THE BOOK
Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
To order, click
HERE

Thursday 28 March 2024

If it's rounded, it ain't quarried.....






Two nice photos from our walk down on the Parrog in Newport, the other day. These are two big erratic boulders on the shore platform, just a few yards from the coastal footpath. They are both dolerite boulders. One of them is clearly a glacial erratic, resting on the black mudstone shore platform and probably very close to where it was originally dropped by the ice. The other one has clearly been bashed about a bit, with chunks knocked off it, I suspect by the men who were building the coast defences and placing big boulders along the base of the Parrog sea wall.

The bulk of the bluestones at Stonehenge look like the big boulder in the top photo. If they had been quarried, as Ixer, Bevins and Parker Pearson would like us to believe, they would have looked more like the boulder in the bottom photo. This little matter of stone shape and surface characteristics is something tht the MPP team mambers consistently and quite deliberately ignore. That struck me again the other day when I looked again at the famous "Lost Circle" BBC film, in which MPP pretends that the people who supposedly quarried the Waun Mawn and Stonehenge monoliths were looking for gorgeous pillars.  Well, if Stonehenge is anything to go by, and if we follow the logic of the archaeologists that the bluestones were carefully selected at their places of origin, we have to conclude that the megalith hunters had a strong preference for small, weathered, rounded glacial erratics.

Wednesday 27 March 2024

Hooray for Artificial Stupidity!!!

 




Thanks to Mary for drawing this to my attention.  I just had to share it -- not sure where it came from originally.  But somebody obviously asked one one of these AI sites for a portrayal of how the bluestones were transported from Rhosyfelin to Stonehenge.  Mynydd Preseli and the Afon Brynberian valley in all their pristine majesty, and our heroic ancestors hard at work.  Absolutely wonderful.

So now you know...........

Tuesday 26 March 2024

The BBC, the Lost Circle and the rise of pseudo-science


MPP and a presumed dolerite pillar ready for transporting to Stonehenge, but somehow left behind.  This was at Carn Goedog, picturesquely described as "the IKEA of Neolithic quarries".  Spotted dolerite from Carn Goedog was NEVER used preferentially in megalithic structures in Pembrokeshire or anywhere else.  (Photo: Prehistoric Britain)

The famous "Lost Circle" programme fronted by the "astonished" Alice Roberts was on the telly again last night, in spite of the BBC being warned in 2022 by me -- and probably lots of other people -- that it is filled with pseudo-science. When I sent a formal complaint in last time, the BBC responded that "we've received no information that would lead us to form the view that the film can't be shown again."  Well, as others will know, it's not easy to send them information, and they do not go out of their way to look for it either. ........

The documentary has now been shown NINE times on BBC channels alone, and is also permanently available on iPlayer and YouTube -- so it's a nice little earner for all those involved.  This is the marketing pitch:

In a world exclusive, Professor Alice Roberts follows a decade-long historical quest to reveal a hidden secret of the famous bluestones of Stonehenge.
Using cutting-edge research, a dedicated team of archaeologists led by Prof Mike Parker Pearson have painstakingly compiled the evidence to fill in a 400-year gap in our knowledge of the bluestones – and to show that the original stones of Britain’s most iconic monument had a previous life.
From the grand fantasy of medieval Merlin legends, to the chemical signatures in microscopic rock fragments, no stone is left unturned in the search for new evidence. By combining innovative 3D scanning techniques, traditional field archaeology and novel laboratory analysis, the team have discovered when and where the stones for Stonehenge were quarried and where they first stood.
Alice shows how the team discovered that the stones must have been quarried 400 years before they were first erected at Stonehenge. The team then focuses on trying to find out if the same stones had an earlier life.
Alice joins Mike as they put together the final pieces of the puzzle – not just revealing where the stones came from and how they were moved from Wales to England, but also solving one of the toughest challenges that archaeologists face.
Their revelations will rewrite the history of Stonehenge forever – this is the story of Stonehenge’s lost circle.


