who later moved south. Other scholars proposed that indigenous Americans had destroyed the civilization that built the mounds, and used this as part of a justification to in turn destroy them. Atwater had his own theory about their origin, arguing that the mounds had been constructed by Hindus who had migrated from India, via Ohio, to Mexico. Notwithstanding these now discredited hypotheses, Atwater’s study contained valuable descriptions of the earthmounds, which were later destroyed.

Atwater became an active local politician, and in 1829 he was appointed by President Jackson to help negotiate a treaty with the Winnebago and other Indians at Prairie du Chien in what is now Wisconsin. In 1833 he published an account of this process and his travels, which included his earlier study on antiquities in The Writings of Caleb Atwater. In 1838 he published A History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil, one of the earliest histories of the state.

Tim Murray

See also

Jefferson, Thomas; United States of America, Prehistoric Archaeology

Aubrey, John (1626–1697)

John Aubrey was born and grew up near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England, where Neolithic remains cover the countryside. The son of local gentry, Aubrey was a close friend of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and attended Trinity College, Oxford, where he indulged his passion for learning and his insatiable curiosity for all things old.

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John Aubrey

(Ann Ronan Picture Library)

The formative influence on Aubrey’s early career was william dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), which inspired him to begin a similar survey of Wiltshire. Most of the material he collected for his “Wiltshire Antiquities” could be classified as local history and his compilations were for the most part fairly conventional and in the tradition of Dugdale.

The unconventional material in his collections related to ancient stone monuments and earthworks, to which he was powerfully attracted. His familiarity with Wiltshire had made him aware of the large number of standing stones, tumuli, and barrows scattered across the country, and his imagination was stirred by his attempts to guess the origin and purpose of these monuments. Stonehenge had always fascinated him, but he himself discovered the even larger Neolithic monumental complex at avebury in 1649, when he was out hunting. The nucleus of Avebury was largely known as an ancient site, but Aubrey was the first to recognize the full extent of the monument and to appreciate that it was not a camp but some kind of ceremonial site, the scheme of which had been obscured by the growth of the village on the spot. He identified the circle of megaliths for the first time as a man-made construction and he returned many times to map the complex and reflect on its significance. He traced the bank and fosse, proving that it was not part of a defensive system. He identified the first section of the great avenue and suspected it had a ceremonial function. He was able to reconstruct a secondary circle of stones within the greater circle. He also tried to locate the complex within the landscape, by noting the old approach roads and the relationship of Avebury to Silbury Hill and to neighboring barrows.

As his interest in the explication of ancient monuments grew he abandoned “Wiltshire Antiquities” and began a new manuscript devoted