Life in Britain 2000 BC as Revealed by the Latest Discoveries at Stonehenge, Avebury and Stanton Drew.
As famous as it is mysterious, Stonehenge lies at the heart of our imagined past. Nearby at Avebury is one of the most extraordinary ancient religious landscapes, increasingly popular with visitors. Who built these monuments? When? How? Why?
For the first time in over 40 years, Michael Pitts, an archaeologist close to both Stonehenge and Avebury, presents the story from the inside. Starting at the excavation that followed the collapse of a Stonehenge megalith on the last night of the 19th century, and ending with a dramatic discovery in Avebury at the close of the 20th, 'Hengeworld' tells how archaeology has revolutionised the way we think about these great stone circles and the people who built them. Pitts shows a pattern emerging from the archaeology of these sites which explains the relationship between them and reconstructs the ceremony that would have symbolised this.
Research has uncovered the huge timber henges that provided inspiration for Stonehenge, from Woodhenge in 1925 to the astonishing discovering at Stanton Drew in 1997. Perhaps the most sensational new discovery is a collection of ancient human remains, thought to have been destroyed, but found by the author safe in a London museum store. Among the newly re-discovered skeletons is the famous Barber-Surgeon from Avebury. Highly controversial is another skeleton from Stonehenge, which, in a bizarre tale involving the Roman army, King Arthur and the London Blitz, holds a shocking secret, revealed here for the first time.
Told with the pace of a detective novel, and richly illustrated, this remarkable book is set to change the way we think about our ancestors of four millennia past.
