30 OBJECTS / 30 YEARS

Beaker pottery is relatively well-represented among prehistoric finds from the World Heritage Site, but this particular sub-style is not. The name refers to the design and the technique of decoration, in which horizontal zones of comb impressions are bounded at the upper and lower edges by lines of cord impression. The ‘Maritime’ part refers to the fact that this type of Beaker is particularly found along the coastal areas of north-western Europe. It is around 4,300 years old which places it early in the period of Beaker use in Britain. This vessel was found in pieces with a burial on the West Kennet Avenue excavated by Alexander Keiller in 1934. The burial had been badly disturbed but enough survived to show that the person buried with the Beaker was a man. There are many better-preserved vessels from the World Heritage Site, but this one is particularly evocative because it is an illustration of how by this time, right at the end of the Neolithic period, contact was beginning to take place with a wider, European and changing world.

Caption: Rosamund Cleal
Alexander Keiller Museum

Nearly 5,000 years ago, people dug a pit on King Barrow Ridge (2km east of Stonehenge) and carefully buried some objects: two extraordinary chalk plaques, carved pieces of chalk, animal bones, some sherds of Grooved Ware pottery and an antler pick. Known as ‘Chalk Plaque Pit’, and dating from between 2900 and 2580 BC, this pit might have been the site of a temporary settlement and the animal bones the remains of a feast. These plaques, decorated with incised lines and marks, are highly unusual and could be described as the earliest known art from the World Heritage Site. There are similar examples from other sites in Wiltshire including Durrington Walls and Butterfield Down. We don’t know what the decoration on the plaques meant, if anything, but the geometric and criss-crossed design resembles decoration found on Grooved Ware pottery and other objects of this date such as the finely decorated Folkton Drums from North Yorkshire.

Caption: Susan Greaney
English Heritage

The Bush Barrow Chieftain died in about 1950BC and was buried under a barrow on top of a ridge looking down over Stonehenge. He was buried with the objects that symbolised his power and authority – an axe, ceremonial mace, gold sheet lozenge and two bronze daggers. His axe anddaggers resemble those carved on the stones at Stonehenge.
One of the daggers has a pommel set with thousands of tiny gold studs, each the same thickness as a human hair and about 1 millimetre long. The wood of the dagger handle was covered with pine gum and a sharp bronze point used to make a hole into the wood. A gold stud was them positioned in the hole. A watercolour of the dagger when it was excavated shows that the gold studs were set in a zig-zag pattern. Seen under a microscope, the studs were positioned at a density suggesting that over 70,000 gold studs were needed to complete the decoration. Bronze Age craftspeople did not have magnifying glasses and so the work may have been undertaken by children with acute eyesight.

Caption: David Dawson
Wiltshire Museum

This Beaker was buried with a skeleton under a barrow just to the North of the Cursus near Stonehenge. The Beaker is carefully decorated with band of chevrons bordered by lines around the rim, below the waist and around the base, a band of lozenge shapes around neck and cross-hatching around the body, all using comb and fingernail impressions. Beakers are a distinctive type of pottery, with similar shapes and decoration used across Europe. They are often found in burials, placed at by the feet of the skeleton. The first Beakers are made in Britain at the same time as metal is first used, soon after 2,500BC. These Beakers may have contained drink, perhaps to sustain the dead person in their journey beyond the grave. Beaker burials are also sometimes accompanied by archery equipment and copper or bronze dagger.

Caption: David Dawson
Wiltshire Museum

Windmill Hill is a low natural feature at the far north-western corner of the World Heritage Site, approximately one mile from Avebury henge. From at least the eighteenth century it was recognised that there were earthworks there, and by the early 1920s it was established that they were probably Neolithic. Following large-scale excavations between 1925 and 1929 Windmill Hill became one of the sites used by archaeologists to define the southern British Neolithic. This pot, barely larger than a cereal bowl and probably fulfilling a similar function, is just one example from many hundreds of vessels found during the excavations, among many other finds of stone, bone and antler. In its simplicity and the likely nature of its use as an eating bowl, it seems to bring the people who lived at Windmill Hill in that remote time – approximately 5,500 years ago - a little closer to us.

