ABSTRACT
To properly understand monuments is therefore to engage in a comprehension of their relational ontologies; to see them as mesh works that variously drew together flows of substances, cosmic power, people, histories, etc., into moments of creation and form; to understand them as in a constant state of coming into being. Vicki Cummings has usefully summarized the dominant interpretive themes that structure recent research on British Neolithic monuments and has classified them into the categories of "social relations", "process", "landscape", and "experience". Located on the chalk downland of north Wiltshire in southern England is a remarkable complex of monumental constructions belonging to the fourth and third millennia BC. At the center of this complex is a substantial earthwork enclosure the Avebury henge that contains within its perimeter massive megalithic settings of local sarsen stone. There is no denying the energy and interpretive vibrancy that characterizes work on such monuments, but there are instances in which archaeology itself sits uncomfortably with these interpretive strands.
