Stone 33b West Kennet Avenue (image to the left)

Stone 33b has been identified as a star-gazer by Professor Meaden (p93). He points out that the face is easier to see if rotated by 90 degrees, advice which I have taken to produce the graphic on the left of this page.

Other Star-gazers in the Avebury Complex

I have pointed out elsewhere that the Avenue star-gazer here appears modelled on that carved onto stone 2 of the facade at West Kennet Long Barrow, which dates to at least 3600 BC, image below:

As the Barrow's star-gazer is more than a millenium older it is clear then the Avenue version is a copy, showing how the Barrow's style and mythology was reproduced in the main Avebury complex.

I suspect several other star-gazers exist around Avebury (click here for details), showing this was a particularly important motif for our ancesters.  

It seems to me that there is a particularly striking (if rather gothic looking) example of a star-gazer atop the south side of Stone 01 of the Henge's south-east quadrant.   I call these star-gazers that look straight up "zenith-seekers" as opposed to "equator-seekers" that I suspect look to the south (roughly to the area in the sky where the meridian meets the celestial equator).