About the model
The largest prehistoric artificial mound in Europe, 1.6 km south of Avebury: a chalk mound about 30-31 m high (Wikipedia: 39.3 m) and 160-167 m across at the base, with a flat top about 30 m across and a step or terrace a few metres below it, built in many stages over 50-150 years from about 2490-2450 cal BC: a small gravel mound, a stake ring 16 m across filled with dark soils and turf, a 35 m mound about 5 m high, then a 100 m ditched enclosure, then the chalk mound itself quarried from a great ditch round it, which widens on the west into a rectangular 'tank' that floods in winter. Its base has straight construction lines (up to nine). The summit was probably flattened in the early medieval period for a defensive structure. A Roman settlement lay round its foot and the Roman road (A4) swerves round it. Shafts and tunnels were dug in 1776 (Drax, from the top), 1849 (Merewether) and 1968-70 (Atkinson); a crater opened on the summit in 2000 and in 2007-08 English Heritage refilled all known voids with 1,465 tonnes of chalk. Nothing stands on it; the shape now is the LiDAR's. Originally the chalk was white.