Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T12:49:16.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Romancing the stones1

Towards a virtual and elemental Avebury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

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.

Type
Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barker, C.T., 1984: The long mounds of the Avebury region, Wiltshire archaeological magazine 79, 738.Google Scholar
Barrett, J., 1994: Fragments from Antiquity. An archaeology of social life in Britain, 2900–1200 BC, Oxford.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, J., 1983: Simulations, New York.Google Scholar
Bender, B., Hamilton, S. and Tilley, C. 1997: Leskernick. Stone worlds; alternative narratives; nested landscapes, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63, 147178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bewley, R., Cole, M., David, A., Featherstone, R., Payne, A. and Small, F., 1996: New features within the henge at Avebury, Wiltshire. Aerial and geophysical evidence, Antiquity 70, 639646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloch, M., 1995: People into Places. Zafimaniry Concepts of Clarity, in Hirsch, E. and O'Hanlon, M. (eds), The anthropology of landscape, Oxford6377.Google Scholar
Bowen, H.C., and Smith, I.F., 1977: Sarsen stones in Wessex.The Society's first investigations in the evolution of the landscape project, Antiquaries journal 57, 185196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burl, A., 1979: Prehistoric Avebury. New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Cleal, R.M.J., Walker, K.E. and Montague, R., 1995: Stonehenge in its landscape. Twentieth-century excavations, London.Google Scholar
Devereux, P., 1991: Three-dimensional aspects of apparent relationships between natural and artificial features within the topography of the Avebury complex, Antiquity 65, 894898.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devereux, P., and Jahn, R.G., 1996: Preliminary investigations and cognitive considerations of the acoustical resonances of selected archaeological sites, Antiquity 70, 665666.Google Scholar
Dovey, K., 1985: The quest for authenticity and the replication of environmental meaning, in Seamon, D. and Mugerauer, R. (eds), Dwelling, place and environment. Towards a phenomenology of person and world, Dordrecht3349,.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielden, K., 1996: Avebury saved? Antiquity 70, 503507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, P.F., 1995: An exploration of probable viewsheds in landscape planning, Planning and design 22, 527546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, P.F. 1996: Extending the applicability of viewsheds in landscape planning, Photogrammetric engineering and remote sensing 62, 12971302.Google Scholar
Gaffney, V., Stancic, Z. and Watson, H., 1995: Moving from catchments to cognition. Tentative steps towards a larger archaeological context for GIS, Scottish archaeological review 9/10, 4164.Google Scholar
Gibson, A., 1994: Excavations at the Sarn-y-bryn-caled Cursus Complex, Welshpool, Powys, and the timber circles of Great Britain and Ireland, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 60, 143223.Google Scholar
Gidlow, J., 1997: Ways of seeing. Simulating partial pasts at Twyfelfontein, Namibia, Southampton (unpublished M.Sc.thesis, University of Southampton).Google Scholar
Gillings, M., (forthcoming a): The utility of the GIS approach in the collection, management, storage and analysis of surface survey data, in Bintliff, J., Kuna, M. and Venclova, N.(eds), The future of field survey in Europe.Google Scholar
Gillings, M., (forthcoming b): Engaging place. A framework for the integration and realisation of Virtual-Reality approaches in archaeology, in Proceedings of the computer applications in archaeology conference,Birmingham1997.Google Scholar
Gillings, M., (forthcoming c): Plans, elevations and virtual worlds. The development of techniques for the routine construction of hyperreal simulations, in Barcelo, J. (ed.), Virtual Reality applications in archaeological research.Google Scholar
Gillings, M., (forthcoming d): Immaterial culture. Virtual archaeologies and the hyperreal, in Fisher, P. and Unwin, D. (eds), Virtual Reality in geography.Google Scholar
Gillings, M., and Goodrick, G., 1996: Sensuous and reflexive GIS. Exploring visualisation and VRML, Internet Archaeology 1 (http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue1/).Google Scholar
Gingell, C., 1996: Avebury. Striking a balance, Antiquity 70, 507511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, N., 1995: Seeing Nature, History of European ideas 20, 341348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, D.J., 1991: Simians, cyborgs and women. The reinvention of nature, London.Google Scholar
Higuchi, T., 1983: The visual and spatial structure of landscapes, London.Google Scholar
