Bluestone Museum goes into storage

The Bluestone Museum at our house called Trefelin has gone into storage,  following the sale of the property a few days ago.  After 48 years at the same address, we came to the conclusion, some time ago, that it was too big for us to manage any longer -- and the family agreed.  Two dwelling units and 5 acres of land.  We had a firm offer which we accepted, back in September.  Since then, there has been endless correspondence with solicitors over the minutest of details.  You know the sort of thing.  So the last month or so has been chaos as we approached exchange of contracts and then completion.  Now we are out, and the new owners are in -- and we are in temporary accommodation for 3 months while we look for somewhere small and convenient, in Newport.  So it's a time of happy memories and high emotion...........

What will happen to my rocks and the rest of the display materials?  Who knows?  There is talk of a Newport Town Museum, and if that comes to fruition, maybe a corner will be found there for my disp-lay, which is unique in that it looks at all sides of the bluestone debate.

Large free stones

 

This is fun -- on Facebook Market Place.  Glacial erratics in Kilgetty, not far from Tenby?  Free to good home.  I might just try to find out how they got to where they are now.......... and what they are made of.......

I wonder if there was an equivalent system back in the Neolithic?  I can imagine a message put out on the bush telegraph from our ancient ancestors in Preseli:  "Assortment of rubbish stones that are getting in the way of our development plans.  Free to anybody who cares to just come over and get them......"

Erratic scatter, Yosemite

 
Erratics resting on glacially polished and striated granitic bedrock along Murphy Creek, north of Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park, USA...........

I have been throwing out old geology and geomorphology text books, and in the process found this photo. It reminds us that if the Stonehenge bluestones were indeed scattered across the landscape of the downs, you do not necessarily expect to find large terminal moraines or indeed coherent glacial deposits in the immediate vicinity.........

Time to sharpen the Razor

 

There are lots of razors about, and sadly, instead of being sharpened and used in normal life, they are for the most part ignored, especially in the field of something called "archaeological science." 

I made the above list some time ago, and  did a post on something I referred to as "John's Razor", for want of a better term.  It is enunciated thus:

Any claim made in a press release or in the media may be ignored unless the original research upon which it is based is freely (ie without limitation) accessible to all who may wish to  scrutinize it knowledgeably.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/03/johns-razor.html

This Razor is normally shut away in the bathroom cabinet, but right now we have need of it, since during the past week the media outlets have been flooded with wildy enthusiastic nonsense about sarsens and bluestones in general and the Altar Stone in partcular demonstrating that the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge were involved in a great political unification project.  Apparently tribes from all four quarters of the land brought tribute stones to Stonehenge from a multitude of different locations, as a sign of their loyalty and obediance.............  

MPP has of course been playing with this idea for some time, but -- wait for it -- this flood of press coverage is based upon nothing more substantial than a press release connected to a hyperlink that does not work.  

There is NO journal article or published research that we can scrutinize.  This is an appalling state of affairs, which should have caused journalists across the world to ask some serious questions about the reliability of the material which they so readily published and celebrated.  Shame on all of them.  And shame on all of the authors of the said article which some of us have seen in rough draft form but which has still not been published in either a digital or printed form, more than a week after the press embargo ended............

According to John's Razor, we have every right to ignore everything contained in the press release and in the flood of media articles and to question the integrity and the expertise of all those involved in the fiasco.  For all we know, the article has been rejected by the editor of "Archaeology International" on the basis of serious criticisms from the peer reviewers.  Or maybe it has not even been submitted for consideration?

What a shambles.  

What a delicious irony............

The bluestones -- geologically selected, or geologically diverse?

Anybody who reads my blog -- or who just dips in now and then to find out what's occurin' -- will know that for the last 15 years I have been making the point that the Stonehenge bluestones have come from multiple sources.  When one counts the bluestone debris in the "debitage" it seems that there are around 46 known rock types involved.  Clearly there is discussion about what constitutes a rock "type" and where the boundary lies between one "type" and another, given that geologists can be classified either as lumpers or splitters.  Anyhow, you get the message -- there are lots of different bluestone lithologies and hence lots of different provenances.

