Trippy film of Neolithic monument
Near At the village of Avebury is a Neolithic stone circle and henge that's older than Stonehenge. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the roughly 5,000-year-old Avebury monument is approximately 421 meters in diameter. Filmmaker Ric Kemp shot a lovely psychedelic 8mm film at the site with a spaced-out soundtrack by Neil Mortimer, produced by Mark Pilkington. Avebury Monument
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Nice find. After the chaos of Stonehenge I found the henge at Avebury instantly calming. (The grazing sheep that roam freely help, too.) Despite a bit of a creepy tone, this film still evoked some of that tranquility for me.
The circle is in Avebury, not near it. Infact, the Neolithic site is much larger than the village itself.
The modern site sits atop the ancient site.
I went dowsing for ley lines at Avebury. It's very quiet there.
is it a nice place to get leyed?
Yeah, it's more like the vilage is in the circle, really. There is also an earthen berm just outside the circle, and a double line of stones extending westward, IIRC.
Avebury... psychedelics... and no mention of Julian Cope?! Former singer/songwriter... "The Teardrop Explodes"... LSD... melting piano... "Fried"... twenty years of serious research and documenting of neolithic sites across UK and Ireland..?
Here's enough to get you started:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=julian%20cope%20avebury%20psychedelic&meta=
Warning, if you're within travelling distance of these sites, that link could change your life. Seriously. Or it could just make for an interesting day out :)
Cope's excellent site: The Modern Antiquarian.
i was there when i was a kid. the film brings back fond memories. thanks.
I guess i'm just not in the mood to watch all 9 min of that video at the moment....my question however is this:
rocks are very old, yet how can we possibly date exactly when something that old has been "placed?"...
this is in reference to dating it "older than stone henge."
Disturbed versus undisturbed soil strata. Buried cultural detritus. Carbon dating buried plant matter.
FYI - That mound is Silbury Hill, another neolithic monument and the largest human-made earthen mound in Europe.
aye, in my day we'd light the signal blaze there and call in the faithful for the solstice. Then we'd EAT them!
If you embed a flash video, then please also supply a link to the website. TYVM.
In my browser (Firefox on Mac, newest Flash) I get a "This video is not available" info...
My guess is this is the same Rick (not Ric) Kemp of Steeleye Span.
this video was somewhat interesting. NEXT!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Antiquarian-Julian-Cope/dp/0722535996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214691174&sr=1-1
wow - available FROM £985 quid. I shall be more careful of my copy!
Here's another lovely psychedelic 8mm film, this one by Derek Jarman, with a soundtrack composed by Coil, several years after the initial silent version.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xopol_journey-to-avebury_creation
Oh, it's called 'Journey to Avebury' by the way.
Hi,
Ric is no relation to Rick Kemp from Steeleye Span, a very fine musician.
~ is Avebury older than Stonehenge? well, both circles evloved over a long period of time, about 1000 years, from approx 3000-2000bce. local West Kennet long barrow (burial mound), also featured in the edited film, predates Avebury Circle. Silbury Hill, the Sanctuary stone circle (destroyed) and Avebury's twin megalithic avenues - only one remains - also comprise this ritual landscape. the village is much later, Early Medieval; the villagers started breaking up the stones for housing material, and some of the standing stones they buried - they are there to this day, beneath the sheep-nibbled grass; an overview of Avebury, enclosing the later village, can be seen here:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Fd0maYpx0
the Ridgeway was the M1 for the Avebury people, during the New Stone Age, and connects the megalithic complex with Wayland's Smithy long barrow, by the Uffington White Horse, in Oxfordshire.
a related megalithic monument is Newgrange in Ireland, so you can see that the culture was comparatively widespread
http://www.knowth.com/newgrange.htm
thanks,
Ric
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VtFn3VCH2I
Archaeologists Ian Russell and Andrew Cochrane indulge in some cheeky and experimental free-running at Avebury. I think it's about the moment we decided to walk out of africa, but you can never be sure. Many more performances will be taking place this week around Newgrange passage tomb, ireland, at the World Archaeological Congress this week.
http://www.ucd.ie/wac-6/
If you are in or near, Dublin, check out the exhibitions this week!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VtFn3VCH2I
he's actually running *away* from Avebury, for a great deal of the video, down the West Kennet Avenue, which would eventually curl up towards the vanished Sanctuary stone circle - on Overton Hill - if the circle still remained (a farmer is recorded as removing all the stones, in antiquity). The pioneer archaeologist Alexander Keiller restored the megalithic avenue, down to where the runner changes direction. WW2 stopped Keiller's restoration, so the rest of the avenue was sadly never restored. The powers-that-be have for the most part, been sitting on their hands, ever since; even though many more standing stones have been definitely detected beneath the Avebury soil, Keiller was the last to champion their restoration for posterity, over 70 years ago
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/3257174.stm
Keiller is a fascinating character; a marmalade magnate who bought up the whole village of Avebury, demolished most of it, and reconstructed large parts of the monument (as Megalith6 mentioned).
Opinion seems to be divided on the value of this restoration; was he right to evict the local farmers? Did the re-erection save the monument, or just prettify it while destroying archaeological data that he was unaware of? Is his reconstruction accurate?