Kennet Avenue

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Kennet Avenue in 2002
State Party	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, ii, iii
Reference	373
Region†	Europe and North America
Inscription history
Inscription	1986 (10th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO.

Kennet Avenue or West Kennet Avenue is a prehistoric site in the English county of Wiltshire.

It was an avenue of two parallel lines of stones 25m wide and 2.5km in length which ran between the Neolithic sites of Avebury and The Sanctuary. A second avenue, called Beckhampton Avenue led west from Avebury towards Beckhampton Long Barrow.

Excavations by Stuart Piggott and Alexander Keiller in the 1930s indicated that around 100 pairs of standing stones had lined the avenue and that they dated to around 2200 BC based on finds of Beaker burials found beneath some of the stones. Many stones have since fallen or are missing however.

Keiller and Piggott righted some of the fallen stones they excavated as did Maud Cunnington during her earlier work there. More recently the stones have been the subject of vandalism when red paint was thrown over some of them.