"Oh no," said geologists Ixer and Bevins many moons ago.  "There are very few bluestone types, specially selected and quarried from specific sacred locations which we have identified."  And so we had Craig Rhosyfelin flagged up as the "Pompeii of Neolithic Quarries" and references to bluestone monolith extraction "on an industrial scale" from the tor of Carn Goedog.

This was of course the Orthodoxy to which all true believers were expected to submit, as part of the belief system preached by the Prophet Michael. He even referred to the ".......extraordinary appearance of the quarries". At both Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedog, he said, "the outcrops are striking and impressive, with their naturally upright pillars making these places anomalous and remarkable when encountered."  That is simply wishful thinking.  I know both sites rather well, and they are not characterised by "upright pillars".  And they are no more striking than scores of other rocky outcrops in the Preseli district.

Then it all started to crumble away,  with a recognition that there were no identified uses of Rhosyfelin foliated rhyolite monoliths in Pembrokeshire or anywhere else, and the realisation that the spotted dolerite monoliths at Stonehenge were quite diverse, and had actually come from many different places.  So in the view of the independent observer the quarries became redundant, as did the Waun Mawn "lost bluestone circle" promoted so heavily and cynically by Prof MPP on the telly and in print.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379121966_The_Stonehenge_bluestones_did_not_come_from_Waun_Mawn_in_West_Wales

But now, in the latest blockbuster article which purports to transform our understanding of Stonehenge, we find that MPP and his merry gang, on the basis of no new evidence, claim that the Stonehenge monoliths have come from multiple sources all over the place.  They call it "composite monumentality".  Stones were carried as tributes or symbols of unification from points all over the British Isles to Stonehenge, which is seen as the great cultural, religious and political focal point of England, Wales and Scotland.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-stonehenge-narrative-becomes-even.html

So now they just love the idea of the bluestones coming from multiple provenances and being made of many different rock types.  The more the merrier, seems to be the mantra, since a Stonehenge monument attracting bluestones from 46 (or whatever) different West Wales locations must have been a much more powerful place than a little monument somewhere else attracting stones from just a few places in the neighbourhood.

There is a delicious irony in all of this.  First, according to Bevins and Ixer, the bluestones were not geologically diverse.  And now they are.  You couldn't make it up............

Here come the heavies.........

They really don't like it when people disagree with them, do they?  The Bluestone Gang is on the warpath:

Coming soon:  Bevins, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G., Ixer, R.A., Scourse, J., Daw, T., Parker Pearson, M., Pitts, M., Field, D., Pirrie, D. and Power, M.R. In press. Further discourse on the enigmatic ‘Newall boulder’ excavated at Stonehenge in 1926: correcting the record. Journal of Quaternary Science.

A gang of ten.  Some of them are probably very upset about my review of their 2024 paper, and about my article published in June 2024 in E&G Quaternary Science Journal.  That article was published after extensive expert review and editorial involvement; whatever Bevins et al might think, it was deemed by the editorial team in Germany to be well worthy of publication.  If it has opened up a serious debate, all well and good. 

 So we look forward with interest to reading the latest attempt at "correcting the record".  This involves not just the geologists Ixer, Bevins and Pearce.  Almost all the members  of the Stonehenge establishment are apparently joining forces in an attempt to discredit my article on the Newall Boulder.  They must be seriously worried.  And so they should be.  The narrative on which they have based their academic reputations is under attack, and there is widepstread scepticism out there in the forum of public opinion, as indicated in the public response to the YouTube videos published by Coral and Jacky Henderson in the last fee months..  

Anyway, we shall see what these fellows have to say. Then I assume I will have to correct the corrected record.  Somebody has to do it.  

This is an interesting development, given that for the best part of a decade Bevins, Ixer and Pearce have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that any of their evidence has been questioned in the scientific literature, or that any of their conclusions have been disputed.  Their refusal to cite key publications by Elis-Gruffydd, Downes and me may be seen as a crude sort of  "academic cancel culture" the likes of which I have never seen before, at least  in my own field of geomorphology.  Should I feel flattered that they have now, at long last, acknowledged my existence?

