{"it":{"id":"BRI-010","kind":"site","sub":"British Isles","name":"Silbury Hill","place":"United Kingdom","lat":51.416,"lon":-1.857,"date":"The hill was constructed in several stages between c. 2400 and 2300 BC and displays…","mat":"clay;earth;limestone;sarsen","nfacts":13,"tags":["Britain"],"sum":"Silbury Hill, near Avebury in England, is 39.3 m tall, a flat-topped mound of chalk and clay heaped up in stages by Neolithic people. It is the tallest prehistoric human-made mound in Europe and close in volume to Egyptian pyramids of its age.","why":"Europe's largest prehistoric mound was built in stages in the Neolithic, and three digs have not explained its purpose.","src":[389],"nsrc":2,"yt":"Silbury was built in stage after stage. Why build it?","rel":["STO-HEN","BRI-004"],"hook":"Silbury Hill, 30 m to 39.3 m high depending on the survey, is Europe's largest prehistoric mound."},"S":{"389":["Wikipedia: Silbury Hill","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbury_Hill"]},"rec":{"id":"BRI-010","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"At","a":"height","v":"39.3","u":"m","o":"At 39.3 m high, REF0 the hill is the tallest and second largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world; it is similar in volume to contemporary Egyptian pyramids.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1044"},{"f":"stands 39 3 m high and covers about","a":"area","v":"2","u":"ha","o":"The mound is composed mainly of chalk and clay excavated from the surrounding area and stands 39.3 m high and covers about 2 ha.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1045"},{"f":"The base of the hill is circular and","a":"diameter","v":"167","u":"m","o":"The base of the hill is circular and 167 m in diameter.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1046"},{"f":"The summit is flat-topped and","a":"diameter","v":"30","u":"m","o":"The summit is flat-topped and 30 m in diameter.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1047"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"Atkinson dug numerous trenches at the site and reopened the 1849 tunnel, where he found material suggesting a Neolithic d","u":"","o":"Atkinson dug numerous trenches at the site and reopened the 1849 tunnel, where he found material suggesting a Neolithic date, although none of his radiocarbon dates are considered reliable by modern standards.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M1048"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"Atkinson reported the C-14 date for the base layer of turf and decayed material indica","u":"","o":"Atkinson reported the C-14 date for the base layer of turf and decayed material indicated a corrected date for the commencement of Silbury was close to REF11","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M1049"},{"f":"He describes a perpendicular cavity","a":"depth","v":"40","u":"ft","o":"He describes a \"perpendicular cavity\" 40 ft deep and 6 in wide.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1050"},{"f":"Marlborough Mound in the grounds of Marlborough College","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"8.3","u":"km","o":"A strong candidate was felt to be the Marlborough Mound, in the grounds of Marlborough College, 8.3 km east of Silbury Hill, further down the River Kennet.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1051"},{"f":"The mound is","a":"height","v":"18","u":"m","o":"The mound is 18 m high, less than half the height of Silbury.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1052"},{"f":"by Jim Leary analysed core samples from two","a":"diameter","v":"10","u":"cm","o":"A team of archaeologists, led by Jim Leary, analysed core samples from two 10 cm diameter boreholes.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1053"},{"f":"the 19th nbsp century was at Marden Henge","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"10","u":"km","o":"Another contender, but which had been all but levelled in the 19th century, was at Marden Henge, 10 km south of Silbury.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1054"},{"f":"surviving fragment of what may have been a","a":"height","v":"15","u":"m","o":"Known as Hatfield Barrow, a surviving fragment of what may have been a 15 m high mound also gave construction dates to the","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1055"},{"f":"1965 and 1986 the entire hill in all","a":"area","v":"2.3","u":"ha","o":"REF24 In 1965 and 1986 the entire hill – in all 2.3 ha – was notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1371829341 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1056"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"Silbury Hill is a prehistoric artificial chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341"},{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"The first clear evidence of construction, dated to around REF5 consisted of a gravel core with a kerb of stakes and sarsen boulders as a revetment.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341"},{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"Silbury Hill was originally entirely white since it had a chalk (limestone) exterior, and the surrounding ditch may have been regularly filled with water from underground springs.