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Fir Clump Stone Circle
Fir Clump Stone Circle was a stone circle in Burderop Wood near Wroughton, Wiltshire, in South West England. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although some archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. A double concentric circle consisting of sarsen megaliths, the Fir Clump stone circle was oval-shaped. The outer ring measured by in diameter, and the inner ring by . It was one of at least seven stone circles that are known to have been erected in the area south of Swindon in northern Wiltshire. Around the 1860s, the megaliths of Fir Clump stone circle were levelled. In the 1890s, the antiquarian A. D. Passmore observed that the circle was no longer visible. Some of the fallen megaliths were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wroughton
Wroughton is a large village and civil parish in northeast Wiltshire, England. It is part of the Borough of Swindon and lies along the A4361 between Swindon and Avebury; the road into Swindon crosses the M4 motorway between junctions 15 and 16. The village is about south of Swindon town centre on the edge of the Marlborough Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town of Marlborough is about to the south, and the World Heritage Site at Avebury is about to the south. The parish includes North Wroughton, formerly a small settlement on the road towards Swindon but now part of the built-up area; and the hamlets of Elcombe and Overtown. History The earliest evidence of human presence in the area is from the Mesolithic period, although this is fairly limited. More significant evidence of settlement and occupation in the area is available for the Neolithic period, most notably due to the extensive ritual complex at Avebury and scattered finds in the locality. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
M4 Motorway
The M4, originally the London-South Wales Motorway, is a motorway in the United Kingdom running from west London to southwest Wales. The English section to the Severn Bridge was constructed between 1961 and 1971; the Welsh element was largely complete by 1980, though a non-motorway section around Briton Ferry bridge remained until 1993. On the opening of the Second Severn Crossing in 1996, the M4 was rerouted over it. The line of the motorway from London to Bristol runs closely in parallel with the A4. After crossing the River Severn, toll-free since 17 December 2018, the motorway follows the A48, to terminate at the Pont Abraham services in Carmarthenshire. The M4 is the only motorway in Wales apart from its two spurs: the A48(M) and the M48. The major towns and cities along the routea distance of approximately include Slough, Reading, Swindon, Bristol, Newport, Cardiff, Bridgend, Port Talbot and Swansea. History A new road from London to South Wales was first propo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broome Stone Circle
Broome Stone Circle was a stone circle located in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. The monument was visited and recorded by antiquarians like John Aubrey. In the mid-nineteenth century the stones were broken up for use as road metal. Nothing of the monument remains. Location The Broome Stone Circle was a mile north of the Fir Clump Stone Circle. Context While the transition from the Early Neolithic to the Late Neolithic in the fourth and third millennia BCE saw much economic and technological continuity, there was a considerable change in the style of monuments erected, particularly in what is n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swindon Old Church Stone Circle
Swindon () is a town and unitary authority with borough status in Wiltshire, England. As of the 2021 Census, the population of Swindon was 201,669, making it the largest town in the county. The Swindon unitary authority area had a population of 233,410 as of 2021. Located in South West England, the town lies between Bristol, 35 miles (56 kilometres) to its west, and Reading, equidistant to its east. Recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as ''Suindune'', it was a small market town until the mid-19th century, when it was selected as the principal site for the Great Western Railway's repair and maintenance works, leading to a marked increase in its population. The new town constructed for the railway workers produced forward-looking amenities such as the UK’s first lending library and a ‘cradle-to-grave' health care centre that was later used as a blueprint for the NHS. After the Second World War, the town expanded dramatically again, as industry and people moved out from Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aubrey Burl
Harry Aubrey Woodruff Burl HonFSA Scot (24 September 1926 – 8 April 2020) was a British archaeologist best known for his studies into megalithic monuments and the nature of prehistoric rituals associated with them. Before retirement he was Principal Lecturer in Archaeology, Hull College, East Riding of Yorkshire. Burl received a volume edited in his honour. He was called by ''The New York Times'', "the leading authority on British stone circles". Burl's work, while considering the astronomical roles of many megalithic monuments, was cautious of embracing the more tenuous claims of archaeoastronomy. In ''Prehistoric Avebury'' Burl proposed that Circles and Henge monuments, far from being astronomical observatories for a class of "astronomer priests" were more likely used for ritualistic practices, connected with death and fertility rites, and ancestor worship, similar to practices observed in other agricultural cultures (in particular the rituals of Native North American Trib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred ''tumuli'' (burial mounds). Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed from around 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC, although ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avebury