This of course comes hard on the heels of an arrogant and patronising article by Pearce, Bevins, Ixer and Scourse published in Quaternary Newsletter 163 (2024), which seeks to discredit other geologists and to question my knowledge of Quaternary events in Western Britain.  I'm not taking any lessons from them, and will deal with their insulting assault in print, in the coming months.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/11/a-very-silly-rant-from-pet-rock-boys.html

Never a dull moment.  Long live academic discourse.......

Mike Pitts and the "lost" megaliths that might not be lost at all.......

Some of the parchmarks in the turf at Stonehyenge.  Some of these may mark to positions of stones in the past, but then again, maybe not.........

This is a popular article written by Mike Pitts and published on the BBC  "Future" web site

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241220-the-archaeological-mystery-of-stonehenges-long-lost-megaliths

This is how BBC Future advertises itself:

===============

We believe in truth, facts, and science. We take the time to think. And we don't accept — we ask why.

In a complex, fast-paced world of soundbites, knee-jerk opinions and information overload, BBC Future provides something different: a home for slowing down, delving deep and shifting perspectives.

We look for answers to the issues facing the world in science. You’ll find stories here on almost every topic that matters. Psychology. Food. Climate change. Health. Social trends. Technology.

What links them all is our approach. Through evidence-based analysis, original thinking, and powerful storytelling, we shine a light on the hidden ways that the world is changing – and provide solutions for how to navigate it. Energised by the everyday, we think no topic is too small to be fascinating. Inspired by obstacles, we believe no subject is too overwhelming to tackle.

===================

Well well. Truth, facts and science. Evidence-based analysis, original thinking and so forth. Grand aspirations and claims. So does the Pitts article measure up? Not from where I'm standing. It is packed full of statements and claims that should have been checked and rejected by the BBC Future editorial team.

Bluestonehenge is mentioned but not named, and it is proposed that the pits there once held bluestones that were transported to Stonehenge. That is of course not universally accepted.

The claim that hardly a stone was left undamaged by stone collectors with hammers is somewhat over the top.  The laser survey of 2012 did reveal a great deal of surface damage, but it has been widely accepted since the days of Richard Atkinson that all but one of the bluestones in the bluestone circle are still in their "natural" state, and that the shaping and surface marking by humans is typical of the monoliths in the bluestone horseshoe.

The so-called parch marks in dry weather do NOT necessarily coincide with the positions of Stonehenge monoliths that have since been "lost".  On the contrary, most may simply mark the positions of pits that were dug for monoliths that never actually arrived -- or were never found by the builders who scoured the couhntryside round about.  These pits, like many others on the site, may simply provide evidence of one of many attempts at rearranging a limited number of stones.  Other pits mat be extraction pits from which smaller sarsens and bluestones were extracted from the places in which they were discovered.  Pitts avoids any mention of this possibility, although in the past he has acknowledged that Stonehenge may have been built  in a place where there was a convenient scatter of naturally occuirring monoliths.  On the site today there are only 40 sarsens and 43 bluestones; if there ever was an "immaculate Stonehenge" that means that 50% of the monoliths involved have disappeared.  To accept that is to be involved in a very considerable act of faith.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2020/08/unfinished-late-neolithic-monuments.html

With reference to the Boles Barrow spotted dolerite block, Pitts mentions the idea that it might have been glacially transported, but cites only Williams-Thorpe and Thorpe 1992.  That is a very dated reference, and there have been many others making the argument since 1992.  Pitts says "geology has never backed" the glacial transport case -- that is far from the truth.  "Archaeologists now agree" that the stone was taken from Stonehenge?  Really?  Pitts should have had the good grace to admit that he is referring to some geologists and some archaeologists.

Finally Pitts accepts, on the basis of the article by Clarke et al (2024) that the Altar Stone has been "shown" to have come from the far NE of Scotland.  He says:  "The most-travelled megalith at Stonehenge had finally been tracked to its source"........  In fact there are considerable doubts about the origins and provenancing of the samples purported to have come from the Altar Stone, no matter what the media coverage might have claimed.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-altar-stone-much-ado-about-nothing.html

Pitts really should be more careful, and so should the BBC.