Another Welsh Triad: the Three Great Preseli Bluestone Disputations

The bluestone quarrying myth:  three sites and three detailed rebuttals

Just published:


Brian John (2025). Carn Goedog on Mynydd Preseli Was Not the Site of a Bluestone Megalith Quarry.  Archaeology in Wales,  March 2025, 14 pp 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390565216_Carn_Goedog_on_Mynydd_Preseli_was_not_the_site_of_a_Bluestone_Megalith_Quarry 

Abstract

This paper examines the hypothesis that Carn Goedog, a prominent tor on the north flank of Mynydd Preseli in Pembrokeshire, Wales, was the site of a Neolithic quarry from which Stonehenge bluestones were extracted on a large scale. The dolerite sills in the area are geochemically heterogenous, with multiple outcrops. Claims of “precise provenancing” of Stonehenge spotted dolerite fragments to Carn Goedog are questionable. Geomorphological studies on the tor reveal that pillars suitable for use as monoliths are restricted to a few small areas, difficult to access. Frost-shattered blocks dominate. Many have sub-rounded edges, suggesting long-term weathering and redistribution by glacier ice. Moulded and smoothed surfaces indicate that the influence of over-riding ice associated with the Irish Sea Ice Stream has been considerable. Examinations of the supposed “Neolithic quarry” site reveal that many of the “engineering features” may be natural. The materials referred to as stone artefacts are not obviously related to quarrying activities, but may instead point to a history of intermittent occupation. The soft shale “wedges” supposedly used for extracting pillars from the rock face may be natural and are ubiquitous. Radiocarbon dating does not appear to support the quarrying hypothesis. Thus the evidence for a Neolithic quarry at Carn Goedog is poor. If blocks and pillars of spotted dolerite were indeed extracted and transported away from the vicinity of the tor in prehistory, the agency is most likely to have been glacier ice.

This is the first detailed examination of the Carn Goedog quarrying hypothesis to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.  Thanks are due to the Editor of the journal, and his anonymous reviewers, for their perceptive and constructive comments which have improved the paper.

With the publication of this article we complete the scrutiny of the  thre crucial sites that have been cited over and again in support of the quarring / lost circle / human transport hypothesis of Parker Pearson et al.    At Craig Rhosyfelin, Waun Mawn and Carn Goedog we have examined the geology, geomorphology and archaeology, and have found a multitude of assumptions and speculations but nothing in the way of hard evidence to support what is now seen as an extended and convoluted myth invented by a small team driven by a ruling hypothesis.

The two earlier papers can be found here:

John, B S, Elis-Gruffydd, D & Downes, J, 2015b, Observations on the supposed Neolithic Bluestone Quarry at Craig Rhos-y-felin, Pembrokeshire, Archaeology in Wales 54, 139-148.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_OBSERVATIONS_ON_THE_SUPPOSED_NEOLITHIC_BLUESTONE_QUARRY_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE

John, B S, 2024a, The Stonehenge bluestones did not come from Waun Mawn in West Wales, The Holocene, 34 (7), 20 March 2024.

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

As we have pointed out many times before on this blog, Parker Pearson, Bevins, Ixer and their colleagues have pretended, in one publication after another, that their ideas are not just widely accepted but free of any scrutiny or criticism from any direction.  That is just plain silly, as well as demonstrating a cavalier disregard for academic convention.  It is a mystery to me why this small group of academics living in their own little bubble have been allowed to get away with it by a complacent and conniving academic establishment.  Are they all so obsessed with their acceptance of the establishment narrative that they cannot accept that "other interpretations are available"?  Are they all blissfully unaware of the extent of their own delusions?

Anyway, we now have three key sites and three key rebuttals of the narrative developed by MPP and his team.  For how much longer, I wonder, will they continue to inhabit their fantasy world before they are forced to confront reality?

Archaeological mythology and the Welsh Triads

• One of the Three Fantastical Places of 
• Powerful Stone.........

In Wales, things come in threes.  To quote from the Prydain Wiki:

The Welsh Triads (Welsh Trioedd Ynys Prydein, literally "Triads of the Island of Britain") are a group of related texts in medieval manuscripts which preserve fragments of Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in groups of three. The triad is a rhetorical form whereby objects are grouped together in threes, with a heading indicating the point of likeness.

https://prydain.fandom.com/wiki/Welsh_Triads

According to Wikipedia:

Some triads simply give a list of three characters with something in common (such as "the three frivolous bards of the island of Britain" while others include substantial narrative explanation. The triad form probably originated amongst the Welsh bards or poets as a mnemonic aid in composing their poems and stories, and later became a rhetorical device of Welsh literature. The Medieval Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen has many triads embedded in its narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Triads

I remember reading the classic work of Rachel Bromwich many years ago, and being greatly intrigued by it. What's not to like about the three princes of the Court of Arthur, or the three bulls of battle of the Island of Prydain, or the three arrogant ones, or the three atrocious assassinations, or the three great illusions?  