Caption: Rosamund Cleal
Alexander Keiller Museum

Archery was important in the earliest part of the Bronze Age. Many of the barrows in the World Heritage Site were built to mark the graves of men who were laid out in a crouched position with a Beaker at their feet and with one or more arrowheads. Sometimes they have a rectangular stone archer͛s bracer on the inside of the left wrist. The bracer prevents the bow string from hitting the sensitive skin on the inside of the forearm. Usually no trace remains of the bow itself. These barbed and tanged arrowheads were carefully designed. Once the point had pierced the flesh. The barbs meant that the arrowhead would not fall out, meaning that if the arrow did not succeed in killing an animal outright, then it might die from the loss of blood. The tang was used to secure the arrowhead onto a slot on the wooden shaft. Making this type of arrowhead required sophisticated flint-knapping techniques and some are so carefully made that it appears that they were made for display and not to be used.

Caption: David Dawson
Wiltshire Museum

This antler pick was found in the packing of Stonehole E, near the entrance to Stonehenge. It was sampled in 1995 as part of a pioneering programme of radiocarbon dating, which showed that it was shed between 2490 and 2200 BC. Stonehenge has been at the forefront of developments in radiocarbon dating, with a sample of charcoal from Aubrey Hole 32 sent to Professor William Libby in Chicago in 1952. Libby had developed the method of dating by measuring the decay of radiocarbon and this was the first sample dated from a British prehistoric site. The result was between 3020 and 1520 BC. Later, in the 1960s, when radiocarbon results could be calibrated with reference to sequences from tree rings, there would be a revolution in our understanding of the antiquity of prehistoric monuments, with existing date estimates pushed back to a millennium earlier. Today, we have nearly 70 radiocarbon dates from Stonehenge alone and our understanding of the date of prehistoric sites in the World Heritage Site is more detailed than ever before.

Caption: Susan Greaney
English Heritage

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.

Caption:Emily Banfield
National Trust

This trowel is part of Alexander Keiller͛s archaeological excavation kit that included measuring tapes, and drawing equipment. Alexander Keiller was a flamboyant millionaire with a passion for archaeology. He inherited his fortune from the family marmalade business and became fascinated by archaeology while looking at aerial photographs of the front during WW1. Inspired by the prehistoric landscapes of Wiltshire, he purchased 900 acres of land around Avebury. He began excavating at Windmill Hill but later began excavating at Avebury itself. He restored many of the stones in the Avebury stone circle as well as the West Kennet avenue. He established the Morven Institute of Archaeological Research and in 1938 he opened a museum in the stables at Avebury Manor before selling the estate to the National Trust in 1943.

Caption: David Dawson
Wiltshire Museum

One day in July 1923, OGS Crawford, Archaeology Officer at the Ordnance Survey, was at RAF Old Sarum to look at their collection of small glass negatives containing aerial images captured during training flights. One set, taken on June 15th 1921, showed – very faintly – two parallel white lines in a field northeast of Stonehenge. Crawford suspected that these represented traces of the Stonehenge Avenue, whose course beyond King Barrow Ridge had previously been a matter for speculation. Crawford tested his suspicions through excavation in September 1923, demonstrating that the white lines represented buried ditches. This, the first cropmark to be identified on an aerial photograph, the first clear proof that aerial photography offered a means to discover unknown sites, allowed Crawford to connect Stonehenge to the River Avon, and to suggest that the Avenue was the route along which the bluestones were hauled for the final part of their journey to Stonehenge.

Caption: Martyn Barber
Historic England

The earliest guidebook to Stonehenge was published in 1823 and was written by Henry Browne, the first full-time guardian. This position created to ensure the protection of the monument in response to increasing numbers of tourists the previous year, but Henry also took it upon himself to act as the site’s historian. He sold these guidebooks to visitors on site, as well as handmade models of the monument.
Browne’s view of history was heavily influenced by the Bible, and his guide reflects this, describing Stonehenge and Avebury as the few ancient structures that survived Noah's Flood. The title page modestly proclaimed the Stonehenge section as 'The Unprejudiced, Authentic and Highly Interesting ACCOUNT which that Stupendous and Beautiful Edifice STONEHENGE in Wiltshire is found to give of itself.' The account of Avebury drew on William Stukeley’s ideas that the complex had been laid out by Druids in the form of a serpent. The guidebook was available until 1893 when a new edition was written by William Judd, the third guardian appointed at the site.

