stones - the `Beckhampton Avenue' - leading from the western entrance of the henge to the Longstones and beyond. This avenue has since disappeared, as the stones were removed, and archaeologists have spent the past two and a half centuries arguing over Stukeley's claim.
Stukeley's rehabilitation began with Ucko, Hunter, Clark and David's excellent book Avebury Reconsidered (1991) in which they destroy the myth of Stukeley's early `sound' period during which he objectively recorded the henge, and later `mad' period of weird theories. Instead, it is clear that Stukeley's theories and his fieldwork records are closely entwined. Initially, he interpreted the monument as a lunar and solar temple, but was unable to find an equivalent to the Sanctuary (the stone and timber circle at the southern end of the West Kennet Avenue) to the west of the henge, at the end of the Beckhampton Avenue. Around 1723, he therefore altered his interpretation and theorised that the monument might be designed in the form of an Egyptian hieroglyph. Nothing is ever certain in life, let alone in archaeology, but it looks as if our excavation has vindicated Stukeley by demonstrating the existence of the Beckhampton Avenue. More than that, it looks as if this passes, or perhaps passes through the site of an earlier enclosure, represented by our Early Neolithic ditch. With one 280-year-old mystery under our belts, we are already asking all the new questions it raises, such as: where does the avenue go to?
But I should end with a confession. I (unlike Mark) didn't believe that the Beckhampton Avenue existed, although once I had seen the results of a geophysical survey by Andrew David of English Heritage this spring, I began to wonder a bit. So I was wrong: it isn't the first time, and it will not be the last. Just this once it feels very good, though.
Dr David Wheatley (University of Southampton) co-directed this year's excavations at Avebury with Dr Joshua Pollard (University of Wales, Newport) and Dr Mark Gillings (University of Leicester)
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