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"The hill was constructed in several stages between c. 2400 and 2300 BC and displays immense technical skill and prolonged control over labour and resources.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"51.4157","lon":"-1.8574","src":"Wikidata P625 only + curated wave0 value agrees","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0000 deg (~0.00 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/377466789"},"src":[{"id":"S0386","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silbury_Hill&oldid=1371829341"},{"id":"S0607","t":"Wikipedia: Silbury Hill","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbury_Hill"},{"id":"VBRI-010-3","t":"Historic England: Silbury Hill, list entry 1008445 (archived)","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1008445?section=official-list-entry"},{"id":"VBRI-010-4","t":"English Heritage: History of Silbury Hill (archived)","u":"https://web.archive.org/web/2024id_/https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/history/"},{"id":"VBRI-010-5","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/373/"},{"id":null,"t":"“The many faces of Silbury Hill,” Current Archaeology, interview with Jim Leary, English Heritage fieldwork director 2007–08.","u":"https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/the-many-faces-of-silbury-hill.htm"},{"id":null,"t":"English Heritage, “Research on Silbury Hill.”","u":"https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/history/research/"}],"sum":"In May 2000 the top of a hill in Wiltshire fell in. A hole opened on the flat summit and dropped 14 metres into the dark. It was not a natural collapse. The hill was hollow in places because people had been tunnelling into it for more than two centuries, searching for a king they were sure must be buried inside, and none of them had properly filled in their holes. They never found the king. The hill had been keeping a different kind of secret.\n\nSilbury Hill rises from a low spur of the Kennet valley, just south of the village of Avebury in southern England. It is a smooth, steep, flat-topped cone of chalk and earth, and English Heritage and UNESCO both call it the largest prehistoric artificial mound in Europe. Its size depends on who is measuring. Historic England's official listing gives 39.3 metres high and 167.6 metres across; English Heritage's visitor history gives about 30 metres and 160 metres. Either way, it is about as tall as a ten-storey building, with a base covering some two hectares, and its volume has been compared with that of Egyptian pyramids of roughly the same age. About half a million tonnes of material went into it, mostly chalk, and English Heritage estimates about four million hours of work. When it was new, its chalk skin would have made it shine white across the valley, and the great ditch dug around it for chalk may have filled with water from underground springs, so that the hill stood in a moat.\n\nIt belongs to one of the rarest kinds of monument in Britain. Historic England counts only four certain Neolithic monumental mounds, and Silbury is by far the greatest. It stands in the same World Heritage landscape as the Avebury stone circles, and it went up in the same decades that the giant sarsen trilithons were being raised at Stonehenge.\n\nFor centuries people assumed it covered a grave. In 1776 miners led by Edward Drax, paid for by the Duke of Northumberland, sank a shaft from the summit down to the centre, expecting a royal burial. There was none. In 1849 John Merewether, Dean of Hereford, drove a tunnel in from the side and found decayed moss and turf, but again no burial. From 1968 to 1970 the archaeologist Richard Atkinson tunnelled in once more, in the first excavation broadcast on television as it happened, sponsored by the BBC. Atkinson found winged ants in the turf and proposed that work had begun in early August, when such ants fly, making Silbury a harvest-time monument. He saw four tidy building phases and read the hill as the project of one powerful chief or priest.\n\nAfter the summit collapsed, English Heritage reopened Atkinson's tunnel in 2007, recorded everything, and packed every known void with 1,465 tonnes of chalk. The work, led by Jim Leary, changed the story. Building began with the ground itself. The turf and stones were stripped away, and the bare soil was churned by many feet, and perhaps hooves, as if a great crowd had gathered and moved about the spot before a single basket was emptied. Then came a low mound of gravel, a little under a metre high, possibly carried up from the nearby River Kennet. A ring of stakes 16 metres across was filled with basketloads of mud and dark soil. Layer upon layer of soil, turf and boulders followed, making a mound 35 metres across and about 5 metres high. A ditch was dug, filled in and recut several times. Only then were the great chalk banks piled on, step by step, held in place by fences of stone and wood, until the hill reached its final height.\n\nThe turves sealed inside are so well preserved that some of the grass is still green after more than four thousand years. Radiocarbon dates show that building began around 2450 BC and lasted somewhere between 55 and 155 years; English Heritage summarises the span as about 2470 to 2350 BC. Leary takes the middle figure as four or five generations, from bare ground to finished hill.