Revisiting Newall's Mound

Newall's Mound is on the tight bend, just under the words "The Avenue"

Newall’s Mound is a distinctive, low raised hummock located near the "elbow" bend of the Stonehenge Avenue. Named after the pioneering archaeologist Robert Newall, who mapped much of the prehistoric landscape, the mound has been the subject of several archaeological investigations to determine its origin. 

Way back in 2012, I spent some time pondering on txhe origin of Newall's Mound.  Much flood water has gone under the bridge since then,  and on looking at my old post I saw that there is a solution hollow under Newall's Mound.  I was a bit puzzled by that.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2012/11/newalls-mound.html

In my post I suggested that on the chalk downlands the solution hollows are the places where the solution of the chalk is most concentrated.  I think my assumption might have been quite wrong.  Having done a lot more reading,  it now seems to me to be much more likely that the solution hollows all over Salisbury Plain are very old indeed, and that they contain residues of ancient deposits that have been broken down and redistributed over hundreds of thousands of years while the "clean chalk" surface on the flanks of the hollows has been systematically lowered by solution.  In other words, there has been in inversion of the topography.  The hollows which were long since the sinks for surface detritus have actually seen a slowing down of the rate of surface solution, which has gone on unchecked elsewhere across the landscape.  

So the hollow becomes a mound, capped by 1.5m of "clay with flints" as we see here in this little feature at Stonehenge.  Sounds absurd?  Not really.  Just think of how kames are formed in glacierized landscapes.  In an ice wastage environment, glaciofluvial materials and associated debris accumulate in hollows in the ice surface.  Glacier ice eventually wastes away completely, and as it does so the old hollows are transformed into hillocks.  The high points in the landscape disappear, leaving befind a veneer of any englacial or supraglaciat deposits that might have been present.  Now substitute chalk for ice, and all is explained.

Topographic inversion and the formation of eskers and kames -- associated with ice wastage

I need to give this more thought........

Interestingly, the mound near the Avenue bend was investigated by Dr John Evans in 1984.  I met John a few times, at a delightful coastal cottage not far from Abermawr in Pembrokeshire.  John was married to Nora Figgis, whom I mentioned on this blog a few days ago.........

Evans,J G. (1984). Stonehenge – the environment in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age and a Beaker-Age burial. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 78 :7–30.

Salisbury Plain: serene landscape but lethal geochemistry

 

Almost all of the textbooks and archaeological papers that devote space to the Stonehenge bluestones make three claims:  (1) that there is no till or any other glacial deposit on Salisbury Plain; (2) that glacial erratics are entirely absent; and (3) that Salisbury Plain was beyond the reach of any known British glacier or ice stream.  

The latter claim was of course made by HH Thomas back in 1923, and has been taken as an article of faith ever since then, even by certain geomorphologists who should know better.  We now know that Thomas misrepresented the evidence by falsely claiming that the outermost ice edge in the Celtic Sea / Bristol Channel arena lay just to the south of the south Pembrokeshire coast, flying in the face of evidence from many of his peers that the ice had on occasions extended much further southwards and eastwards.  We now know that there are abundant traces of glaciation on the coasts of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall -- although evidence of the inland incursion of glacier ice is still hotly debated.  Nonetheless, we know from field research and from modelling studies that it was perfectly possible for glacier ice to have extended well to the east of the chalk escarpment.  Many of these studies have been cited on this blog.

An attempt to portray the extent of the "Greatet British Glaciation", based on computer modelling by various authors and on field evidence.  This is a cautious reconstruction in that the ice margin is shown at the western edge of Salisbury Plain.  Some models show the chalk downs and Salisbury Plain WITHIN the glaciated area.

One of a multitude of computer models showing a somewhat greater ice extent.  This is from Edwards et al, 2017.  Models like this are not "evidence" of past glaciations -- they are mathematical models based on an author's understanding of glaciological theory and an interpretation of field evidence.  As with all modelss of this type, rubbish in, rubbish out.......

As far as erratics are concerned, it is disingenuous to pretend that they do not exist on Salisbury Plain.  As pointed out by Kellaway, Olwen Williams-Thorpe and many others, they are abundant -- with at least 40 different rock types represented in the bluestone monolith / cobble / packing stone assemblage and in the debitage at Stonehenge and further afield.  Whether these erratic materials can be labelled as "glacial erratics" is another question entirely.  But as I have repeated many times, bluestone shapes and surface characteristics point unequivocally towards glacial entrainment and transport -- and if things look like glacial erratics, that is probably what they are. Why is that such a big deal?

Then we come to the claimed absence of glacial deposits on Salisbury Plain. Well, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence -- and the great majority of the sediments on Salisbury Plain are of course unexplored and unknown.  Even within the Stonenge stone setting, 50% of the surface sediments have never been investigated.  With the "impossibility of glaciation" accepted as an article of faith, we see confirmation bias in almost every study in the literature.  Over and again we see that sediments containing foreign erratic material are immediately dated as younger than the supposed known date of bluestone arrival; it does not seem to have occurred to the establishment faithful that "date of first use" is not at all the same as "date of arrival", and that erratics might well have been lying around in the Stonehenge area for hundreds of thousands of years before people arrived and started messing about with monumental ambitions.