Ihde, D., 1993: Postphenomenology. Essays in the postmodern context, Evanston.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 1992: Culture and the perception of the environment, in Croll., E. and Parkin, D. (eds), Bush base, forest farm, London, 3956.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 1995: Building, dwelling, living. How animals and people make themselves at home in the world, in Strathern, M. (ed.), Shifting contexts. Transformations in anthropological knowledge, London, 5780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, M., (ed.), 1996: Things as they are. New directions in phenomological anthropology. Bloomington and Indianapolis.Google Scholar
Kahn, M., 1990: Stone-faced ancestors. The spatial anchoring of myth in Wamira, Papua New Guinea, Ethnology 29, 5166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keiller, A., 1939: Avebury. Summary of excavations, 1937 and 1938, Antiquity 13, 223233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keiller, A., and Piggott, S., 1936: The recent excavations at Avebury, Antiquity 10, 417427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Llobera, M., 1996: Exploring the topography of mind. GIS, social space and archaeology, Antiquity 70, 612622.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molyneaux, B. L., 1997: Introduction. The cultural life of images, in Molyneaux, B. (ed.), The Cultural Life of Images, London, 110.Google Scholar
Norberg-schulz, C., 1996: The Phenomenon of place, in Nesbitt, K. (ed.), Theorizing a new agenda for architecture. An anthology of architectural theory, 1965–1995, New York, 414428.Google Scholar
Parker Pearson, M. and Ramilisonina, , 1998: Stonehenge for the ancestors. The stones pass on the message, Antiquity 72, 308326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitts, M., 1990: What future for Avebury?, Antiquity 64, 259–74.Google Scholar
Pitts, M., 1996: The vicar's dewpond, the National Trust shop and the rise of paganism, in Evans, D.M., Salway, P. and Thackray, D. (eds), The Remains of Distant Times. Archaeology and the National Trust, London, 116131.Google Scholar
Pitts, M., and Whittle, A., 1992: The development and date of Avebury, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 203212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, J., 1992: The Sanctuary. Overton Hill, Wiltshire. A re-examination, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 213226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollard, J., 1993: Traditions of deposition in the Neolithic of Wessex, Cardiff (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales).Google Scholar
Presson, C.C., 1995: Orientation-specificity in spatial recall. Distinct spatial memories? Geographical systems 2, 197216.Google Scholar
Reilly, P., 1991: Towards a Virtual Archaeology, in Lockyear, K. and Rahtz, S. (eds), Computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology 1990, Oxford (British Archaeological Reports, Supp. Series 565), 133140.Google Scholar
Richards, C., 1996: Henges and water, Journal of material culture 1, 313336.Google Scholar
Rivière, P., 1995: Houses, places and people. Community and continuity in Guiana, in Carsten, J. and Hugh-Jones, S. (eds), About the house. Lévi-Strauss and beyond, Cambridge, 189205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sholl, M. J., 1995: The representation and retrieval of map and environment knowledge, Geographical systems 2, 177196.Google Scholar
Smith, I.F., 1965: Windmill Hill and Avebury. Excavations by Alexander Keiller, 1925–1939, Oxford.Google Scholar
Stukeley, W., 1743: Abury, a temple of the British druids, with some others, described, London.Google Scholar
Taçon, P.S.C., 1991: The power of stone. Symbolic aspects of stone use and tool development in western Arnhem Land, Australia, Antiquity 65, 192207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, J., 1991: Rethinking the Neolithic, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Thomas, J., 1993: The politics of vision and the archaeologies of landscape, in Bender, B. (ed.), Landscape. Politics and perspectives, Oxford, 1948.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1994: A phenomenology of landscape, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ucko, P., Hunter, M., Clark, A. and David, A., 1991: Avebury reconsidered. From the 1660s to the 1990s, London.Google Scholar
Watson, A. 1996: Listening to the stones. Paper presented at the 18th Theoretical Archaeology Group conference,Liverpool.Google Scholar
Wheatley, D. 1995: Cumulative viewshed analysis. A GIS-based method for investigating intervisibility, and its archaeological application, in Lock, G. and Stancic, Z. (eds), Archaeology and geographical information systems. A European perspective, London, 171186.Google Scholar
Whittle, A. 1993: The Neolithic of the Avebury area. Sequence, environment, settlement and monuments, Oxford Journal of archaeology 12, 2953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittle, A. 1997: Remembered and imagined belongings. Stonehenge in its traditions and structures of meaning, in Cunliffe, B. and Renfrew, C. (eds), Science and Stonehenge, Proceedings of the British Academy 92, 145166.Google Scholar