Caption: Susan Greaney
English Heritage

This copper alloy Roman brooch was found at Stonehenge by William Hawley during his 1920s excavations. It dates from the 2nd–4th century AD. It is one of about 1,500 Roman objects that have been discovered at the monument, including coins, pins, jewellery and fragments of pottery. Although Stonehenge was more than 2,500 years old by the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, these objects show that people continued to visit the monument.
For many years it was thought that these objects were the losses of Roman tourists and the remains of their picnics. However, excavations in 2008 by Professors Tim Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwight within the stone circle uncovered evidence that people were digging deep holes and perhaps even moving stones in the Roman period. This casts new light on the Roman finds from Stonehenge such as this brooch and may suggest that they were deliberately deposited at the site as part of religious activities, the monument being treated as a shrine or temple at that date.

Caption : Susan Greaney
English Heritage

One of the most enduring puzzles of the Avebury part of the World Heritage Site is that of why, around 700 years ago, many of the standing stones were buried so completely that in most cases their existence was entirely concealed. During excavations in the 1930s the skeleton of a man was found alongside one of the buried stones within the henge. With him were a pair of scissors, a pointed instrument of iron and three silver coins. A buckle with these objects may have belonged to a pouch or belt. The coins suggest that the man died probably no earlier than the 1320s. But there are three aspects of this find which remain stubbornly enigmatic: who was the man; how did he come to be in the stone burial pit and was he alive or dead when he went in; and why, at a time when true scissors were very rare, did a pair come to be lost in an obscure Wiltshire village? Alexander Keiller, who excavated the find, felt that the objects pointed to the man being either a ‘barber surgeon’ or a tailor, the former being the title which has stuck. Whether any of the answers are ever discovered or not this find is a reminder that it’s not only the prehistoric past of the World Heritage Site which offers many tantalising avenues for enquiry.

Caption: Rosamund Cleal
Alexander Keiller Museum

This object is an unusual one. It is modern, and it is now stolen. More accurately, this is a pair of objects – two bronze plaques with coloured enamelled details – beautifully made in the 1920s to help visitors interpret the site of Woodhenge in the Stonehenge WHS. They were placed at the site by the Ministry of Works who then cared for the monument, and as can be seen from the photos, were prised from their concrete plinth and stolen in November 2015.Woodhenge is one of the best places – along with Stonehenge itself – to understand the astronomical importance of the WHS, and what the heavens meant to the prehistoric peoples who built these monuments. The horizons around it are still relatively clear and unobscured, and it is easy to imagine what the rising midsummer sun and the setting midwinter sun meant to the original builders. These missing objects helped modern day visitors to understand the importance of these prehistoric ceremonial sites in relation to the heavens.

Caption: Amanda Chadburn
Historic England

'Silbury Hill in May' by David Inshaw

This contemporary painting is a great way to show how features in, and characteristics of, the WHS inspire both realist and English surreal painters to create works that are rooted in the pastoral tradition. Inshaw captures not only a record of the physical reality of the monument, but also something of the uncertainty and strangeness of a thousands-year-old structure still present in the modern world.

Caption: Katy Whitaker
Historic England

These photos/postcards are most likely montages, not real photos. Photographic techniques made it possible to create these (more-or-less) convincing scenes in a way that other art techniques could not be so realistic. Such montages speak to the twin fascination with Stonehenge, that mysterious, ancient monument standing alone on the plain: and with heavier-than-air flight, which by contrast was just a few years old, novel, alien to most people in its own way just as the deep past was also unfamiliar. Artistic responses to Stonehenge, they were nevertheless made in a commercial context as part of both a growing souvenir market and expansion in print-media technology of photographic reproduction and easy dissemination, where the ancient and the futuristic were equally intriguing.

Caption: Katy Whitaker
Historic England

This was made as a talking piece for a gentleman͛s drawing room, once owned by the travel writer John Britton. In the top is a model of Stonehenge as it was when the cabinet was made in 1824. The sides of the glass are coloured red and orange so that shining the light of a candle would show how Stonehenge looks at dawn or dusk. In one of the drawers is a model of Stonehenge as it may have been if it was complete. In a second drawer is a model of the Avebury landscape, based on a plan by the antiquarian William Stukeley. The drawer fronts are set with watercolours by John Britton and leading artists of the day. The remaining drawers and cupboards held books, maps, plans and drawings. The cabinet and many of John Britton͛s books and papers formed the founding collection of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. Today the Society runs the Wiltshire Museum.

