From June the 12th until the end of the month, the midsummer sun rises at 49 degrees (azimuth) and sets at 311 degrees.
The midsummer sun rises and sets at the same azimuth every day for almost a month.
This means that there could be at least one early morning without rain, fog, hail or thunder for an intrepid person to dare the cold (I swear there was frost last time I was there at midsummer!) see where exactly the sun is, in relation to the position of posts of the Sanctuary.
Sounds simple enough?
Except the round concrete posts that used to mark the positions of the inner timber circles are now no longer accurate- add to that the question of did the Cunnington's correct for magnetic declination of not!
So what you see now is just a bit confusing. And it is as if the Sanctuary is slowly changing shape, starting to echo the double circle surrounded by one large circle, layout of Avebury.
But the original plan is in fact a cross within a circle.
The only way to navigate the Sanctuary- for someone without any money, or power or help!- is to lay out the paths with string, using the blue posts, the recumbent stone marker and the burial stone as guides.
Looking again at the recording I made there that freezing midsummer morning, I see the sun is rises between the two, Bronze Age barrows, when viewed from the SW recumbent stone.
The midsummer sun rises and sets at the same azimuth every day for almost a month.
This means that there could be at least one early morning without rain, fog, hail or thunder for an intrepid person to dare the cold (I swear there was frost last time I was there at midsummer!) see where exactly the sun is, in relation to the position of posts of the Sanctuary.
Sounds simple enough?
Except the round concrete posts that used to mark the positions of the inner timber circles are now no longer accurate- add to that the question of did the Cunnington's correct for magnetic declination of not!
So what you see now is just a bit confusing. And it is as if the Sanctuary is slowly changing shape, starting to echo the double circle surrounded by one large circle, layout of Avebury.
But the original plan is in fact a cross within a circle.
The only way to navigate the Sanctuary- for someone without any money, or power or help!- is to lay out the paths with string, using the blue posts, the recumbent stone marker and the burial stone as guides.
Looking again at the recording I made there that freezing midsummer morning, I see the sun is rises between the two, Bronze Age barrows, when viewed from the SW recumbent stone.
The ring on this picture indicates the burial stone.
I'm standing in the SW, close to the 'recumbent stone' marker.
There is a theory that 'wood henges', were a specialised version of the wooden structures of poles that once were built around barrows from central Eurasia to northern Europe from the third millennium onwards (The Rise of Bronze Age Societies- Krisiansen and Larsson).
This could mean that a timber circle is the barrow, all barrows.
One problem with that idea is that timber circles seem to be Neolithic in origin (pre-date henges, finds of Peterborough ware) and the Neolithic houses of the dead were not circular. Long barrows are more common than round, in the Neolithic, but the rule isn't absolute.
Circles in the Neolithic landscape first appear as meeting places, the causewayed enclosures. These places show sign of almost everything possible taking place there. And so the circular shape may be 'the city' or festival city in microcosm.
Linking the two ideas and perhaps the timber circles represented the walls and gates of the Underworld.
The round barrows were probably constructed hundreds of years after the timber circle. It would be interesting to know how long an oak post could stay upright before it needed replacing, but there is evidence that the posts at the Sanctuary were maintained for many years. The Bronze Age barrows close to, and the Bronze Age burial within the Sanctuary, show that the Sanctuary continued to be an important, sacred space.
If the two round barrows were placed there to flank the sun and become the mountains of sunrise at midsummer, they also do the same for the full moon at midwinter then their meaning, and their 'supernatural' significance is informed by their position.
The two barrows have become portals to the Otherworld.
And the Underworld lies within the Sanctuary as the midwinter sun shines between the oak posts.
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