Keiller's Concrete Plinth

Avebury megalithic complex as it is encountered today is very much the vision of Alexander Keiller. Excavated in the 1930s and accompanied by a programme of restoration, the stone circle and West Kennet Avenue feature combinations of standing megaliths and concrete plinths, the simple, stylised forms of the latter the product of an Art Deco aesthetic, betraying their age. Documentary evidence records episodes of deliberate stone destruction and burial throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although these practices have much earlier roots. The buried stones encountered in the process of excavation were re-erected; it is the absent elements that are presenced by Keiller’s pillars. The physicality of the pillars makes manifest the archaeology, inviting interaction and response. Keiller’s pillars are thus an articulation and democratisation of archaeological findings and it is these qualities that make them of such importance to the story of the World Heritage Site. Contributor: Emily Banfield (National Trust)