This document summarizes John Robb's paper on the relationship between prehistoric ritual landscapes in Wessex, England and how they are currently conserved and presented as heritage sites. It discusses how the concept of ritual landscapes has evolved in archaeology to view large territories reserved for spiritual purposes during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, using Stonehenge and Avebury as examples. It also examines how movement through these landscapes was important for collective memory formation and how phenomenological approaches aim to understand the syntaxes and meanings encoded in their monument placements. However, some critiques argue landscape meanings and woodland changes are often unknown. The document questions how well prehistoric ritual landscapes have been incorporated into modern heritage interpretation.

1. John Robb Past ritual and present heritage in Wessex landscapes.
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Landscaping Change Conference, BSU, 29-31st March 2016
Death, Memory and Landscape Panel
Past ritual and present heritage in Wessex landscapes.
John Robb - rohnjobb@gmail.com
Independent Researcher, formerly Lecturer and Subject Leader in Geography at BSU.
Abstract
This paper explores the spatial (in)congruences between prehistoric ‘ritual landscapes’ in
Wessex and heritage conservation constructs, specifically Word Heritage designations.
Conceptualized today as large-scale, long-term territories that were reserved for spiritual
purposes, ritual or ceremonial landscapes are seen to symbolize the transition from the
individual dead to a more impersonal ancestral identity during the Neolithic and Early Bronze
Ages. These landscape syntaxes can also be seen to accumulate subtle references to
competing ancestries and to key natural landscape features, though the concept has not
enjoyed universal acceptance in the academy. This paper is concerned with human movement
through such landscapes, then and now, both in conceptual terms and also in how such
surviving landscapes have been and are interpreted and conserved today.
Introduction
My aim in this paper is to review and evaluate how far prehistoric ‘ritual’, or ceremonial,
landscapes in Britain, in contrast to individual sites and monuments, have been incorporated
and interpreted into the modern heritage experience. This purpose stems from an earlier
interest in academic conceptualizations of ‘ritual landscape’ (Robb, 1998), informed since by the
consequent evolution of the landscape idea in archaeological writings, and then by how much
these changes have been (or can be) taken up in the ways that these landscapes are
conserved, made accessible and represented to their publics by their custodians. I will focus on
the world famous Stonehenge, and lesser known Avebury landscapes, which were both
‘inscribed’ exactly thirty years ago as Unesco World Heritage Sites.
For some time, the purpose of most surviving Neolithic and Bronze Age structures in Britain has
been associated with rites involving the dead and their remains rather than once-and-for-all
disposal (e.g. Smith and Brickley, 2009). This is uncontroversial where sometimes large

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quantities of human skeletal material and cremations have been excavated, such as at barrows,
and at causewayed sites and some henges1
, notably at Stonehenge itself (Pitts, 2001). A
consensus emerged that further refined this empirical association from the Victorian era: that
the predominant spiritual or religious focus of Neolithic peoples, and possibly during the Early
Bronze Age (EBA), involved a form of ancestor worship or propitiation (Edmonds, 1999).
Excarnation was widely evidenced in the Neolithic, and the subsequent selection of incomplete
bodies for interment in barrows was likely to represent only a portion of the population whose
postmortem fate is unknown. By modern standards, the apparent lack of respect for the
individual dead changes dramatically in the EBA, when carefully interred individual burials or
cremations, the former often with grave goods denoting status, became the norm (Woodward
and Hunter, 2015). The barrows raised to commemorate, and interact with, the ancestors make
up a large proportion of those monuments from these periods still visible in the modern
landscape.
The ritual landscape concept, as I outlined in 1998, itself occupied a liminal position, part-way
between mainstream academic thinking and more popular discourses. The central claim is that
large-scale, long-term territories were ‘designated’ or reserved for spiritual purposes during the
Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages, most spectacularly at Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire
(Pryor, 2004: 173), but also at e.g. Bru na Boinne in Ireland, Orkney Mainland in Scotland, and
Carnac in Brittany. These areas were monumentalized to an impressive extent, spatially and
temporally, transcending the average density of visible or recorded sites dated to these periods,
in Britain and Ireland.
For many professionals, it seemed, the notion of wide-scale landscape veneration in prehistory
went too far beyond the slight evidence for what Neolithic peoples actually thought about land
use at any particular time or in any particular place. Could the entire landscape not equally be
imbued with spiritual meaning, or none of it, as discussed in Brück (1999) and Bradley (2003)?
Concentrations of excavated evidence in and around specific sites and monuments, especially
those seemingly related to death and the ancestors, provided firmer ground. Archaeologists
have become adept at distinguishing ritual deposits in pits and ditches from mundane domestic
discards or accidental loss (Edmonds, 1999: 117). The costs of meticulous excavation have
mitigated against more extensive data collection of this type. However, from the 1980s onwards,
field walking (Barrett, Bradley and Green, 1991), remote sensing and GIS (e.g. Exon et al,
1
for definitions of site types, see Glossary p. 21