So could there be glacial deposits lying around on Salisbury Plain, undiscovered?  Of course that is a possibility.  We see various clues in the strange and intriguing deposits lumped together under the "clay-with-flints" label.  But then we come to a point that is hardly ever made by archaeologists, geologists or anybody else: namely that the chalk downs of Salisbury Plain and adjacent areas are geochemically lethal, and are perfect places for the efficient degradation and destruction of any scattered patches of till and glaciofluvial deposits that might once have existed. 

If glacial ice did once extend across the chalk downs, what might the  traces of this glaciation have looked like?  Well, there will probably not have been any massive terminal moraines located at ice edges.  Prior to ice arrival near the peak of a glacial episode, we can assume that the ground surface would have been deeply frozen or locked in permafrost.  That points in turn towards cold-based ice, moving slowly and not affecting much basal erosion -- and in turn not depositing vast thicknesses of till and other materials such as we see in parts of Eastern England where chalk bedrock underlies Late Devensian and other till sheets.

Lee and Roberson (2025) contains an interesting discussion on the types of glacial features that occur in the ice marginal zone, dependent upon thermal regime, bedrock characteristics etc.  They make the point that the edge of a till sheet rarely marks the maximum extent of ice in a landscape.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016787824000683

So, around 450,000 years ago, if the chronology of ancient glaciations is correct, there may well have been a patchy spread of glacial and glacio-fluvial deposits on the chalklands of Salisbury Plain.  So should they not still be there, available to be mapped and examined?  The short answer to that is "No".  The long answer is that the geochemical environment on Salisbury Plain is far too aggressive -- and even lethal -- for ancient glacial deposits to have survived.  The deposits -- however extensive they might have been -- would have been quite calcareous, as demonstrated by the Devensian Irish Sea till of the west Wales coasts and by the Fremington Till on the coast of Devon.  It must have been composed for the most part of clay and silt deposits dredged from the floor of the Bristol Channel, with other calcareous additions coming (for example)  from the Mendips and from the Black Rock limestone beds around Frome.  Gilbertson and Hawkins, and other workers, have described the till deposits of Somerset and their associations with marine shell fragments, suggesting a shared chemistry.  

So the Salisbury Plain till was probably calcareous -- meaning that its chances of long-term survival were virtually zero.  Because the chalk is highly porous and lacks cementing minerals, rainwater mixed with soil acids percolates straight down, soaking the landscape. Any loose calcareous sediments dropped onto the plain (such as limestone erratics or older shelly sands) are subjected to continuous, downward leaching by acidic water. Without the specific point-source degassing or coastal evaporation seen in Wales to precipitate cements, the carbonate is entirely dissolved and flushed deep into the aquifer, leaving no physical trace.  This aggressive leaching is so intense that even relatively resilient detrital minerals (like apatite) are chemically dissolved and structurally stripped from Salisbury Plain's surficial layers over hundreds of thousands of years.

However, in this broadly very destructive scenario, the chemistry also shows that erratic boulder survivals are not just possible but probable.  Sarsen stones derived from an ancient duricrust layer were eminently survivable, being composed of almost 100% silica.  The "bluestone" lithologies from Pembrokeshire—primarily spotted dolerite (diabase) and various rhyolites/tuffs—are composed of highly resilient silicate minerals like quartz, plagioclase feldspar, and pyroxene. Unlike calcium carbonate, these minerals are resistant to weak carbonic acid.  Even if small carbonate grains dissolve, un-weatherable microscopic minerals do not disappear.  Igneous rocks like the Pembrokeshire igneous bluestones are packed with ultra-durable heavy trace minerals, such as zircon, rutile, tourmaline, and apatite.  Placed on Salisbury Plain, a large dolerite block would be expected to survive hundreds of thousands of years of chemical weathering, whereas a limestone or chalk pebble in a surrounding till matrix would dissolve completely.

In addition to the "chemical hostility" of the Salisbury Plain environment, we have to consider the physical weathering effects of climate change over almost half a million years -- with  multiple oscillations in wetting and drying, heating and cooling.  Chalk absorbs a lot of water.  During past permafrost freeze-thaw cycles, the surface layer of chalk must have shattered into a fine, paste-like slurry.  Any glacial till, erratic boulders, or paleosols caught in this zone would also have been violently churned up by cryoturbation and washed down valleys as mobile gravelly solifluction deposits (historically termed "coombe rock" or "head"). Because these redeposited sediments could not cement together, they remained loose, soft, and completely vulnerable to being wiped away by subsequent fluvial and colluvial processes during warmer episodes.

