Avebury Outer Circle Stone 9 aka SW16 aka Barber Stone, Avebury Outer Stone Circle Extant Stones, Avebury Stone Circles, Avebury Henge and Stones, Selkley Hundred, Wiltshire, South-West England, British Isles [Map]

Antiquity 1939 Volume 13 Pages 223-233. During the excavation of the buried Stone 16 [Map], a complete skeleton was found within the narrow space between the stone and the only unfinished part of the side of the burial-pit. It is evident that the remains were those of an individual who had been accidentally killed while engaged in completing the pit for the burial of the stone, which had apparently slipped or fallen owing to a support giving way, fracturing the victim's pelvis, and also breaking his neck. The right foot was wedged beneath the fallen stone and it had consequently been impossible at the time of death to remove the corpse. It had therefore been covered over and the pit containing stone and body filled in. The date of the occurrence, and the burial of the stone, could be accurately fixed to within a few years by the discovery near the man's left hip of a discoloured patch of soil, doubtless representing the remains of a leather pouch, upon which lay thrce coins; two silver pennies of Edward I, minted at Canterbury in 1307, and a sterling of the City of Toul. Other finds beside the skeleton included a pair of pointed scissors, which were from their form definitely those rather of a barber than a tailor, and a small iron object, with the vestigial remains of a wooden handle, which had apparently been a lancet or probe. These objects were found beside the left thigh. The discovery of a pair of scissors in England accurately identifiable to so early a date as the first quarter of the fourteenth century A.D. is interesting.

In passing it may be remarked that the generally accepted explanation that is in order to facilitate agriculture-for the burial of so many of the stones at Avebury cannot, on other grounds than the employment of a barber for the task, be regarded as adequate, at any rate so far as the northwest and southeast sectors are concerned.

The skeleton has been accepted by the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, while the associated finds are housed in the Museum of the Morven Institute at Avebury.