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2000) and ethnographic analogies (Bradley, 2000), inter alia, have narrowed the evidential
deficit and allowed wider landscape thinking to find conceptual favour. Basically, the scale of
archaeological interpretation has been extensively widened both by new field technologies and
by global ethnographic comparisons.
Figure 1 demonstrates some aspects of the conceptual journey taken by the exponents of the
landscape approach in archaeology.
Fig. 1. Conceptual evolution of the ‘ritual landscape’ idea. Source: author (2008) lecture slide.
Additionally, phenomenology has been employed by some archaeologists, as a complementary
approach to modern understandings of how landscapes might have been made meaningful in
the deep past. This is especially seen in Tilley’s (1994) pioneering attempts to relate modern
landscape experiences (after Merleau Ponty, 1962) to Neolithic percepta at the Dorset Cursus
and other ritual landscapes. Incidentally, Tilley acknowledges the debt archaeology owes to
human geography in the prior adoption and exploration of landscape, broadly, as a social
construct, citing for instance Relph (1976), Tuan (1977), Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), and
Wagstaff (1987).
In essence, Tilley’s thesis is that movement of the human body through landscape is, and was,
constitutive of collective memory. Modern learnings based on maps and aerial images,
combined with the distortions and distractions of higher speeds and lack of effort in modern

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movement, can be set aside by simply walking through landscapes-with-monuments following
predetermined or suggested pathways, and attending carefully to what can still be perceived in
the original visual sequences at e.g. Cranborne Chase in Dorset or the Nevern valley in North
Pembrokeshire. So not only can prehistoric pathways of movement be followed today, but the
messages of the original ‘landscapers’ might be dimly discerned as e.g. more recent sites
sometimes block the view of older sites and sometimes not, creating and revising the subtle
syntaxes encoded in the landscape. What can be seen, from where, and what cannot, matters.
Are later monuments formally located in alignments and clusters that can be seen to ‘respect’
older sites and alignments and do they form hierarchies of prestige or ancestral closeness?
Woodward (2000) and Bradley (2007: 164) discuss the purposive placement of EBA round
barrows both in relation to earlier sites and to each other.
In Tilley’s conception, homo sapiens’ bodies provide unchanging anatomical platforms, pre-set
with right and left, above and below, ahead and behind. Processing on foot, or on an animal or
litter, yields similar landscape sequences today as they would have done in prehistory. In this
way, we can see that the view ahead constantly reveals and obscures features, which then drop
behind the subject, forming new vistas and sequences to the rear, which of course may have
been a subordinate or fearful aspect glimpsed only furtively. What remains is to interpret the
syntaxes of landscape inscription from the subtle interplay of sightlines, slopes and ridges,
monument alignments and temporal sequencing. Thus, to Tilley experience and collective
memory has been encoded by successive prehistoric generations inscribing, effacing and re-
inscribing numerous earthen, timber and stone monuments into already-numinous and
meaningful natural places and landscapes at the beginning of the Neolithic. There has never
been any suggestion of an original plan or blueprint. The societies who began to construct the
great Wessex monuments around 4000 BC were certainly pre-literate, and reliant on the oral
transmission of group lore.
This approach has been influential in landscape archaeology, though there have been critiques
of both Tilley’s interpretations of distributional data and the intervisibility of monuments,
particularly as so often little is known of local woodland changes (Fleming, 1999) and of
prehistoric landscape meanings (Johnson, 1999). Examples of the approach include observed
visitor behaviour at Avebury (Field et al, 2004), personal experience at Cranborne Chase (Tilley,
1994), in book titles (Bradley, 1998), and in a more recent focus on procession (e.g. Harding,

