ENGLAND AND WALES 



seasons, and that their priests or wise men deter- 

 mined for them, by observing the sun, the times 

 of sowing, reaping, etc., as they do among many 

 savage tribes at the present day. They may 

 have been worshippers of the sun, and their 

 temples may have contained ' observation lines ' 

 for determining certain of his movements. But 

 the attempt to date the monuments from such 

 lines involves so many assumptions and is affected 

 by so many disturbing elements that it can never 

 have a serious value for the archaeologist. The 

 uncertainty is even greater in the case of temples 

 supposed to be oriented by some star, for in this 

 case there is almost always a choice of two or 

 more bright stars, giving the most divergent results. 





y 



Fig. 2. Avebury and the Kennet Avenue. (After 

 Sir R. Colt Hoare. ) 



Next in importance to Stonehenge comes the 

 huge but now almost destroyed circle of Avebury 

 (Fig. 2). Its area is five times as great as that of 

 St. Peter's in Rome, and a quarter of a million 

 people could stand within it. It consists in the 

 first place of a rampart of earth roughly circular 



