Everybody knows Stonehenge. Stonehenge is iconic. Stonehenge inspired Spinal Tap, dash it. So why did I elect to go see Avebury instead?
In a word, access.
The stones are not as big, and they're not piled on top of each other as at Stonehenge (trilithons), but there are more stones at Avebury, it's older (about 2500-2200 BC), and you get to touch them. Some archaeologists suggest that Avebury may have been a more important site, based on its size, the number of stones, barrows, and circles. And they're still fairly large, ranging from a ton to Swindon Stone, 65 tons (one of the few never to have been toppled here).
The site is about 350m in diameter, and is surrounded by a ditch about 6-9m deep, and an outer circle consisting of a high earthen bank. The village of Avebury with its roads divide the site into 4 quadrants. You have to be careful where you step, however, because goats graze among the ruins. Goat poop is just another thing Avebury has over Stonehenge.
One of the problems with Avebury is that many of the stones are missing, due to medieval Britain's embarrassment over her pagan past. In 1934, the site was restored, and markers were put down to indicate where the missing ones were.
Also, the site extends way beyond the circle itself. Walk through the Wiltshire fields for about a mile and a half, through a cow pasture and up a flipping large hill, and revealed to you will be the 4500 year-old Silbury Hill, Europe's largest constructed burial mound. You can't go on it, but you can see it from a long ways off, and at 40m high, it's still very impressive. Worth the walk, and if I had had the heart attack I thought I was going to have, the World Heritage people could have just thrown me on top of it.
What was the purpose of Avebury? Well...like Stonehenge, experts are not 100% certain.
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