Non‐portable stone artefacts and contexts of meaning: The tale of Grey Wether (www.museums.ncl.ac.uk/Avebury/stone4.htm)

Abstract

It is easy to appreciate that portable artefacts can carry lengthy biographies. Those biographies can encapsulate many meanings which will have varied from production, to use, to deposition, with significance changing according to time, place and ownership. However, the cultural biography of static objects, particularly if they are essentially natural rather than culturally modified, may seem more prescribed. It is our contention that this is often far from the case, as the social lives of the stones making up the megalithic settings at Avebury, Wiltshire, vividly demonstrate.