page_title: Avebury
section_title: Outer Stone Circle
hierarchical_section_title: Avebury / Construction / Outer Stone Circle
context_page_description: Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.
  Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC, during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony. The Avebury monument is a part of a larger prehistoric landscape containing several older monuments nearby, including West Kennet Long Barrow, Windmill Hill and Silbury Hill.
  By the Iron Age, the site had been effectively abandoned, with some evidence of human activity on the site during the Roman period. During the Early Middle Ages, a village first began to be built around the monument, eventually extending into it.
context_section_description: Within the henge is a great outer circle. This is one of Europe's largest stone circles, with a diameter of 331.6 metres (1,088 ft), Britain's largest stone circle. It was either contemporary with, or built around four or five centuries after the earthworks. It is thought that there were originally 98 sarsen standing stones, some weighing in excess of 40 tons. The stones varied in height from 3.6 to 4.2 m, as exemplified at the north and south entrances.  Radiocarbon dating of some stone settings indicate a construction date of around 2870–2200 BC.
  The two large stones at the Southern Entrance had an unusually smooth surface, likely due to having stone axes polished on them.
caption: Part of the Outer Circle
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