So this is sold to a gullible public as an investigation using "cutting edge research" -- in other words, high-powered science -- to help to solve the mystery.  That's just cynical spin.  Well, there are techniques involved, but they are certainly not used very scientifically, and of course the conclusions based on the research have been quietly dumped, one by one, since the programme was made in 2020.  These are the papers that have cumulatively demonstrated that the documentary film is effectively useless, based as it is on dodgy evidence and a string of speculations and assumptions.

Bevins, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G., Parker Pearson, M., Ixer, R.A., 2022. Identification of the source of dolerites used at the Waun Mawn stone circle in the Mynydd Preseli, west Wales and implications for the proposed link with Stonehenge. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 45 (2022) 103556.

Darvill, T. 2022. Mythical rings? Waun Mawn and Stonehenge Stage 1. Antiquity, 4 November 2022, pp 1-15. 

Pearce, N.J.G., Bevins, R.E., and Ixer, R.A. 2022. Portable XRF investigation of Stonehenge -- Stone 62 and potential source dolerite outcrops in the Mynydd Preseli, west Wales. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 44 (2022a), 103525.

Parker Pearson, M., Pollard, J., Richards, C., Welham, K., Kinnaird, T., Srivastava, A., Casswell, C., Shaw, D., Simmons, E., Stanford, A., Bevins, R., Ixer, R., Ruggles, C., Rylatt, J. & Edinborough, K. 2022. How Waun Mawn stone circle was designed and built, and when the Bluestones arrived at Stonehenge: A response to Darvill. Antiquity, 96 (390), pp 1-8.

John, B.S. 2024. The Stonehenge bluestones did not come from Waun Mawn in West Wales. The Holocene, March 20, 2024 (published online) 13 pp.

All of those who have participated in the recent research seem to have accepted that there was no link of any sort between Waun Mawn and Stonehenge, although MPP persists in his belief that there was an "intention" to build a large stone circle at Waun Mawn, and that the site was thus a "place of significance in the Stonehenge story".       How he comes to that conclusion seems to be a complete mystery to everybody else....

Anyway, the programme is filled with pseudo-science from beginning to end, and the BBC should be ashamed of itself for continuing to promote a piece of frothy entertainment on the pretence that it is scientifically reliable.  BBC Verify, where are you now?


Saturday 23 March 2024

The Bluestone Interview

I have had a number of requests from people who could not make it to my talk the other day for a summary of my main points.  I'll get round to doing that before long in a blog post, but in the meantime here is a reminder of the interview I did with broadcaster Wyn Thomas, on local radio five years ago.  It's just 12 minutes long, but in the conversation we cover some of the main issues. 


Wyn put this onto YouTube without me knowing anything about it, and I came upon it purely by chance, when checking what was out there on the subject of the bluestones.  The sound quality is not very good, since the interview was done over the telephone.

Britain's Pompeii -- what, again?


There's a big push to promote the Must Farm findings as of vast importance for our understanding of Bronze Age Britain.  And there is the Pompeii comparison.  With some justification, I think, since the finds really are spectacular........

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68608467?fbclid=IwAR03huiAZkzDQl2PEjKVWj33-eIo9CnN5nLOG1TfBOhKWoYq5ECQe7NchP0


 Some of the charred remains on the Must Farm "Bronze Age village" site

But wait a minute -- haven't we heard this sort of thing before?  Why yes -- none other than our old friend MPP used the Pompeii comparison when talking about Rhosyfelin and its supposed quarry.  A reminder of ancient history. At the end of the September 2011digging season Mike announced to the world that the "Pompeii of prehistoric stone quarries" had been found, at a location given to him by geologists Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer.  He repeated this phrase in his 2012 book, on a section about Rhosyfelin between pages 286 and 291. After the bit about Pompeii, MPP said: "We could hardly believe our luck. This was a smoking gun; the game was up for anyone still trying to argue that the bluestones were not quarries in Preseli during the Neolithic, and then taken to Wiltshire." 

