Romancing the stones

Abstract

The late Neolithic monument complex at Avebury, Wiltshire, continues to elicit much curiosity and attention. However, with excavation unlikely to occur in the near future, new and non-destructive means of exploring the monument complex are required. Although a number of such investigations have been undertaken, to date no concerted effort has been made to consolidate the results within a single framework. The opening stages of such a project, involving innovative research using GIS and Virtual-Reality technologies within an explicitly theoretical interpretative agenda, are described here.

Temporal Frankensteins and Legacy Images

“…Our case study for this analysis has been the site of Avebury, North Wiltshire, UK. Avebury is particularly apt for this analysis, as its most recent excavators, Mark Gillings and Josh Pollard, recognise that: "As a monument Avebury is fascinating in that it already encapsulates much of the hyperreal, from the regularity and artificiality of the area of the henge reconstructed in concrete, earth, and stone, by Keiller, to the geometric and symmetrical hypothetical reconstructions of the early antiquarians" ( [58], pp. 147-148).…”

“…One particularly influential theoretical approach was through the medium of phenomenological analysis to develop more encountered and negotiated perspectives of the situated body within the monument. Various scholars have turned to the digital, and particularly to the vehicle of Virtual Reality modelling [58] to develop a virtual 'first-person approach' [59] to exploring the monument. This virtual approach continues to be fruitfully elaborated [60,61].…”

Alterity, Otherness and Nomad Geometries: New Trajectories for the Interpretation of Late Neolithic Monuments

“…This has explored questions of stone animacy and agency (e.g. Pollard & Gillings 1998) as well as begun to tease out the new explanatory pathways that emerge when we stress the transformative flows of substances, capacities and energies involved in the movement and raising of megaliths (Gillings & Pollard 2016). Important work has also been carried out on approaching the individual stones that make up the monument not as static components, but instead animate material assemblages (Banfied 2016).…”