Avebury Carvings :  Set  A    Three of Avebury's many sculptured heads are illustrated here.  Others will be published as this page is changed at cyclic intervals.  Some of the heads will be selected to correspond with known dates of the ancient agricultural calendar to whose sunrises or sunsets they face.


     The head on the book cover is one of three heads known for Stone 206 which stands on circumference of the remains of the North Circle, between the Cove and Green Street.    This perfectly-proportioned right-profile head faces the early-February sunrise.  Visitors should inspect the well-carved mouth, the shaped and smoothed chin, the carefully-prepared  nose, the rounded cranium and the horn at the right temple.  A second fine right-profile head on this megalith (beneath the one illustrated) also faces the early-February sunrise, while a third head, but in left-profile on the opposite side of the stone, faces the early-May sunset.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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This next stone is Stone 26A from the middle of the restored section of the Kennet Avenue. Surviving tool marks show that half of its north-east side (the side near the fence and easily visible from the road) had been picked over in ancient times to create the huge right-profile head and the pecked-out right eye.  The head looks northwards, along the avenue in the direction of Avebury.  It is illuminated every morning by the sun rising in the east.
 

   The next two pictures show Stone 4 of the great stone circle in the south-western part of Avebury Henge.  Only a small part of this stone has been sculptured, but the artist's work has been clever enough to create a fine left-profile head facing west.  Sarsen is a very hard stone --- harder than granite.  Only diamond is harder than sarsen.






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