So the scenario is one of widespread sediment destruction with some survivals.  What of the residues and lag deposits that must remain when calcium carbonate rich rocks are dissolved away?  This is where we return to some of the enigmatic sediments on Salisbury Plain -- and in particular the "clay with flints" that we have discussed on many occasions.  The physical and mineralogical composition of this material strongly proves that it contains a large amount of detritus that did not come from the underlying chalk.  Pure chalk contains very little clay and sand. To produce a one-metre-thick layer of clay-with-flints purely from chalk dissolution, you would have to dissolve hundreds of metres of bedrock. Mineralogical analyses show that much of the matrix clay (like illite and kaolinite) and quartz sand actually comes from reworked, younger overlying formations (like the Paleogene Reading and Thanet Formations) and unknown exotic surficial inputs.  In many areas of the downlands, the clay-with-flints loses its classic red-clay appearance and grades into poorly sorted, unstratified, gravelly deposits packed with sub-angular flints and erratic quartzites. This structural signature is virtually indistinguishable from a highly weathered, decalcified, cryoturbed periglacial "head" or an ancient, deeply rotted till or fluvioglacial accumulation.

Despite the heavy dilution, geologists have occasionally confirmed a persistent presence of exotic "foreign" stones. Round, exotic quartzite pebbles (often historically lumped together as part of the "Northern Drift" or derived from old Triassic Pebble Beds) are well-documented across the downlands. These are classic indicators of far-travelled, non-local glacial, fluvioglacial or fluvial transport.  Over the decades, independent Quaternary geologists (most notably our old friend Geoffrey Kellaway) reported finding small, erratic pebbles of igneous and metamorphic material—including fragments resembling southwestern and Welsh lithologies—in deep solution features and surficial deposits across the wider Wessex region.

Ah -- solution features.  Now we are getting serious, and feel another comment about Parker Pearson's "periglacial stripes" coming on.  Watch this space.........

The Croft Gorsedd Circle

 

On doing some more digging in a minefield of Facebook groups and pages on matters relating to the Bluestone Eisteddfod, and from talking to certain people who are well informed, I have small matters to report.  The stone circle at Croft is on land belonging to Croft Farm, and it was put up by the local Eisteddfod Committe with the help of assorted other organizations and lots of volunteers.  It was "unofficial" in that it was not put up by the main National Eisteddfod Committee, whose work was restricted to the designated eisteddfod site.  But one of the beauties of the eisteddfod is that it attracts hundreds of voluntary events and gestures around the edges, before and during the eisteddfod itself, stimulating a vast amount of creative activity and involving an army of volunteers.  So the building of the Croft "Gorsedd Circle" was one of these good-natured and slightly tongue-in-cheek events, planned and executed with precision in late June and early July.  

First, the site was chosen, and then a hedge alongside the road was removed in 2025.  As far as I can gather, the stones were donated by a farmer from the Mynachlogddu area (from private farmland).  They were transported to the site in late June, laid out and put into the ground in early July.  Later, the electric floodlighting system was installed by a local electrical contractor, and the flower boxes at the roadside were put in by Menter Iaith Sir Benfro.  This was all done slightly under the radar, but there was some coverage on the S4C TV channel, and in local Welsh language news media.  I picked up some photos from assorted Facebook pages........

The installation is meant to be a permanent reminder of the eisteddfod, which is fair enough, since the official Gorsedd Circle on the Maes was made of the glass fibre imitation stones that are installed and used and taken away again each year.   I doubt that any planning permission was required, since there is no change of use on the land, and the 11 stones were probably put up as scratching stones for the convenience of the farmer's cattle and sheep.......

 All we need now, to complete the story, is for a worthy  Cadw inspector to come along and to designate the stone circle as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, on the basis that it has great historical and cultural significance.......

The Gors Fawr circle of sitting stones

We took a little trip up into the mountains yesterday.  Very pleasant indeed.  

Gors Fawr has a rather pretty little circle of stones -- but I hesitate to call them standing stones because they are not tall, slim or erect.  They are almost all less than 1m high.  I doubt that any of them are deeply embedded -- they are best referred to as boulders simply placed or settled into position in a slightly distorted circle.  They are a perfect height for sitting on -- so we will call them "sitting stones".   Back in the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age, we can imagine the village elders sitting here in a circle, each one on his favourite stone, discussing the issues of the day rather as the community council does today.  Does that sound frivolous?  Maybe.  But I find it hard to see any religious or ritual intent here -- although of course the setting is greatly revered by some, and many visitors claim to be impressed by its ambience or power .......

Think of  Durham Cathedral at one end of the grandeur scale, and Portfield Gate Methodist Chapel at the other.  Then, on the circle front,  think of Avebury at one end of the scale and Gors Fawr at the other.  This circle is so small and insignificant that it cannot possibly have been intended to be ostentatious or intimidating.  It sits quietly in its landscape of wide horizons, mostly hidden from view but peeping out from behind the gorse bushes.  (The local authorities have removed many of the gorse bushes that were crowding in rather too closely on the stones -- and we are grateful for that......)

The essential details.  Thanks to Coral and Jack for publishing this drone image:

Most authorities think that the circle is made up of 16 stones.  I think that only 15 stones really belong to the circle, with 3 or 4 other recumbent stones slightly "out of position" off the circumference.  One of them, near the base of the above photo, is almost 2m long and has the best claim to be called a "pillar".  I think that one was ignored by the builders of the circle, as inded were other elongated stones scattered about in the landscape.

