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Silbury Hill

King Sil IS in Silbury, probably.

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Rhiannon R
Rhiannon Oct 5, 2007 11:31:20
Replying to nigelswift

He was saying that as the hill was built up, the original centre would have become less important, or less obvious? to those building. So the burial would have ended up being a bit off-centre.
I was quite convinced but then.. Does it not depend at what stage the burial was inserted? I mean would you make a little mound first, then work on the bigger diameter and bring it up to the level of the little one (in which case it would be quite central, surely). If you inserted it later you might as well put it in the middle because it'd be easy enough to see where the middle was.
You'd think such a major bit of engineering would need careful mapping out on the ground, you couldn't just go adding a bit here and then a bit there.. wouldn't the Plan require quite exact behaviour or the whole lot'd slump?
OBviously I have no idea. but I'm not so sure about the Rev's argument now.

N nigelswift
nigelswift Oct 5, 2007 12:53:16
Replying to Rhiannon

You're right in all you say of course. Although, there are still a lot of unexplored areas above, below, to the sides and between the tunnels and the shaft that its quite feasible that a very small error by the original builders could have placed Sil slightly off-centre or just outside the excavated parts. The chance is there at least, certainly sufficient to make any claim that he isn't there mighty dodgy.

And that's assuming they wanted to place him centrally of course. Considering we haven't the faintest idea what the monument was for that's a pretty unjustified assumption for us to make. EH are forever telling us what a miniscule proportion of the whole volume the voided portions are. All we know is that we haven't found him in a tiny proportion of one percent of the Hill. It makes no sense to say that there's no burial in a monument that remains 99.7% totally unexplored - especially as at the same time we're marvelling that it is so unlike the norm and it is surrounded by hundreds of smaller green lumps every one of which had a burial in it. Not to mention being within site of a number of Long Barrows. No sign of burials in those being placed centrally is there?