How much do we know about Stonehenge? Less than we think. And what has Stonehenge got to do with the Ice Age? More than we might think. This blog is mostly devoted to the problems of where the Stonehenge bluestones came from, and how they got from their source areas to the monument. Now and then I will muse on related Stonehenge topics which have an Ice Age dimension...
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
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
Monday, 25 January 2010
The Pont Saeson connection
Been to have a look at Pont Saeson, between Brynberian and Crosswell in North Pembrokeshire -- whence Richard Bevins took his rock samples which have now been matched up with rock fragments from the Stonehenge area. The interesting thing about this area is that there are no upstanding tors or craggy hills at all -- the landscape is gently undulating, with a couple of deep river valleys which have within them smallish outcrops of rhyolite on the slopes. In one place, pictured above, there is a prominent "spur" or crag of rhyolite, not far from the Pontsaeson ford, which owes its prominence to stream action -- and maybe to subglacial fluvial action during one of the glacial episodes that affected the area. But even this spur is within the valley -- it does not project above the overall land surface.
It is clear that the entrainment of erratics into the base of an overriding glacier could have occurred here -- but I can see no reason whatsoever why any Neolithic tribesmen would ever wish to take a stone, or a collection of stones, from an innocuous and undistinguished location such as this. Here, it just does not make sense -- even though there may some attraction in the idea (put forward with great enthusiasm by HH Thomas and Richard Atkinson) that the Stonehenge bluestones were taken from "sacred hills" or prominent high points in the landscape -- like Carn Meini -- which might have been treated with reverence by passing traders.
Another thumbs-down for the crazy human transport theory........
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