Aubrey Burl

MerryWizard77 Oct 12, 2024 23:16:27

Almost finished Burl’s book about prehistoric Avebury, interesting read but maybe overly long. Moreover he’s very conservative and dismissive of the more left field writers like Michael Dames. Sometimes he reasons well but he dismisses the idea of Silbury being a goddess figure because there was 800 years between the building of separate body parts. However this argument seems illogical to me considering the megalithic complex of Avebury itself took a similarly long time to come to fruition,

tjj Oct 13, 2024 17:19:34

Replying to MerryWizard77

Hi, welcome to TMA Merry Wizard ... I am fortunate to live near Avebury and spent a few years being somewhat immersed in 'all things Avebury' - now I'm much more nonchalant about it. A great place to meet up with a friend to go for walk either over to West Kennet Long Barrow or somewhere else nearby.

The first book I bought about Avebury was Terence Meaden's "The Secrets of the Avebury Stones", secondly a synopsis of John Aubrey's "Monumenta Britannia" (mine came from the Alexander Keiller museum) and thirdly, my favourite - an accessible and beautiful book by Steve Marshall "Exploring Avebury - the Essential Guide", which I whole-heartedly recommend and still take down from my bookshelf from time to time.

You may have gathered from all that, I'm a bit of an 'oldie' - still walking about, very glad to have Avebury and the Wiltshire Downs on my doorstep. Happy to see your contribution here Merry Wizard and look forward to reading your future posts.