Aubrey Burl thought that 12 of the stones are "upstanding" and that 4 are fallen or partly submerged in the turf.

It is often claimed that the stone setting is made of alternating spotted and unspotted dolerite boulders.  I disagree with that.  Having examined the boulders carefully, I think that only 5 or 6 are what I would call "spotted dolerite" -- and there is no sign of an alternating arrangement.    The majority of the boulders are faceted and heavily abraded and weathered stones which have either been subjected to glacial transport (over a short distance) or to many thousands of years of exposure in a hostile and oscillating environment. There is nothing to suggest that the stone have been carried or dragged here from Carn Meini or anywhere else.  Used more or less where found, I think.   Some of the stones have cracks and breakage scars, but I would not say that any of them have been deliberately shaped.  There is no stone at the centre of the circle.  The spacing of the stones on the circle circumference is not very regular.  The diameter of the circle is c 22m.

Some of the stones:

This is the only stone that would be rather uncomfortable to sit on:

This is the recumbent small "pillar" (unspotted dolerite) that I think never belonged to the circle of stones:

See also:
https://archive.org/details/guidetoancienthi0000rees/page/36/mode/1up?q=gors
https://thathistorycouple.co.uk/2025/03/03/gors-fawr-stone-circle/

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/gorsfawr.htm

About 140m from the circle (not 400m as claimed by Darvill and Wainwright) there are two very impressive standing stones, one very broad and imposing and the other (called the "dreaming stone") more delicate and slim.  They are each about 2m tall, and the northern one of the pair seems to have a small ridge running around it.  That may be significant, or maybe not -- the apparent pit in which the stone is located may just be an excavation artifice.

There is much discussion in the literature about whether these stones should be considered to be a pair, and whether they are connected in some way to the circle.  Personally, I don't see any obvious connection apart from proximity.......

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

So, what of any possible Stonehenge connection?  Well, there is nothing here to suggest any connection with Stonehenge or any contact between the Preseli tribe and the people of Salisbury Plain.  Parker Pearson and his colleagues argue for a deep connection between the peoples of the two widely separated areas -- but since they claim the existence of a highly sophisticated community at Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn, capable of large scale quarrying and stone moving operations, we see none of that here at Gors Fawr, or for that matter at Foel Drygarn.

So we return to these questions:  If the Late Neolithic tribesmen of Preseli had a special reverence for spotted dolerite monoliths, why did they not exclusively use spotted dolerites in this stone setting, given that such stones were readily available?  If our heroes were -- as claimed by Parker Pearson -- obsessed (at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog) with hunting for solid, elongated pillars, why have they ignored such stone shapes at Gors Fawr and used small boulders instead?

We might explain this by reference to the Neolithic - Bronze Age time line.   There are all sorts of uncertainties in the radiocarbon chronology, but it is broadly agreed that around 5,000 year ago the "megalithic mania" in Britain reached its peak with the construction of Stonehenge and other imposing stone circles in which big stones were used and in which there were many demonstrations of advanced stone working skills.  Gors Fawr was probably built about 500 years later, during the Late Neolithic - Early Bronze Age transition, and it might be argued that it is small and simple not because its builders were primitive or "backward" but because there were changed cultural priorities.  In other words, they might have known about Stonehenge and other grandiose schemes, but chose not to mimic them.

This argument falls down because cultural changes do not simply flow in one direction.  If we are expected to believe that advanced quarrying techniques were used in Preseli around 5,500 years ago and that advanced stone haulage techniques were in use 500 years later, we would expect to find unequivocal evidence in the local area. As we know, such evidence does not exist. The claims made by Parker Pearson and his team do not survive detailed scrutiny.  

And the fatal flaw in the development and promotion of the narrative is that there have been no control studies -- so it has never been demonstrated that the features described at the two "quarrying sites" are not widespread natural phenomena.  Indeed, I have demonstrated over and again from my own field research that all of the so-called engineering features occur in many entirely natural Pembrokeshire inland and coastal exposures of sedimentary and igneous bedrock.

Two scenarios have been explored by the archaeologists.  In the first, the tribesmen of Salisbury Plain learned about the "special" rocks (spotted dolerite and foliated rhyolite) to be found in specific places in Preseli, and headed west in some great "tomb raider" expedition, robbing 80 significant monoliths and transporting them back (either sooner or later) to their homeland -- ignoring or suppressing whatever local resistance there might have been. In the second (preferred) scenario the people of Preseli accepted the superiority of the Salisbury Plain people and then became involved in some great political unification movement.  They travelled off to Stonehenge in a great folk migration, taking the spirits of their ancestors with them, embodied in their 80 sacred stones.  These stones were then presented as tributes to the Stonehenge people, to be incorporated into their great stone monument.  That in itself would demonstrate some great reverence for a sophisticated society located far away in the west.