\n\nHe also overturned Atkinson's harvest. Atkinson had found ants and he had found wings, Leary points out, but not wings on ants, so the season of building is unknown. And the four neat phases dissolved into dozens of small steps, not all of them aimed at making a mound at all.\n\nThat is the mainstream view today: Silbury was not built to a plan by a single ruler but grew through many acts of building by a whole community, and the act of building may have mattered more than the finished hill. Leary suggests that people simply stopped adding to it as Beaker pottery, Beaker burials and the first copper reached Britain, and that Silbury may have been the old order's answer to those changes, a last enormous statement of a world that was ending. He notes too that it stands near the source of the River Kennet, which Neolithic people may have seen as the head of the Thames, while the largest henge in Britain, at Marden, sits at the head of the River Avon. Perhaps both marked the springs of sacred rivers.\n\nOther readings have been offered. In his 1976 book The Silbury Treasure, Michael Dames argued that the ditches were laid out as the image of a Neolithic mother goddess. Historic England records the idea only as a suggestion; there is no direct evidence for it.\n\nThe hill's later life is almost as strange. The Romans built a road and a sizeable settlement at its foot, yet left little mark on the mound itself, which leaves open whether they revered it or whether a shrine on the summit was later lost. In the 11th century someone cut a spiral path into its slopes, leaving behind Saxon pottery and a coin of Æthelred the Unready. The top was probably flattened in the early medieval period, perhaps for defence.\n\nSo what was Silbury for? It is not a tomb. It was not built in one go. Its season, its purpose and even whether its builders ever imagined its final shape remain unknown. What is known is that for four or five generations, people with baskets kept returning to this spot by the springs to add to a white hill that served no practical purpose anyone can identify, until it became the largest mound raised by prehistoric hands in Europe.\n\nThe miners went looking for a king and found layers of turf with green grass still in them. What were the people who laid that turf trying to raise, and who did they think was watching from above?","qs":["Silbury was built in stage after stage. Why build it?","Three digs went into the mound. What would you expect to find inside a monument this size?","Two official bodies give heights 9 m apart. How can a hill's height be in dispute?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Silbury_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silbury_1.jpg","title":"Silbury 1.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Immanuel Giel","cap":"Silbury Hill"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Marden%2C_bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1757024.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marden,_bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1757024.jpg","title":"Marden, bridge - geograph.org.uk - 1757024.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Mike Faherty","cap":"Marden, bridge Simple brick bridge over River Avon, North of the village."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Prehistoric_Silbury_Hill%2C_Wiltshire.JPG/1280px-Prehistoric_Silbury_Hill%2C_Wiltshire.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prehistoric_Silbury_Hill,_Wiltshire.JPG","title":"Prehistoric Silbury Hill, Wiltshire.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Swindonian","cap":"Photograph of the prehistoric monument of Silbury Hill following heavy rain storms that had filled its surrounding ditch"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Silbury_Hill%2C_England.jpg/1280px-Silbury_Hill%2C_England.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silbury_Hill,_England.jpg","title":"Silbury Hill, England.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Kenny Arne Lang Antonsen","cap":"Silbury Hill, England."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Silbury_Hill_Profile_A_1.jpg/1280px-Silbury_Hill_Profile_A_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silbury_Hill_Profile_A_1.jpg","title":"Silbury Hill Profile A 1.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Gatis Kalniņš","cap":"Silbury Hill 3D model. Created from open Lidar data with app planlaufTerrain."}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"39.3","u":"m","h":"Tallest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe","s":[129]},{"v":"2400 BC","h":"Radiocarbon date for the mound's second phase","s":[129]},{"v":"Clay","h":"Made of: Clay, earth, limestone, sarsen","s":[129]}],"hs":{"129":["Wikipedia: Silbury Hill (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbury_Hill"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/BRI-010.webp","w":1175,"h":753,"o":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Silbury_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled"}}