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2012; Leary et al, 2016). Tilley has gone on to define the ‘phenomenological walk’ as a specific
tool of landscape archaeology (Tilley, 2008: 269 - 271).
The Present in the Past
In 1998 I suggested that ritual landscapes, might be identified by employing these criteria,
revised for the present purpose as: evident clustering of monuments and linked natural
features; circumscription of the landscape; exclusivity of ritual functions; linkages between
sites within the area; memory - when the earlier monuments fell out of use, were later additions
sited with respect to them, or were otherwise commemorated, e.g. by replacing timber settings
with stone?
In their seminal study of the Dorset cursus in its landscape context, and in an accompanying
broadcast magazine (Hills et al, 1991), Barrett, Bradley and Green (1991) showed that Neolithic
artefacts recovered in the plough soil near to the linear Dorset Cursus were markedly exotic or
‘special’, compared to the more everyday pottery, flints and domestic material collected at a
greater distance from it. This enigmatic 10 km long enclosure can be seen to link several long
barrows along the spring line axis and incorporated a view of the midwinter sunset from part of
its interior, with the setting sun appearing to ‘touch’ a long barrow which had been purposefully
enclosed within its linear banks on Bottlebush Down (Green, 2000: 61). Another striking
discovery of evidence for memory and linkage are timber avenues that were used to physically
connect the older cursus to newer EBA barrows located some thirty metres outside the cursus
bank (ibid.: 115).
Thus, rather than dealing with settlements, henges, long barrows and cursuses separately, this
large tract was conceived of by these authors as an integrated spatial entity. The site focus is
perfectly understandable in the modern era as research has failed to conclusively settle on a
single purpose for spectacular and enigmatic monuments such as Stonehenge and the Avebury
Great Henge, encouraging speculation on several competing lines of explanation in the last
hundred years, such as astronomical calendars or places of healing, replacing earlier
comparisons with classical temples and origins in Mediterranean contacts (see Parker Pearson,
2013, for a useful summary and critique).

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Fig. 2. Henge bank, ditch and stone circle at Avebury. Source: author, 2005
This integrated landscape approach has been supported empirically in a number of key
locations by a mass of new data from rapid and cheap extensive methods. These have largely
confirmed the clustering of and linkages between sites of different types, dates and scales,
including those no longer extant, within recognized concentrations. Examples of this empirical
intensification at Avebury, for example, include the discovery of a complex of timber palisade
enclosures and alignments from aerial photography (Whittle, 1997), and confirmation by
geophysical prospection that a second stone avenue existed between the Great Henge and
Beckhampton (Gillings et al, 2000).
More recently, academic perceptions of different scales of prehistoric movement (migration,
transhumance, procession) have altered meantime (e.g. Leary and Kador, 2016). The economic
pre-eminence of cattle herding over cereal cropping in the British Neolithic is now more widely
recognized. Lawson (2007) even conjectures nomadic yurt-dwellers as creators of the grand
Wessex monuments. Previously, the arrival of Neolithic lifeways around 4000 BC was
considered to have ‘settled’ a previously itinerant population of hunter-gatherers as was
required for arable farming and ‘close’ herding. What has changed is the realization that the
evidence can support a lesser reliance on cereal cultivation in the Neolithic, with enclosed fields
evidenced as late as the EBA (Pryor, 2004: 302).
Procession has been identified as a possible ‘purpose’ for the enigmatic cursus enclosures, with
the inscribed landscape as a text for ‘teaching’ initiates maybe (Tilley, 1994; Johnston, 1999).
Pilgrimage has been invoked to explain the extraordinary alignment of henges in the Vale of

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York, envisaged as marking a sacred route way from the Neolithic hand-axe mines in Cumbria
to the southern lowlands (Harding, 2012). A refinement to the processional idea is the
commemoration of route ways that processions were remembered to have followed in the
prehistoric past. Johnston (1999) disagrees with Tilley’s interpretation of the Dorset cursus as a
processional way, but rather as the monumentalization of where processions used to take
place, memorialized by the closed-off banks and ditches. The stone avenues at Avebury and
the earthen avenue at Stonehenge have long been supposed as mortal procession routes,
though it may have been that the stones erected along the Avebury avenues marked their
transformation from mortal to spirit ‘use’. Perhaps people were then relegated to moving along
the route outside the stone markers?
Collective memory is now seen in the phasing of monuments and in how places retained
significance over often long gaps between phases of activity (Chadwick and Gibson, 2013).
Monuments were sometimes ‘revised’ to delete or conceal key elements or were built to
‘respect’ older sites through subtle landscape syntaxes of alignment and prioritization (Bradley,
2002: 36 - 41) and as noted above at the Dorset cursus. Further, there are impressive
structures in the modern landscape that reflect the ends of their use, rather than as functioning
‘temples’ or ‘shrines’. The final closure of West Kennet long barrow for instance, entailed the
installation of the very large sarsens across the mound entrance that form such a prominent
feature today (Cunliffe, 1993: 67).
Fig. 3. West Kennet long barrow, facade sarsen stones. Source: Mark McGuinness, 2005.
Elsewhere, prehistoric activity at The Sanctuary near Avebury, has recently been ‘decoded’ as a
project, where people raised timber posts (‘totem poles’) sometimes replacing those that had
rotted or been taken down, suggesting groups or individuals collaborated (or maybe competed)

