Anyone interested in the history of Silbury Hill and what has been going on more recently should have a look at the NEWSLETTER OF THE ENGLISH HERITAGE RESEARCH GROUP.

Christopher Scull, research director says:

“In Issue 10 of Research News we concentrate on the multidisciplinary project carried out at Silbury Hill in order to save the largest prehistoric monument in Europe from collapse.
Silbury Hill has been dug into from the 18th century, if not before. In 1776 a shaft was sunk from the top of the hill by Colonel Drax, and in 1849 Dean Merewether excavated a lateral tunnel to the centre of the mound. The Merewether tunnel was re-excavated by Professor Richard Atkinson in 1968 for the famous BBC2 archaeological television programme Chronicle.

In late May 2000 a hole appeared in the top of the hill as the 18th-century shaft, which had been capped but not backfilled, opened up. A further collapse in December showed that there were other voids in the hill. Seismic survey and remote photography confirmed the problem and it was decided that the best course was to re-enter the hill, clear the tunnels and voids, and backfill them fully in order to stabilise the monument. Integral to this was a full programme of archaeological investigation and recording which would be the last time that archaeologists would gain access to the interior of Silbury Hill.

The archaeological programme inside Silbury Hill took a full year and deployed novel uses of photogrammetry and geophysical techniques as well as conventional methods of recording and sampling. The archaeological work was undertaken in tandem with the clearing and stabilisation of the tunnels and neither objective could have been achieved without seamless working between archaeologists and engineers. Working conditions inside the hill were challenging, but the new archaeological information gained is transforming our understanding of the monument and its contexts.

It now appears that Silbury Hill was not raised in three clear phases, as had been thought. Instead, the evidence suggests a much more complex sequence of development. In its earlier phases the monument may have been important as an enclosure, and it seems that the mound itself was raised incrementally, being altered and added to over time with several episodes of remodelling apparent. New radiocarbon dating places the earliest phases of the mound around 2,400 BC, and the environmental data recovered promise important insights into the history of environment and landscape. Geophysical survey has revealed an extensive Roman settlement around the monument, and the original summit appears to have been reduced and flattened in the early Middle Ages to take a building or palisade.”