Avebury - Silbury Hill

Silbury Hill, a conical formation almost 130ft/40m high and 590ft/180m in diameter, was constructed around 2500 B.C. Its Stone Age builders, equipped only with reindeer antler picks and shovels fashioned from the shoulder blades of oxen, shifted altogether some 46,000cu.yd/35,000cu.m of earth and gravel, the work being carried out in several stages. Its raison d'être remains something of a mystery, excavation having yielded no grave goods or other evidence of use as a burial site. As some form of ritual significance seems the most likely alternative, archaeologists tend to assume that Silbury was either a religious site or possibly served some calendrical purpose.