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in periodic rituals which finally came to an end with the erection of a stone circle to
commemorate and sanctify, perhaps, the preceding active phases which were by then still
recalled in oral lore (Pitts, 2000). This small scale of activity suggests that Neolithic society in
this region was itself small in scale, tending towards greater social cohesion only towards the
end of the period. Whilst the importance of elites or individuals with the power of social
mobilization is seen in the later Neolithic - Beaker periods, contrary evidence of ‘minority’
variation, regionally and socially, is also now given more weight (Bradley, 2007: 89). As the
posts and stones are long gone, the cumulative pattern has been re-created using coloured
concrete markers at the Sanctuary, posing a puzzle for modern visitors.
Fig 4. Concrete markers at the Sanctuary. Source: author 2001
Attention has also turned to the perceived roles of natural features within the spiritual
functioning of ritual landscapes in prehistory (Bradley, 2000). In particular, the close
relationships between henges, cursuses and rivers has been noted (Barclay and Hey, 1999;
Pryor, 2004: 182) and identified as natural spirit paths later augmented by monuments that were
subsequently ‘plugged in to’ the spiritual circuitry. The skyscape has been a subject of (often
avid) modern speculation for longer: ‘astro-archaeology’ at Stonehenge, in particular, dominated
the collective imagination during the 1960s and 70s, as summarised and critiqued by Souden
(1997: 126-127). Whilst the main solar alignment (the midwinter sunset and the midsummer
sunrise) clearly formed the axis of the final phase layout at Stonehenge, claims for eclipse
prediction and other more esoteric celestial events, have been largely discredited.
The most ambitious application of ritual landscape theory to date must be that conceived by
Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina (1998a, 1998b), subsequently illustrated and developed by

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Pitts (2000: 272) and Pryor (2004: 239). Here we see the recent shifts of emphasis in academic
speculation cumulating in an integrated theory with three phases of development as successive
generations adapted their shared inheritance in earth, timber and stone. Fundamental to this is
the concept of ‘hardening’ as the dead migrate from the flesh of mutability and ultimate decay,
to the boney-stoney permanence of the ancestral realm. By way of an analogy derived from
Ramilisonina’s knowledge of the associations of contemporary timber and stone monuments in
Madagascar, a symbolic link is made between the living to timber monuments, and the
ancestors to stone monuments in Britain (see also Bradley, 2007: 126).
Fig. 5. The Stonehenge ritual landscape, final phase. Source: author, adapted from Parker Pearson (2008: 163) and
Pryor (2012: 245).
When mapped out between Durrington Walls and Stonehenge, incorporating the river Avon and
the Avenue in the final phase, these authors discern two dynamics. Firstly, landscape
conceptions changed and were enacted by building new structures to replace the old, and
secondly the perceived migration of souls from mortal east to ancestral west was enabled by the
natural landscape and its monuments in a dialectic. Parker Pearson et al. (2008) declare that
the river Avon and the avenues at Durrington Walls and Stonehenge were ‘conceptually
indistinguishable’, and that the two henge enclosures were likely linked by flows of ‘various
kinds’ (163). The theory gains from the already well known solar alignments, an axis mundus to
Parker Pearson (2012: 245), augmented by a recent discovery that the last uphill section of the
Stonehenge Avenue follows periglacial striations in the chalk bedrock which just happen to

