The general presumption that it is a very exceptional and puzzling non-sepulchral monument arises from an all-too-facile assumption that the body would have been in the centre, but he offers extremely good reasons for thinking it may equally well not have been.
Haven't got round to reading Rev Smith's paper yet but it seem's just as reasonabe that a burial chamber would have been placed off-center than
at the centre of the structure. Having said that, earlier in the week I was looking at the
Silbury Conservation Risk Assessment (Fachtna McAvoy, May 2005 - second link down at
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17594 ) and wondered what the large block (of stone?) might be that's shown in the photo on Page 52, Fig. A14. Apart from the (broken?) right-hand side the stone looks pretty symmetrical. Note how the left-hand side and top seem to have been dressed. Looks almost like one end of a sarcophagus. Natural or otherwise someone in 1969 took the trouble to measure and photograph the cavity in the top - a cavity which seems to be about a foot deep and about two foot long.
The next photo (Fig. A15) is also interesting and shows what looks like Atkinson on the left with a colleague on the right; the colleague seems to be working on the stone with a trowel. The helmet shown on the extreme right is the same helmet belonging to the person working opposite Atkinson (double exposure - there are actually only two people there). Note also the bucket at the base of the stone. Are Atkinson and his colleague removing debris from the top of the stone that's shown in photo A14?
If the shape of the stone (if it is a stone) is just natural and not dressed it's still of interest and, hopefully, still in situ (though English Heritage don't seem to have mentioned either its presence or absence in any of their updates - perhaps it's mentined elsewhere).
