“New information has emerged from letters written in 1776 about excavations at Silbury Hill and published for the first time in the new volume of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine.”
More here – wiltshireheritagemuseum.blogspot.com/2010/02/silbury-hill-new-find-in-archive.html
Mr Edwards. Bravo!
Six inches diameter doesn't sound huge for a post though is it? Maypoles are bigger. Trees are bigger. Ooh the plot thickens. Or was it something quite mundane just keeping the centre in centre, perhaps?
funnily enough Rhiannon, talking about maypoles, Dames said that 'strings radiated out from the centre!
The Wiltshire Gazette & Herald today reports David Dawson as saying,
“It tells us that in one of its earliest phases some kind of totem pole was erected on the mound, then subsequent additions to build the hill up were piled up around that timber.”
More here -
gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/4884791.Long_lost_theory_on_Silbury_Hill_is_uncovered/?ref=rss
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 above. 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.
Many thanks for that Neolith.
Some of us on TMA have actually been following, with great interest, your original account of Jim Leary's lecture, and subsequent comments, on the Eternal Idol thread.
I was wondering, as this comments facility is not really suited to an easy exchange of views, whether you would be interested in reposting the above on the TMA forum here - themodernantiquarian.com/forum/?thread=56369&message=710339
Thanks again.