Night Photography by David Baldwin

 

 


 

Agricultural Animal Carvings At Avebury

 
  The Neolithic is above all associated with farming, and so it should not be surprising that the Avebury artworks include many portraits of farm animals - cattle and sheep. The North-west quadrant's Stone 44 is unique as it displays carvings of both kinds of agricultural animals on the same elevation:
   
   
 



Figure 1 - Stone 44
   
  The Avebury Cattle
   
 

Avebury boasts several bovine heads among its carvings. Figure 2 and Figure 3 demonstrate very clear bovine carvings of very high quality, both left profiled.

Figure 4 is somewhat less clear. I suspect the shallow and crude eyes have been carved between two natural clefts in the rock, natural cracks the artist has cleverly incorporated as negative horns.
   
   
 



Figure 2 - Stone 50
   
 

 

Figure 3 - Barber Stone

Figure 4 - Swindon Diamond Stone
   
   
   
  The Avebury Sheep
   
  There are individual sheep too:
   
 

Figure 5 - Stone 7
   
 

Figure 6 - Stone 37b West Kennet Avenue
   
 



Figure 7 - Stone 35
   
   
  I have not yet photographed the excellent sheep's head at West Kennet Long Barrow (Stone 5, see Meaden Secrets Chapter 8) and an additional Stone 44 sheep (see Pattison p108).