This stirring narrative has been heavily promoted by MPP and the media for more than a decade now, but it falls flat because cultural dissemination or advancement does not simply travel in one direction.  If, in scenario one, the tribesmen who went off to west Wales in search of sacred stones,  there must already have been famous sacred megalithic sites there, using sacred stones and in highly revered locations.  As we never tire of pointing out, no such sites are known to have existed.  Were they all destroyed or dismantled and removed, as MPP has suggested?  That would involve stretching credibility to quite absurd lengths.........  

And if, in scenario 2, the people of the Preseli tribe hauled themselves off to Salisbury Plain voluntarily, carrying their 80 petrified ancestors with them, and leaving a landscape behind them that was devoid of any cultural markers, what evidence is there of a great hiatus?  This is what Parker Pearson and others wanted to examine through pollen analyses and other forms of recent environmental change research -- which conclusively showed that there was no hiatus or depopulation at the time:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-preseli-landscape-change-paper.html

The only possible "sacred sites" that we have in the Preseli landscape, following the cromlech construction phase, are the standing stones and stone pairs.  (There is only one stone row in the area -- at Parc y Meirw -- and that is not very convincing........)  They are widely scattered, with no concentrations close to Rhosyfelin or Carn Goedog, and they were not made preferentially of spotted dolerite or foliated rhyolite.  They were made, according to utilitarian principles, of whatever handy pillar-shaped rocks happened to be lying around in the neighbourhood at the time.

CONCLUSIONS

The Late Neolithic and Bronze Age people of Preseli, as far as we can see from the evidence on the ground, had little or no interest in grandiose civil engineering schemes, even at the time that Stonehenge was constructed.  Around 5,000 years ago they knew nothing of "special stones" or vast architectural "statements".  Later on, throughout the transition from stone to metal they had very limited technical skills, lived a simple life and knew nothing whatsoever about Stonehenge. 

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

PS

I've realised that in the above I have accepted -- rather naively -- that the dating of the Gors Fawr circle to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age is correct.  On checking more closely, I find that the site has never been excavated -- so there are no associated artifacts, no radiocarbon dates, and no stratigraphic records.  It has simply been assumed, in the literature, that this is a feature created relatively late in the history of megalithic Pembrokeshire, on the grounds that the circle is perfect and that the stones are regularly placed or carefully measured out.  Well, as I point out above, the circle is not perfect and the stones are not regularly placed. Nor is there an alternating arrangement of spotted and non-spotted dolerites.  And there really is nothing to suggest thatc the circle has anything to do with the two nearby standing stones.  In other words, we have lots of assumptions but few hard facts.........

With regard to Britain's simple circles of small stones, it's all too easy to assume that if some of them are dated, they are all dated -- but we do NOT know that they are all contemporaneous, since it is quite possible that some parts of the country were more "advanced" or more "backward" than others. They might also have had different cultural preferences.   How far might some of the assigned dates be removed from their real dates of origin?  A hundred years?  500 years?  A millennium? 

Look what a tangle Parker Pearson and his colleagues got into at Rhosyfelin and Waun Mawn by cherry picking the dates from the portfolio that were convenient and ignoring those that did not slot easily into the ruling hypothesis......

Watch this space.......

Nora Figgis on Prehistoric Preseli: no link with Stonehenge

 

I have been looking again at Nora Figgis's book on "Prehistoric Preseli" (2001) which is after 25 years still the most comprehensive guide to the evidence on the ground.  It's full of fascinating detail, and generally takes the cautious approach of the Dyfed Archaeology field workers who have so painstakingly catalogued the main features of the uplands over the years.  It's much less fanciful than the big chapter by Darvill and Wainwright in the "Pembrokeshire County History" series.  This is what she says on page 48:

"There is nothing, either at Sonehenge or in the Preselis, to suggest any reason for a bonding of special places.  At home, in Preseli, bluestone is used sparsely in the monuments (although a comprehensive prolonged petrological survey has yet to be made). There is nothing to indicate that it was a preferred or special stone here. The tools and weapons made of bluestone are not numerous; indeed, it is among the less used resources, far outranked by the local stones used earlier in the Neolithic. The distribution of objects made of bluestone is wide, and loosely similar to that covered by the infinitely more numerous Craig Lwyd axes from North Wales. Although it was used for prestige objects – maces and battle axes - there are twice as many working tools, axeheads an axe-hammers (although individual axe-heads may have had both functional and prestige value). In fact, were it not for its architectural use of Stonehenge, bluestone would appear to have no more significance than many another suitable and attractive local stone."

I'm not sure that Figgis is cited in any of the articles by the Parker Pearson team. Not surprising really -- far too inconvenient........

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Nora Pamela Figgis was an Irish archaeologist who studied archaeology in Cambridge and at the Institute of Archaeology in London.  She was married to Dr John Evans and moved to Wales in 1967.  One of her publications was a catalogue of Welsh prehistory finds housed in museums and other collections.  She died in 2014.