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follow the solar axis, suggesting a very early reason for the subsequent location of Stonehenge
(Bradley, 2007: 141).
Thus we can see that a new set of landscape perspectives has expanded the scope and scale
of archaeological data-collection and speculation. Chief among these are the linkages now seen
between monuments often of different types and dates, both in terms of position and
intervisibility, but also by natural and/or artificial linear features.
The Past in the Present
The challenges these advances to theory now present to heritage conservation and
interpretation is considerable. The established focus on the best preserved and better-known
monuments is understandable, as also the consequences of the transfer of both Avebury and
Stonehenge from private estates to public custody and the National Trust. It could be argued
that ancient remains are now marooned on small land parcels hemmed in or separated by
modernity (e.g. by the A303 at Stonehenge, the village and arable fields at Avebury), and
crucially, separated from their ritual landscapes. How are today’s visitors encouraged to
experience the iconic centrepieces as part of the theorised web of linkages, sightlines and
movements to and from far less well known and more distant places, some no longer visible, or
even visitable?
Both Avebury and Stonehenge were given international recognition in 1986 by the designation
of a World Heritage Site incorporating the main monuments and surrounding landscapes, in two
areas of c.2600 hectares each separated by 30 km. as the crow flies. Both WHS spaces have
been incorporated into a single Management Plan since 2014 (henceforth referred to as the
Plan). Individual sites enjoy Scheduled Ancient Monument protection under the Ancient
Monuments Act of 1979. Further elements of protection, conservation, accessibility and visual
cohesion are afforded by National Trust ownership, AONB, Natural England, and Defra agri-
environmental schemes, inter alia. However, there remain important dislocations in access and
in visitor experiences across and beyond these complex patterns of land holdings and
regulatory regimes, with significant differences between the two WHS spaces. In terms of
circumscription, what are we to make of the exclusion of the great midway henge at Marden
from these designations? The parsimonious ‘underbounding’ of the two separate heritage
spaces is a challenge to theory and for the public imagination.

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The current Plan (Simmonds, S. and Thomas, B., 2015) illustrates how the concept and
application of the WHS as a heritage landscape sometimes coincides with, and sometimes
departs from, the evolution of landscape ideas in archaeology. It is revealing to consider the
Plan’s influences on the formation of modern experiences at these ‘sites’ (a telling
anachronism!), particularly in light of the opening of the new and relocated visitor centre at
Stonehenge in 2013 (Pitts, 2014). In many ways, and perhaps perchance in some respects, a
landscape vision has imbued the visitor ‘offer’, raising the tourist gaze above and beyond the
customary focus on the iconic mega-monuments themselves. In other respects, more
consideration is needed to reconnect the main monuments with the lesser known ones and with
the natural landscape in the ways now envisaged in the academy.
There is modern recognition of a wider range of legitimate, if sometimes conflicting, interests
and claims to knowledge beyond the mainstream tourism and heritage publics. Modern spiritual
rights/rites at British sites and monuments have emerged as worthy of study in the past four
decades (Blain and Wallis, 2007; Worthington, 2004). The recognition that prehistoric ritual
landscapes may also be/have become modern ritual landscapes has been accepted at least by
some, for instance Cannon’s (2005) observation that a ring of people holding hands around the
Avebury stones ‘somehow brings the monument to life,’ (210). The question has raised some
interesting themes for the management of access to the key sites and indeed issues around
credibility, suspicion and rival claims to authority.
Blain and Wallis (2007) make plain their reading of a landscape that was/is never ‘finished’ and
constantly in a flux of (re-)interpretation;
‘The Avebury landscape is not fixed either within archaeological or pagan interpretation.
‘New’ or ‘discovered’ features may become points of interest, and management
delineation of features as archaeological may legitimate pagan focuses of practice.
Some features remain to be discovered by tourists or discursively constituted as
ancient.’ (Blain and Wallis, 2007: 53)
Though modern spiritual activity at Avebury takes place at the well-known monuments, and has
become part of visitor expectations (ibid.:55), tree dressing, protest walks and attempts to take
some ownership of academic or ‘official’ activity have ranged more widely across the landscape
(ibid.: 73 - 74). The area around Swallowhead Spring is an example of an unofficial modern

