Qualla: Windmill Hill, Avebury https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Windmill Hill, Avebury https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury Windmill Hill, Avebury: Introduction https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury/ Photo credit Chris Collard, CC BY-SA 2.0. Six thousand years ago, the first farmers in the British landscape walked up a low chalk hill northwest of where Avebury stands today and started digging. They scooped out a series of pits with antler picks and shovels made from cattle shoulder-blades. They left potsherds in the holes, and bones, and on the bottom of one ditch they laid a child. Then, around 3700 BC, they came back and dug something bigger: three concentric rings of segmented ditch, the outermost ring 365 metres across, with gaps - causeways - left between each segment so people could walk in and out. They piled the chalk into internal banks. Twenty-one acres enclosed. The largest enclosure of its kind known in Britain. We are still not entirely sure why they did it.

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Image: Chris Collard | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/gcns-windmill-hill-avebury-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Windmill Hill, Avebury: Causewayed Enclosure, Carefully Made https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury/ Photo credit Brian Robert Marshall, CC BY-SA 2.0. The technical name for what they built is a causewayed enclosure - a Neolithic monument type found across northern Europe, defined by ditches broken into segments rather than dug as continuous rings. The deepest ditches and the largest banks at Windmill Hill are on the outer circ...

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Image: Brian Robert Marshall | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/gcns-windmill-hill-avebury-causewayed-enclosure-carefully-made.mp3 0:06 2 full Windmill Hill, Avebury: Pottery That Named a Culture https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury/ Photo credit Arpingstone, Public domain. What came out of the ditches in the 1925-1929 excavations made Windmill Hill the type site for a whole culture. The pottery from the bottom layers - round-bottomed, decorated with simple incised lines, the kind of thing a careful potter could make without a wheel - defines what a...

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Image: Arpingstone | Public domain

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/gcns-windmill-hill-avebury-pottery-that-named-a-culture.mp3 0:06 3 full Windmill Hill, Avebury: Alexander Keiller's Pickaxes https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. The site was bought in 1924 by Alexander Keiller, heir to the Keiller's marmalade fortune in Dundee, and he excavated it for five seasons from 1925 to 1929 alongside the veteran archaeologist Harold St George Gray. Keiller had the money, the obsession and the methodical mind to d...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/gcns-windmill-hill-avebury-alexander-keillers-pickaxes.mp3 0:06 4 full Windmill Hill, Avebury: Part of a Sacred Landscape https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Dickbauch~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes Windmill Hill especially compelling is that it does not stand alone. A mile southeast lies Avebury henge, the world's largest stone circle. Two miles south stands Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe. Just east of Avebury lies the West Kennet ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Dickbauch~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/gcns-windmill-hill-avebury-part-of-a-sacred-landscape.mp3 0:06 5 full Windmill Hill, Avebury: A Bronze Age Coda https://qualla.com/windmill-hill-avebury/ Photo credit Brian Robert Marshall, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long after the Neolithic ditches had silted up, the hill kept attracting attention. Between the inner and middle rings of the enclosure, someone in the Bronze Age built a bell barrow - a particular kind of round burial mound, raised over the body of an important person. The barro...

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Image: Brian Robert Marshall | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/n/s/windmill-hill-avebury-wp/gcns-windmill-hill-avebury-a-bronze-age-coda.mp3 0:06 6 full