Gors Fawr Stone Circle: unspectacular but highly significant

From a previous post:  

The archaeologists all say the same thing -- that Neolithic Wales was singularly disinterested in stone circles -- in striking contrast to the Lake District, the Southwest Peninsula and Scotland. Cromlechs (dolmens), standing stones and other stone settings are easy to find in Wales, but decent stone circles (as distinct from ring cairns and small settings of upright stones around burial sites) can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Darvill and Wainwright, in Pembs County History Vol 1, claim that there were about 80 stone circles in Wales, accounting for six per cent of the British total, but I am not sure where they get that figure from -- I guess it is based on lots of assumptions about stone circles that are no longer present, or where somebody or other back in the good old days has speculated in the literature.......

In Pembrokeshire, although Darvill and Wainwright map six stone circles, there is only one that deserves recognition, and that is Gors Fawr near Mynachlogddu. As everybody says, it's rather charming but not particularly impressive; and no attempt was made by the builders to use pillar-shaped stones. Bedd Arthur, up on the Preseli ridge, is a strange stone setting, oval shaped and with a cluster of small stones leaning inwards......

In this context, the idea that there was a "giant stone circle" at Waun Mawn seems more than a little preposterous. And the idea that there was some communication between North Preseli and Stonehenge with regard to the "magic diameter" of 110 m seems even more absurd. If there was a stone setting of any sort at Waun Mawn it must have been crude and unfinished -- and a part of an assemblage of megalithic structures in the Tafarn-y-bwlch - Brynberian - Foel Eryr area. At a rough count, there are at least 20 prehistoric structures using blocks of stone (all erratics) in the vicinity -- all ignored by Mike Parker Pearson and his team.

The impression gained from the prehistoric remains is that North Pembrokeshire did have a "megalithic culture" with links to Ireland and other parts of Wales, but that it was relatively unsophisticated. It follows that there were probably not huge manpower resources available, and probably no awareness at all of anything further east than Carmarthen, let alone as far away as Stonehenge....

As we have seen, the evidence for a vast stone circle at Waun Mawn is extremely flimsy, and the evidence for Parker Pearson's exotic narrative of quarrying and bluestone transport looks ever more ridiculous.

-----------------------------

The small stone circle at Gors Fawr.  Diameter c 22m.  Sixteen stones, some spotted dolerite and some not. Most are less than 1.5m high.

Gors Fawr is now of great importance to the dabate about the quarrying of "natural and readily available pillars" from rocky outcrops at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog.  Parker Pearson and others have claimed repeatedly that the easy availability of elongated orthostats was the prime reason for the selection of stones from these sites as "ancestor stones" worthy of transporting all the way to Stonehenge.  So the assumption has to be that tall elongated pillars were prized above all else, and that the Neolithic Preseli Tribe had the skills and the manpower resources to remove them from their places of origin and to transport them over a vast distance. This is not what Gors Fawr tells us.  

This little circle tells us that in the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age the locals ignored -- for whatever reason -- the abundant tall and massive pillare that were lying around in their landscape and built their stone circle instead out of small and easily moved boulders. They did erect a few tall single standing stones (as at Bedd Morris, Glynsaethmaen, Gelli Fawr and Waun Mawn) and a few stone settings (as at Bedd Arthur, Cerrig Meibion Arthur, Parc y Meirw and Meini Gwyr or Glandy Cross), but as far as we can see these were all erected at the places where the stones were found.

Ironically, some of the more massive pillar-shaped rocks ignored by the builders of Gors Fawr were used in recent years by the builders of the Cystic Fibrosis stone setting and the Waldo Williams Memorial on the roadside near Mynachlogddu.

If the local Pembrokeshire population had spent centuries mastering the logistics of long-distance megalith transport, stone masonry, and precise structural engineering, their later local monuments should reflect that accumulated knowledge. Gors Fawr should be a masterclass in stone-working.
Instead, it looks exactly like what a small, local group of farmers would build on a weekend using whatever rough stones were available while clearing their fields. It demonstrates zero cultural memory of advanced masonry or grand engineering.

So -- a thousand years after the supposed transport of a mottley bluestone assemblage from Preseli to Stonehenge,  we see signs of very limited manpower availability and technical skill in the key megalithic structures of West Wales.  This is confirmed when we look at the BronzeAge / Iron Age quarry on Foel Drygarn:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2026/07/foel-drygarn-prehistoric-quarry-they.html

To explain this within the Parker Pearson narrative we would have to assume a dramatic regression in technical ability and aspirations between 5,000 yrs BP and 4,000 yrs BP.  So did the Stonehenge bluestone transport gangs move, lock stock and barrel, from Preseli to Salisbury Plain, taking their technical skills with them and leaving behind a more primitive residual society?  Such a dramatic exodus has been suggested -- in all seriousness -- by Parker Pearson -- but it has been discounted by the recent pollen analysis work on environmental change, who found no major hiatus or disruption in the land use record:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-preseli-landscape-change-paper.html

See this post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/04/was-there-neolithic-mass-exodus-from.html 

From whichever direction we look at it, the quarrying and bluestone transport narrative developed by Parker Pearson et all lies in smouldering ruins.