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ritual landscape within the Avebury WHS, but not ‘of’ it, and unknown to most visitors. Cannon
(2005: 207-8) claims ‘archaeology is being created’ with the possibility of unique insights into
the role of spontaneity and individualism in the installation of artefacts and offerings in the
landscape. This offers a fascinating reflection of new thinking on group collaboration and
competition and the idea that a ‘project’ or ritual process was important in the early phases of
monument building as details of the piecemeal nature of the earliest phase of nearby Silbury Hill
have emerged (Leary et al., 2013).
Fig. 6. Equinoctial celebrants at West Kennet long barrow, March 2002. Source, author (2002)
‘For the first time in over a century, it has become rewarding to seek out Stonehenge in the
landscape that gave it birth’ (Pitts, 2014, 18). Pitts notes that having been a short stop en route
to other attractions in the region, average visitor ‘stays’ have more than doubled. The displays in
the new visitor centre make clear links between the Stones themselves and their ritual
landscape setting using temporal animation effectively. The WHS Plan recognizes the immense
pull of the Stones as a ‘honeypot’ and the need to spread visitors more widely across the
landscape, from a managerial viewpoint if not necessarily in accordance with an integrated
landscape vision. Whilst noting that ’there is limited understanding by visitors of the extent of the
WHS’. (Simmonds and Thomas, 2015: 116), the Plan acknowledges;
‘One approach to reducing the visitor impacts in the WHS and at the same time
increasing
benefit to the wider area would be to create and promote opportunities for visitors to
enjoy the wider landscape’ (ibid.: 122).

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Fig. 7. Stonehenge visitor centre; four seasons animation in-the-round. Source: author, 2013.
The current WHS boundaries at both Avebury and Stonehenge are seen to have ‘...little
significance in archaeological or visual terms’ having been drawn before nomination in 1986
without a detailed study under present day nomination requirements.’ (ibid.: 15). A recent
extension at Avebury included a visually-imposing long barrow at East Kennet and other sites,
and a forthcoming review was expected to consider inclusion of ‘directly related’ sites and
monuments, perhaps Robin Hood’s Ball causewayed enclosure at Stonehenge a notable part of
the ritual landscape that remains excluded from the WHS space on MoD land (ibid.: 26 - 27).
In striking accord with current ritual landscape thinking, the Plan notes that:
‘The change in viewpoints of key monuments such as Stonehenge and Silbury Hill [...]
suggest that anticipation and expectation in the form of views and movement towards
monuments may have been an important element of historic ceremonies and rituals.’
(ibid.: 103).
While discussing the need to remove modern intrusions from the landscape that might impede
intervisibility, the Plan acknowledges that near Durrington Walls and Woodhenge; ‘multiple
owners and changes in the road network have resulted in an unsatisfactory arrangement for this
area’ (Ibid.: 103). At Avebury, though the National Trust owns about one third of the WHS
space, 647 hectares, much of this is arable land let on secure Agricultural Holdings Act
tenancies and therefore not managed directly by the NT (ibid.: 70). The high proportion of
farmland within both WHS spaces is a serious disincentive to visitors wishing to explore the
landscape more widely.
Major roads also act as barriers to exploration, besides eroding the tranquillity and natural
ambience of these downland spaces. Arable reversion to grassland has proceeded, though 75

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percent of the combined land area is still cultivated. Successful reversion requires ongoing
incentives to prevent a return to arable at a time of relatively high cereal prices and budgetary
restraint (ibid.: 102). Ploughing and standing crops are detrimental to both subsurface
conservation and walking access.
The Plan acknowledges this, but the tunnel solution, first proposed in 1995 and revived in 2014,
seems no nearer commencement at time of writing:
‘.... a solution needs to be identified to help visitors reach the southern part of the WHS,
currently severed from the northern part by the A303, with its well-preserved monuments
and impressive landscape views to Stonehenge and other attributes of Outstanding
Universal Value.’ (ibid.:168)
Lastly, looking at the Plan maps of both WHS spaces (ibid.: 296 - 318), it becomes clear that
modern movement and visibility through these landscapes is not unfettered, a tantalizing if ironic
parallel with prehistoric mobility. This seems to have been generally managed, and in some
places curtailed, by barriers such as the cursuses, and the evident ‘stage managing’ of access
to, and visibility of, henge interiors. Today, few public rights of way in the WHS spaces have
been planned, or revised, to follow linear monuments and allow ‘revelatory’ views, such as the
final Avenue approach to Stonehenge. Pitts (2014) contends that the best approach to
Stonehenge is now on one of the footpaths crossing the National Trust estate. Walking routes
are available to download, with options for exploring lesser monuments, as are tickets, obviating
the necessity to arrive via the visitor centre. It is notable that none of the recommended walking
routes include the last section of the Avenue on its unique ‘reveal-hide-reveal’ final approach to
the Stones (Pitts, 2001: 158), nor along the Greater Cursus, for instance. Part of the reason
seems to be the fragmentation of ownership and legacy of rights-of-way within the WHS space
at Stonehenge. The National Trust ‘open access’ designation covers less than one third of this,
and that mostly north of the A303 trunk road (Simmonds and Thomas, 2015: 69).
At Avebury, it is now permitted to walk further along the course of the Avenue by the acquisition
of land by the National Trust at Waden Hill; the onward course to the Sanctuary is interrupted
only by the busy A4 road and a few private properties. However, East Kennet long barrow,
newly incorporated into the WHS space, lies marooned on private land without a public right of
access. Future NT acquisitions would further integrate the ancient and modern landscapes, but
these are inherently unpredictable. The WHS spaces are even less accessible to disabled

