Large Right-Facing Head, Stone 26a, West Kennet Avenue - (December 2018)             
   

Cf Image on page 90 of Professor Meadens "Secrets"book and also Di Pattison's "Avebury's Stones" book p 80. For an alternative photograph of this monolith here on Nightfolio please click here

This carved faces is an equator-seeker, please click here to see others

Explanatory Materials Appear Below This Image - Please Scroll Down To View
 

I believe that this strong right-profiled masculine face represents a character of immense significance to Avebury's creators, a significance which led them to replicate his image all over the site, usually in the shorthand form of crude "block" faces with a basic socket for the eye. The face here on Stone 26a is unusually well delineated, as is the version on nearby Stone 31a, visible here. Stone 26a appears to wear a distinctive carved hood or cap, there are other Avebury faces which are similarly adorned, click here for details.



 

My photograph shows abundant evidence that the east face of Stone 26a contains sculptures.


 

  

 

1.   The eye panel covering much of the right hand part of the monolith has clearly been beaten flat, possibly with small round stone mauls, similar to those used to hammer out the Stonehenge sarsens.  I believe there are other such dressed eye panels among the Avebury stones, a brilliant example is on the Swindon Diamond which you can see by clicking here.

  
 

2.   You can clearly see that the central area of the stone has been labouriously "pecked" away by the sculptor -  presumably using slivers of stone as chisels.

  

 

The left hand of the stone represents a different kind of head, a cruder, sharper profile of a face looking to the left and slightly upwards, leading me to classify this as an equator-seeker, one of the many such sculptures that litter this portion of the West Kennet Avenue, all appearing to gaze up roughly in the direction of the southernmost celestial equator.

  

 

Image copyright David Baldwin Night Photography