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Silbury Hill

The Archaeology of a Monumental Mound

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Neolith N
Neolith Feb 2, 2010 19:53:16
Replying to Littlestone

Littlestone has suggested that I re-post a comment here that I made earlier today on another TMA page: Silbury Hill - new find in the archive! (My unfamiliarity with the site, I'm afraid.) Happy to oblige!
>>>>
I wrote the original account of Jim Leary's lecture posted on Eternal Idol (under my real name of Alex Down) and, in subsequent comments, I suggested that Silbury Hill might be the Avebury community's equivalent of Stonehenge, which I believe to be a symbolic representation of the Neolithic view of their cosmos.

In subsequent comments that I submitted yesterday (as I type here, still awaiting moderation on EI) I went further to suggest that the apparent post down through the centre of the hill might be equivalent of Yggdrasil, the central Tree of Life in the Norse cosmology. (A tiered layer view of the cosmos seems to be the common model, with a central axis.) So I was interested to see that a maypole cropped up in the comments on the archive find. When I looked at the Maypole entry in Wikipedia, I found this: "Potential other meanings include symbolism relating to the Yggdrasil, a symbolic axis linking the underworld, the world of the living, the heavens and numerous other realms. Also likely related, reverence for sacred trees can be found in ... " All a bit speculative, I know, but an interesting connection.

L Littlestone
Littlestone Feb 2, 2010 21:40:35
Replying to Neolith

Neolith wrote:
Littlestone has suggested that I re-post a comment here that I made earlier today on another TMA page: Silbury Hill - new find in the archive! (My unfamiliarity with the site, I'm afraid.) Happy to oblige!
>>>>
I wrote the original account of Jim Leary's lecture posted on Eternal Idol (under my real name of Alex Down) and, in subsequent comments, I suggested that Silbury Hill might be the Avebury community's equivalent of Stonehenge, which I believe to be a symbolic representation of the Neolithic view of their cosmos.

In subsequent comments that I submitted yesterday (as I type here, still awaiting moderation on EI) I went further to suggest that the apparent post down through the centre of the hill might be equivalent of Yggdrasil, the central Tree of Life in the Norse cosmology. (A tiered layer view of the cosmos seems to be the common model, with a central axis.) So I was interested to see that a maypole cropped up in the comments on the archive find. When I looked at the Maypole entry in Wikipedia, I found this: "Potential other meanings include symbolism relating to the Yggdrasil, a symbolic axis linking the underworld, the world of the living, the heavens and numerous other realms. Also likely related, reverence for sacred trees can be found in ... " All a bit speculative, I know, but an interesting connection.

Welcome to TMA Neolith, and thanks for posting again here.

G gjrk
gjrk Feb 2, 2010 23:58:19
Replying to Neolith

Intriguing stuff.

It reminded me of something I'd read in Eliade. You'll be away ahead of me, so sorry for the repetition...

"This cosmic tree is similar to the Pillar, the support of the world, "axis of the universe" of the Altaic and northern European cosmologies. In these myths the tree expresses absolute reality in its aspect of norm, of a fixed point, supporting the cosmos. It is the supreme prop of all things. And, consequently, communication with heaven can only be effected near it, or by means of it."

This last is the thing that catches the imagination, the link to the human, although, of course, its like fishing with a banana - you just don't know. Anyway. I'll skip him back ten pages, or so, to where he says...

"...a Tree of Life (or Fountain of Life), placed in some inaccessible spot (at the end of the earth, at the bottom of the sea, in the land of darkness, on top of a very high hill, or in a "centre")..."

What would the importance of that 'inaccessible' pole have been to a local?

M moss
moss Feb 3, 2010 09:00:18
Replying to Neolith

Hi Alex,

Moss/Thelma are the same people ;) sorry for not clearing that up earlier on E/I, so it was me that wrote about the 'strings'. I did look it up last night, it was something Dean Merewether said, and it has always intrigued me. This is what he wrote..
"I must not omit to state that in many places within this range (the core) (starting) from the centre, and on the surface of the original hill, were found fragments of a sort of string, of two strands each twisted, composed of (as it seemed) grass, and about the size of whipcord."
Dames took the quote from Merewether's 'Diary of a Dean'

The primary mound is I think the most exciting bit of Silbury, it is an 'axis mundi' from here all 'centrality' of the mound starts, though I don't go along with a maypole theory, somehow as a measuring rod doesnt quite stack up, what it was invested with I don't know....