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

PS.  Sadly, there was some damage last year on the Gors Fawr site. Looks as if some idiot had it in mind to steal one of the stones, and then gave up on the idea.......

https://heneb.org.uk/gors-fawr-bronze-age-stone-circle-repair-work/

The special status of "unhewn rocks" and glacial erratics

 The Trollasten dolmen in Skåne, Southern Sweden.  Big stones, glacially transported, and 

put there by a troll.........

Now here is an interesting question:  In the Neolithic, were glacial erratics more highly prized than monoliths of quarried rock?

This is relevant because, over the past decade or so, there has been a deliberate and coordinated campaign involving senior archaeologists and geologists designed to spread the belief that pillars of rock hewn from specially selected rock outcrops (such as Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog) were highly prized if not sacred. Indeed, so the hypothesis insists, these "targetted" monoliths or orthostats were so special that they were transported for hundreds of kilometres across land and sea all the way to Stonehenge, involving logistical exercises on a scale out of all proportion when set against anything before or since.  Thousands of men were involved, so goes the story, over many decades.........

The trouble with that bluestone quarrying and transport narrative, of course, is that it is unsupported by any evidence.  Speculations and assumptions proliferate, but there is nothing solid on the ground which is capable of supporting the preferred story.  The evidence of Neolithic quarrying at Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Carn Meini does not withstand scrutiny, as my colleagues and I have demonstrated in the peer-reviewed literature. There is no sign of the preferential use of foliated rhyolite or spotted dolerite in prehistoric structures either in west Wales or on Salisbury Plain.  "Preselite" -- a term used loosely for spotted dolerite -- does not seem to have been particularly valued for tool making or for any ceremonial purpose.  The sophisticated "quarrying techniques" supposedly used in the "special" Pembrokeshire quarrying locations are unsupported by any evidence from the Neolithic or the Bronze Age anywhere in the British Isles.  No cultural or technological links with Stonehenge can be demonstrated at megalithic sites anywhere in West Wales. 

So the quarrying and man-hauling narrative is entirely unconvincing, and should be abandoned forthwith.   What can we put in its place?

Well, the simple idea that large boulders, pillars and slabs lying around in the landscape were valued in some way simply because of what they were -- not because of where they might have come from.

Let's dig a bit deeper.  First, the Gorsedd Circle at -- or immediately adjacent to -- the designated and demarcated site of the 2026 Llantwd National Eisteddfod. In a couple of recent posts I have been trying to uncover the truth about it.  But the genuine stone circle at Croft consists 15 orthostats made -- as far as I can see -- of dolerite.  These stones are clearly glacial erratics, picked up from within the local area.   So they are "unhewn" and authentic stones, chosen and installed as a gentle dig against the use of fibreglass "imitation stones" used in the "official" stone circle on the Eisteddfod Maes. 

The preferential use of "unhewn" stone for ceremonial or ritual use goes back a long way.  I don't often quote from the Bible on this blog, but here goes:

"And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." (Exodus 20:25)

"And there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. You shall wield no iron tool on them; you shall build the altar of the Lord your God of uncut stones..." (Deuteronomy 27:5–6) 

"Joshua built an altar to the Lord God of Israel on Mount Ebal...........an altar of unhewn stones, on which no iron tool has been used" (Joshua 8:30–31)

I'm not suggesting that Neolithic tribesmen were motivated by the same belief system as the Old Testament prophets and kings, but it is well known that Iolo Morgannwg, the inventor of many of the National Eisteddfod rituals and traditions, was attracted by the idea that anything carved, squared, or polished by modern industry was artificial. Unhewn stones—boulders collected in their natural state from the local landscape—symbolised honesty, ancient permanence, and a direct connection to nature. Iolo's emphasis on the use of "unhewn stone" stems from a mixture of his Romantic-era imagination, pseudo-archaeology, and a clever appropriation of biblical law. He correctly assumed that his invented Druidic rituals involving "unhewn stone" would appeal to a highly religious, nonconformist 18th-century Welsh public. Iron was of course associated with weapons, violence and warfare.  By declaring that the Gorsedd stones must be natural and untouched by iron tools, Iolo framed the Druids not as pagans, but as primordial, holy men practicing a pure, uncorrupted form of patriarchal religion.

Ironically, before becoming a romantic antiquarian and master forger, Morgannwg's actual trade was working as a professional stonemason and stonecutter.

During the 1700s, antiquarians like John Aubrey and William Stukeley popularized the theory that megalithic monuments were built by Celtic Druids. Iolo visited the massive, natural stone circles at Avebury in Wiltshire. Unlike the heavily shaped trilithons of Stonehenge, Avebury's stones are famously rough, wild, and unhewn. This deeply shaped Iolo’s vision of what an authentic "Druidic" ritual space should look like.

