Stone 201, North-east Quadrant - (December 2016)      

   

"At Avebury there are vast ruins of monuments built so that people nearly five thousand years ago could meet on black winter nights and on summer days to take part in rituals that would provide them with safeguards against the inexplicable perils of their ordinary lives"    Burl, p5

Explanatory Materials Appear Below This Image - Please Scroll Down To View


 


 

1.  Stone 201 And Cove Stone II Show The Same Sacred Face In Profile
 

 

Stone 201 appears to be based on a similar design to Cove stone II. To help show this I set out comparison images of these stones above. The overall outline of the stones shares similar brows, noses and mouths. In particular, both the position and appearance of the mouths are far too similar to be random. These monoliths could therefore well represent the same or at least a closely related deity/god/folklore figure - perhaps a canine companion of the Great Goddess? They are good examples of raw sarsen rocks that have been subtly and labouriously sculpted, they are not merely found objects

If I were to speculate further, there is an interesting directionality to this pair. Cove Stone II is the westerly of the two stones, 201 is to the east of it. Cove Stone II seems to be pointing left with its nose, or north, 201s' nose points rightwards, or south. Therefore these stones could be seen as circling each other around a common center performing a stone dance, their clockwise movements echoing the daily movement of the sun from east to west. If I am right this clockwise stone dance is entirely appropriate to the purpose and circular nature of the henge generally, and furthermore echoes the implied movement of the stone hares in the south-east quadrant (see here), their implied movement also being clockwise.

 

2.  Stone 201 May Host An Example Of Avebury's Beaked Face


I believe that there is a distinctive beaked face referenced all over Avebury (click here for details). I see a possible example here on 201, and it is very similar indeed to the face that I have found on top of Stone 25b (click here for details). Below is a simple graphic I have made to illustrate the location of  201's beaked face:

 

Images copyright David Baldwin Night Photography