Caption: David Dawson
Wiltshire Museum

A fragment of a commonly used seventeenth century drinking vessel found at Avebury, depicts Catholic cardinal Roberto Bellarmine (1542–1621).

The demonised features on Bellarmine jugs served as a popularised talisman of Protestant England’s passionate rejection of Rome. The theme serves to remind us that the name adopted for Avebury’s inn was the Catherine Wheel, an unpleasant celebration of the instrument of torture of Roman Catholics. William Stukeley (1695-1765) borrowed the demonised caricature of these jugs, fusing it with Anglican watchfulness to cast a local Nonconformist speculator, Thomas Robinson, as Avebury’s Herostratus – the destroyer of the Temple.

Where Stukeley’s eighteenth century heritage protection scheme relied on division, the World Heritage Site now promotes harmonious unity.

Caption: Brian Edwards

Image of Commonwealth soliders stationed at the Site; From the 'Soliders at Stonehenge' exhibit; Stonehenge Visitor Centre.

© English Heritage

This embroidered silk sash depicting Stonehenge alongside Christian and Druid symbols dates from the 19th century. It was made for a member of the United Order of Ancient Druids, an offshoot from the original Ancient Order of Druids, which had been founded in London in 1781. These organisations were non-religious friendly societies that based their iconography and principles on the ancient Druids; justice, benevolence and friendship. At that time, the Druids were widely thought to have been responsible for building Stonehenge, Avebury and other prehistoric monuments.The United Ancient Order of Druids had 330 lodges across England and Wales by 1846. This sash shows that the different fraternal groups had elaborate costumes and ceremonies. From 1905 some Druid societies began to hold initiation rites at Stonehenge. These groups were influential in the later development of the Neo-druidic religious movement, the basis of many Neopagan religions celebrated at Stonehenge and Avebury today.

Caption: Susan Greaney
English Heritage

This a replica of a miniature vessel or incense cup found with a cremation burial excavated from a barrow close to Stonehenge. The burial was probably that of a woman who was buried with gold and amber jewellery. The burial was excavated by William Cunnington over 200 years ago and he records "An enthusiastic antiquary, who was present at the opening of this barrow, fancied that he could trace in this cup a design taken from the outward circle of STONEHENGE." The slots in the wall of the cup may have let air flow through, allowing a scented oil or hemp leaves to burn slowly. These cups seem to have been fired on the funeral pyre and may have been used in the burial ceremony. The excavation was supported by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, the wealthy owner of the Stourhead Estate. He was a friend of Josiah Wedgwood, a well-known scientist and who ran the well-known pottery. Hoare commissioned Wedgwood to make these replicas and had hoped that they might become a commercial success.

Caption: David Dawson
Wiltshire Museum

Nash (1889-1946) was a leading British modernist, surrealist and neo-romantic artist. In 1933, he visited Avebury and became enthralled by the vision of the stones and monuments such as Silbury Hill (their lines, masses, planes and volumes). 'Landscape of the Megaliths' is, in his terms, a attempt to 'solve' the equation' of these forms. Inspired by the avenues, it depicts a line of megaliths crossing a cultivated field, with a Silbury-like mound and terraced conical hill (Oldbury hillfort?) backgrounded and a spiraling convolvulus in the foreground. There is influence within this and other Nash work of an earlier generation of romantics (Samuel Palmer and William Blake), and also a strand that links to the legacy of Wiliam Stukeley. It remains one of the most powerful pieces of English landscape art from the inter-war years, and an evocation of Avebury that transcends the archaeological in its attempt to capture the sense of place and otherness.

Caption: Josh Pollard
University of Southampton

This famous image of Stonehenge comes from a manuscript of Wace’s Roman de Brut, a French verse translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regium Britanniae. It dates from the second quarter of the 14th century and is probably the earliest known depiction of Stonehenge, and of any prehistoric monument. The accompanying story relates how Aurelius Ambrosius, the British king, commanded Merlin the wizard to dismantle a monument in Ireland and bring it to Salisbury Plain, as a memorial to the fallen British dead from a great battle. Here Merlin is either dismantling or re-building Stonehenge, visually identified with the giants who were said to have originally erected the monument. Unlike Avebury, which was largely unknown until its rediscovery by John Aubrey in 1649, Stonehenge never appears to have been forgotten; it seems to have been visited and to have inspired art and literature throughout history.

Caption: Susan Greaney
English Heritage