Avebury () is a Neolithic British Isles, Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury (village), Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to Neopaganism, contemporary pagans. Constructed over several hundred years in the third millennium BC, during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony. The Avebury monument is a part of a larger prehistoric landscape containing several older monuments nearby, including West Kennet Long Barrow, Windmill Hill, Avebury, Windmill Hil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Parker Pearson
Michael Parker Pearson, (born 26 June 1957) is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Neolithic British Isles, Madagascar and the archaeology of death and burial. A professor at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, he previously worked for 25 years as a professor at the University of Sheffield in England, and was the director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project. A prolific author, he has also written a variety of books on the subject. A media personality, Parker Pearson has appeared several times in the Channel 4 show ''Time Team'' in particular in one looking at the excavation of Durrington Walls in Wiltshire. He also appeared in the National Geographic Channel documentary ''Stonehenge Decoded'', along with the PBS programme ''Nova: Secrets of Stonehenge''. Early life and education Parker Pearson was born in 1957. He would later inform interviewers that he first took an interest in the past when searching for fossils in his father's driveway gravel aged 4, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Hutton
Ronald Edmund Hutton (born 19 December 1953) is an English historian who specialises in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism. He is a professor at the University of Bristol, has written 14 books and has appeared on British television and radio. He held a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and is a Commissioner of English Heritage. Born in Ootacamund, India, his family returned to England, and he attended a school in Ilford and became particularly interested in archaeology. He volunteered in a number of excavations until 1976 and visited the country's chambered tombs. He studied history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and then Magdalen College, Oxford, before he lectured in history at the University of Bristol from 1981. Specialising in Early Modern Britain, he wrote three books on the subject: ''The Royalist War Effort'' (1981), ''The Restoration'' (1985) and ''Charles the Second'' (1990). In the 1990s, he wrote b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aberdeen
Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and has a population estimate of for the city of Aberdeen, and for the local council area making it the United Kingdom's 39th most populous built-up area. The city is northeast of Edinburgh and north of London, and is the northernmost major city in the United Kingdom. Aberdeen has a long, sandy coastline and features an oceanic climate, with cool summers and mild, rainy winters. During the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries, Aberdeen's buildings incorporated locally quarried grey granite, which may sparkle like silver because of its high mica content. Since the discovery of North Sea oil in 1969, Aberdeen has been known as the offshore oil capital of Europe. Based upon the discovery of prehistoric villages around the mouths of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timber Circles
In archaeology, timber circles are rings of upright wooden posts, built mainly by ancient peoples in the British Isles and North America. They survive only as gapped rings of post-holes, with no evidence they formed walls, making them distinct from palisades. Like stone circles, it is believed their purpose was ritual, ceremonial, and/or astronomical. British Isles Timber circles in the British Isles date to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The posts themselves have long since disappeared and the sites are identified from the rings of postholes that they stood in. Aerial photography and geophysical survey have led to the discovery of increasing numbers of the features. Often a postpipe survives in the posthole fill aiding diagnosis. They are usually more than , and up to , in diameter and the posts that constituted them were generally more than wide. Often they consist of at least two rings or ovals of timber posts, although some consist of only one ring. Wider gaps b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henge
There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork that are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three is that they feature a ring-shaped bank and ditch, with the ditch inside the bank. Because the internal ditches would have served defensive purposes poorly, henges are not considered to have been defensive constructions (cf. circular rampart). The three henge types are as follows, with the figure in brackets being the approximate diameter of the central flat area: # Henge (> ). The word ''henge'' refers to a particular type of earthwork of the Neolithic period, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area of more than in diameter. There is typically little if any evidence of occupation in a henge, although they may contain ritual structures such as stone circles, timber circles and coves. Henge monument is sometimes used as a synonym for henge. Henges sometimes, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