By the late 1880's, The Eisteddfod had formalised Iolo’s romantic vision, decreeing that a permanent circle of 12 massive, unhewn local stones must be erected in the hosting community a year before the festival.  Here is a list of all the Gorsedd circles and their locations:

https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/18th-and-19th-century-stone-circles/gorsedd-circles/list-of-gorsedd-circles/

Up to 2004, when a Welsh town hosted the National Eisteddfod, local organizers were instructed to go out into the surrounding fields and gather natural, surface-weathered glacial erratics to construct the circle. Rather than quarrying fresh pillars, they specifically targeted stones shaped entirely by natural processes. 

The point of all this is to show that in at least one ancient culture, natural boulders found in the landscape were accorded greater respect than quarried stone. It is perfectly possible that in glaciated British terrains erratic boulders -- often very impressive features in themselves -- were viewed as special or mysterious. Because glacial erratics contrast sharply with the local bedrock and sit isolated in landscapes, prehistoric and historical cultures across North America, Europe, and Asia routinely incorporated them into their spiritual systems. 

As pointed out by Lionel Jackson and myself, the Foothills Erratics Train (which includes the iconic Okotoks "Big Rock" in Alberta, is deeply revered by the Blackfoot (Siksikaitsitapi) nation. They left red ochre pictographs on it and still pass down the famous legend of Napi (the Trickster) and his mobile rock. 

Other sacred erratics across glaciated North America include:

The Skystone (Washington, USA): Located in Bonney Lake, this andesite erratic features distinct depressions and alignments. It is traditionally used by the Puyallup tribe for ancestral astronomical tracking and spiritual observations.
Medicine Rocks / Prayer Boulders: Across the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas), solitary granite erratics on the limestone prairies were treated as Inyan (the primordial rock spirit in Lakota/Dakota cosmology). Native peoples left offerings of tobacco, painted them with vermillion, and sought visions near them.
Turtle Mounds and Effigy Alignments (New England): Indigenous communities frequently selected specific glacial erratics—propped up or stabilized intentionally on smaller stones—to serve as structural centers for ceremonial stone landscapes and effigy markers. 

In glaciated northern Europe, the spiritual co-opting of erratics spans from the Stone Age to Christian-era folklore.  During the Neolithic, prehistoric peoples across Denmark, northern Germany (for example the island of Rügen), and Poland harvested heavy erratics to build their megalithic tombs, passage graves, and dolmens. The stones were treated as permanent spiritual thresholds separating the worlds of the living and the dead.   In Northern Poland and the Baltic region, large erratics like the Devil’s Rock in Bisztynek were revered as pagan altars. Natural depressions in the stones were interpreted as the footprints of gods, devils, or witches. Because they were considered sacred or cursed, local populations heavily resisted breaking them down for building materials, creating an early form of folk conservation.
 In Swedish and Norwegian folklore, erratic boulders scattered across fields were explicitly called jättekast (giant-throws). They were believed to be weapons hurled by Frost Giants targeting Christian church bells, imbuing the stones with a dark, supernatural aura. 

 Carn Arthur, a spectacular perched block in Preseli

Similarly, in west Wales large erratic stones in prominent positions (often used in megalithic settings) were named after gods, giants. angels, saints, monsters and heroes.  So we have Carreg Coetan Arthur, Coetan Arthur, Bedd Arthur, Bedd yr Afanc, Carreg Samson, Carn Ingli, Cerrig Marchogion, Caerfyrddin, Bryn Myrddin, Tyddewi, Carnedd Meibion Owen, Llanrhian.  And many more.

And so to Geoffrey Kellaway and the blau stones.  As reported a number of times on this blog, Kellaway argued in "Nature" in 1971 (and in other papers)  that the bluestones were never described as BLUE stones by the early visitors to Stonehenge, but that in the Middle Ages (ie around the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth and later) they might have been referred to in Ango-Saxon as BLAU stones — with the word “blau” meaning striking, different, or of unusual or striking appearance.  This would make sense, since the stones are not actually blue at all — no matter what people might pretend, they are not that different in colour from the sarsens. But it’s intriguing to think that from an early stage people might have recognized them as simply DIFFERENT or exotic.

There is of course a tendency for people to see different, unusual, or striking stones in the landscape and and to wonder where they came from or why they are here rather than there.  I think it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that when the Neolithic people living on Salisbury Plain wanted to put up the early stone settings at Stonehenge, they gathered up as many stones as they could find, showing particular interest in any stones that were "different" from the common sarsens which were widely distributed across the landscape. Maybe -- like the Neolithic tribes elsewhere in NW Europe -- they even invested these "different" stones with magical or sacred significance -- with those special qualities entirely unrelated to source of origin or distance carried. I agree with many others who have suggested that the builders of Stonehenge did not have a clue where the bluestones had come from.

Kellaway argued that the stones were collected up on Salisbury Plain simply because they were there and because they looked different and interesting. Like Briggs, be preferred the 

"utilitarian" explanation.   I think we might go further than that, and argue, on the basis of the info contained in this post, that the erratics might well have been invested with significance.  If there was any stone-related reverence around in Neolithic times, it is much more likely to have been directed at scattered glacial erratics than to useless and broken bits of foliated rhyolite quarried at a faraway place called Rhosyfelin..........

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/06/nothing-new-under-sun.html