Ah, youthful enthusiasm knows no bounds -- and who cares about a spot of hyperbole when you are among friends?  Perhaps a little more caution might have been in order, but MPP and his colleagues don't do caution.

Anyway, the Pompeii comparison always was preposterous, since it implies a find that reveals a huge amount of data about the culture, life style, clothing, social order, economy, belief system, etc of a whole community that was wiped out in a catastrophe.  I can understand the use of the term with respect to Must Farm, because there a catastrophic fire wiped everything out and brought habitation of the site to 
an end. Not on quite the same scale as Pompeii and the volcanic eruption of 79 AD, maybe, but the metaphor is a good one.  And as for Rhosyfelin? Well, there never was a quarry there, of course, and what has the site told us about the community that lived in North Pembs during the Neolithic? It has told us that over a long period of time people used to come into the valley of the river Brynberian for a spot of berry picking, hunting and fishing. It's a very pretty location, with a rocky crag, birds singing in the woods, bright sunshine inn the summer and shelter from the wind and rain in the winter. The locals certainly lit camp fires there, so at times they might have stayed overnight. They might have eaten hazel nuts and blackberries. They might have taken some sharp edged bits of rhyolite and used them as cutting or scraping tools. And that's it. The same could be said of multiple sites all over the northern part of Pembrokeshire, which remain unexamined by the archaeologists. So to claim any sort of uniqueness or cultural significance for Rhosyfelin is quite frankly absurd.



Friday 22 March 2024

Coastal retreat at Abermawr

 

 

I have been studying the Quaternary sediment sequence at Abermawr for more than 60 years and have watched with fascination as the coast has retreated inexorably during that time span.  When I started coming here the rocky outcrop in the centre of the photograph was not visible at all -- it was buried completely under the storm beach ridge.  The ridge is being pushed further and further up the valley, on top of the Holocene sediments in the bog.  The peat beds that have been overridden are now exposed intermittently on the seaward flank of the storm beach, and the "submerged forest" is currently covered by the sandy beach.  I think that in my lifetime the coast has retreated by about 40m.........

Thursday 21 March 2024

The Stonehenge bluestones did not come from Waun Mawn in West Wales



At last this article is published, in HOLOCENE journal, having been in the pipeline for around 12 months.  Partly my fault,  since I have been rather preoccupied with my lovely wife's health issues.  Anyway, it is fully refereed and edited, in case you wondered, to the journal's normal high standard.

It's a cause of irritation that it is behind a paywall, but I have placed a PDF version of the accepted manuscript onto Researchgate, here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379121966_The_Stonehenge_bluestones_did_not_come_from_Waun_Mawn_in_West_Wales?fbclid=IwAR0UHyj8hQ_gYQgNHHvHF6Wra-0Y3xoEUukqa9EQrpUGdRvis0wfV9sjKig

So this is my contribution to the learned debate which I trust that MPP and his colleagues will all welcome -- nobody wins when researchers pretend that their output is accepted with universal acclaim......

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the hypothesis that Waun Mawn in West Wales provided the bluestone monoliths that were used at Stonehenge. Some archaeologists believe that the site supports the last remains of a giant stone circle or ‘Proto Stonehenge’ which was dismantled and transported to Salisbury Plain around 5000 years ago. It was claimed, after three excavation seasons at Waun Mawn in 2017, 2018 and 2021, that there is firm evidence of some standing stones which were later removed or broken up, but it has still not been demonstrated that there ever was a small stone circle here, let alone a ‘giant’ one. Furthermore, there have been no control studies in the neighbourhood which might demonstrate that the speculative feature has any unique characteristics. There is nothing at Waun Mawn to link this site in any way to Stonehenge, and this is confirmed by recent cited research. No evidence has been brought forward in support of the claim that ‘this was one of the great religious and political centres of Neolithic Britain’. It is concluded that at Waun Mawn and elsewhere in West Wales there has been substantial ‘interpretative inflation’ driven by the desire to demonstrate a Stonehenge connection.