Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

There are many burial mounds dotted around the ancient landscape of Avebury, echoing perhaps, in miniature, the great mound of Silbury Hill. Some are round barrows, others sheem to shadow the shape of the ceremonial stone axes that have been found across Europe. Or perhaps too, they echo the shape of the gravid womb.

Many of these mounds sleep within the embrace of trees, the roots slowly bringing death to the mounds as they draw life from the earth. You cannot help but wonder at this deliberate juxtaposition of living and departed, life and death. Today we seek to distance ourselves from death. Our ancestors did not so so and for me, their inclusion of death in life is a celebration of an endless natural cycle.