Silbury: Resolving the Enigma

According to English Heritage, ‘Silbury’s significance is obscure and we can only hope to understand it if we combine our scientific approach with a vision that sees beyond modern-day beliefs.’ This book meets that need. Developed from the same author’s acclaimed work The Silbury Treasure, here he sets new scientific findings made at Silbury with a framework of religious ideas, associated with the invention of agriculture. Silbury re-emerges as a gigantic pregnant image of the Neolithic harvest goddess, linked to animals reared at the nearby Palisades enclosures and to local landscape features, so delivering an annual First Fruits birth. The recent discovery of a Roman town, built around Silbury, indicates that the Romans merged their own corn goddess, Ceres, with the Neolithic deity. With a survey of Britain’s evocative ‘Mother Earth’-shaped hills, to which folklore has adhered. Dames also relates Celtic and English traditions of pagan worship to the Silbury prototype. Silbury: Resolving the Enigma is a scholarly, boldly argued, lucid, affectionate book. With more than 150 illustrations, the author demonstrates Silbury’s relevance to current environmental concerns.