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visitors with old-style stiles still predominating over gates and busy road crossings within
Avebury Henge, or at the A4 crossing at The Sanctuary - Ridgeway, surprisingly dangerous
even for the fully ambulatory and sighted. The needs and aspirations of visitors with disabilities
are considered in a single paragraph of the 340-page Plan (Ibid.: 128).
Fig. 8. More limited access to the wider landscape. Source: author, 2004.
Conclusion
We can see in the Plan awareness of the prehistoric ritual landscape as an integrated whole,
with attention paid to open access, intervisibility, guided routes on foot and cycle, landscape-
oriented displays and interpretation. It is striking that a phenomenological point is made
regarding how modern, and thus prehistoric, experience of monuments is/was altered by simply
walking towards them from certain directions. The ‘underbounding’ of the two spaces has been
addressed to some extent by extensions, such as that at East Kennet, though these have been
piecemeal and there is as yet no real vision of any optimum circumscription of these
landscapes. Parsimony in spatial extent doubtless matches concern that managerial over-reach
would dilute custodial effectiveness. Modern intrusions, not least the trunk roads and the
bisection of the Avebury Henge, bring danger and impose barriers besides undermining the
landscape vision. It is a challenge to imagine the Avebury Henge as it might have been without
these accretions. Several ‘before’ and ‘after’ images and films have been released of
Stonehenge to highlight the obvious enhancement of landscape ambience and the potential for
less constrained visitor experiences that a bored tunnel could enable (e.g. English Heritage,
2015).

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The traditional fixation with the upstanding, isolated ‘big monuments’, inherited from academic
practice, popular expectations and property legacies, is undergoing interesting and sometimes
unexpected changes. In some ways, the scope of conservation and interpretation has widened
to embrace the academic interest in ritual, sacred or ceremonial landscapes, just as in natural
conservation, habitat and ecology have superseded narrower attentions paid to species and
habitats. In some ways these changes are harmonised by the dual use of natural environment
designations in heritage management (e.g. mutuality of the importance of healthy chalk
grassland ecologies to earthwork preservation and visibility). The other striking parallel is in
human movement through monuments and landscape, and the opportunities and barriers to
modern phenomenologies emulating those now envisaged for the ancestors (and their
ancestors). Indeed, the ambiguities around whether prehistoric people did once walk down the
West Kennet Avenue, or were cursed if they did, can only but add a frisson to the already
numinous experience of doing so today.
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Glossary
barrow a burial mound, long or round in plan, common in the south and east of
Britain. Long barrows are dated to the Neolithic, and round barrows began
in that period but proliferated in the EBA. Some excavated long barrows
have yielded no sign of human remains, hinting at the many social
functions these structures seem to have fulfilled.
causewayed
enclosure
an early Neolithic ritual site demarcated by concentric, incomplete rings of
ditches, often on a hilltop. The ditches are frequently found to contain
formally-deposited human and animal bone, pottery, flint etc.
cursus a long, rectangular ditch-and-bank enclosure of Neolithic date sometimes
built with no entrances. Named by C. 18th antiquarian William Stukeley
who supposed them to be Roman chariot race tracks.
EBA Early Bronze Age, from around 2100 to 1500 BC
henge nominally, a Neolithic quasi-circular enclosure formed from an external
bank and internal ditch with one or more entrances. These often had timber
and/or stone circles and settings within them. Stonehenge, however, has
an external ditch.
Neolithic from around 4000 to 2500 BC in Britain, followed by the Copper Age
(Chalcolithic) or ‘Beaker Period’, from 2500 to 2100 BC.