Silbury Hill in its Prehistoric Landscape

A landscape of intensive early prehistoric activity

The landscape of Silbury Hill
© English Heritage Photo Library
 Silbury Hill is just one of a number of internationally important prehistoric monuments found along the valley of the River Kennet, which now form the core of the Avebury World Heritage Site.
 
Some of these monuments, such as Windmill Hill and Avebury Henge, were gathering places. Some, such as the West Kennet long barrow, were burial places, and others such as the West Kennet stone avenue connected one place to another.

These monuments were constructed and used over a very long period. The people who built the late Neolithic Silbury and Avebury were more distant in time from the original builders of the early Neolithic Windmill Hill and the West Kennet long barrow than we are from the Normans and their castles.

All of this activity took place against a backdrop of a landscape that was gradually being cleared of trees and used for grazing animals and cultivating crops, although recognisable fields did not appear until much later.

Although these monuments were not built at the same time, they were used together as people visited the old monuments and created new ones, to interpret their past and mark their own presence in this extraordinary landscape.