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 About
Silbury Hill
2485 B.C.E.Britain
Silbury
Hill has been called the largest prehistoric structure in Britain.
It is located on the Wiltshire downs and is part of the group
of sites which make up the Avebury henge and stone circle.
The
building of Silbury Hill began in 2750 B.C.E. and took generations to
complete. It was raised by human
hands and is composed of a series of stepped, circular shapes seven
layers high. The bottom layer
was carved out of rock while the top six were composed of chalk blocks.
Silbury
Hill is not a burial mound as had been originally thought.
Indeed mounds of this sort are scattered across the planet.
They were built with intention and painstaking precision. Their placements were chosen with great care. They cleary served a ritual function, but what
that might have been escapes the modern mind.
It
is, however, quite commonly accepted that early people celebrated the
quarter and cross quarter days of the year. Many of the mounds have a particular alignment
to these natural phenomena.
Silbury
Hill is surrounded by a human made, deep, chalk lined ditch.
Even as they raised the hill up, they dug a deep trench down.
This trench, in Neolithic times, contained water. The Swallowhead spring, which is the base of
the river Kennet, sits at the base of Silbury Hill. Many Neolithic sites are built on or near the origins of the local
water source. In November, the
spring dried up but in the spring, especially near equinox, when the
snow was melting and the land thawing, the spring bubbled up to overflowing.
At
this time, the moat was filled high with water, giving the illusion
of the mound of earth emerging out of the wetness, rising again from
the depths of the primordial waters.
Sources:
Dames, Michael,
The Silbury Treasure: The
Great Goddess Rediscovered, Thames and Hudson, London.
1976.
Streep, Peg, Sanctuaries of the
Goddess, Little, Brown and
Company, Boston, 1994
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