See also:

https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/triads2.html

Bearing in mind that tales and myths are not necessarily old, and they they continue to be created, we come to the three Great Fabricators, Michael of the East, Robert of the Middle and Richard of the West.  And behold the tale of the Three Fantastical Places of Powerful Stone, known as Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn..........

Monolith extraction pits at Stonehenge?

The honeycomb chalk debris surface.  I have seen no convincing evidence that demonstrates that these pits and hollows (or at least some of them) are not genuine stone extraction pits.

There has been some discussion lately, on social media, on the possible occurrence of one or more deep pits at Stonehenge, in amongst the stone settings -- indicative of the extraction of use of large stones.  This is not a new idea -- indeed, I had a discussion with Nick Snashall about this some years ago.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/08/extraction-pits-solution-hollows-post.html

In that discussion, I was not at all convinced by the argument that genuine extraction pits are genuinely different in kind (ie in morphological features) to other pits that are man-made either as sockets or to accommodate packing stones etc...........

See  also:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2013/08/where-did-stonehenge-sarsens-come-from.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/03/stonehenge-always-was-bit-of-mess.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/02/were-some-stonehenge-sarsens.html

The honeycomb characteristics of the chalky ground surface beneath the Stonehenge layer and other accumulations of detritus have always suggested to me that at least some of the surface indentations and elongated hollows might mark the places from which noth sarsens and bluestones have been extracted and rearranged.  There is the matter of the "stone 16 pit"......... or a pit that might have held stone 56......

In other words, there is a strong possibility that Stonehenge was simply built where it is because that is where the stones (or the bulk of them) were found...........

Some recent discussion has centred on a large "mystery pit" at the centre of Stonehenge, which has shown up in various excavations. Prof MPP thinks it is very intriguing, but Tim Daw thinks it is a genuine extraction pit, used for taking away the Lake House meteorite, which he speculates was found here. I'm not sure what the basis for that speculation might be.  But why could the pit not have been an extraction pit once occupied by one of the larger sarsens or even by one or more bluestones?

To quote Mike Pitts in "Digging Deeper":

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/04/pitts-and-very-ancient-sarsens.html

The idea is that there are two great pits at Stonehenge, larger than any other and both difficult to explain. One of these I partly excavated in 1979, where we found the impression of a standing stone on the bottom, and Atkinson excavated part of it in 1956 (thinking at the time it was the erection ramp for the Heelstone).

The other is near the centre of Stonehenge. It was written about by Mike Parker Pearson and colleagues in Antiquity 2007, as part of their study of the site’s phasing. It’s a problematic thing, as Parker Pearson argues, excavated partly by Gowland in 1901 and partly by Atkinson on two occasions, in 1956 and 1958. There are two radiocarbon dates from samples that appear to be from the pit, but context details are missing and we can’t be sure exactly where they came from, and whether or not they were in pits dug into the filled larger pit; I don’t think we can trust these to age the big pit, which like that by the Heelstone, remains undated.

Both of these could be explained as filled natural hollows that once contained larger local sarsens. To the north-east, we may be looking at the stone that was dug out and raised, the Heelstone. To the south-west, we can only guess. It’s such a large pit, it might have held the tallest stone, trilithon Stone 56 which now stands at the end of the pit. I suggested Stone 16 as a possible candidate, because of its odd shape.

The last glaciers of the Wicklow Mountains

This is an interesting article which looks at the evidence for the last small glaciers in the Wicklow Mountains,  in Younger Dryas / Zone III / Loch Lomond / NS  times, around 12,000 years ago.  There are interesting comparisons with other Irish mountain areas and with Scotland, where the extent of this new glacierisation was much more dramatic.

These small glaciers -- just seven of them -- can be classified as cirque glaciers, and the authors incorporate evidence of three types of associated moraines, each one dependent upon certain glaciological conditions.   Three of the studied glaciers do not look much like cirque glaciers at all, but more like elongated snowpatches or snowfields on NE-facing steep slopes where snowdrift accumulations occurred. Were these really small glaciers (with flowing ice capable of transporting detritus) or were they small firn fields fronted by pro-talus ramparts or ridges of frost-shattered debris that simply slid down the snow surface from exposed cliff edges? I would have liked something in the article about stone and boulder shapes in the three moraine types, which might have given us a clue........

But these are small matters, and the cosmogenic dating evidence presented by the authors (based on the sampling of morainic boulder surfaces) is rather convincing.

Lauren Knight, Clare M. Boston, Harold Lovell, Timothy T. Barrows, Eric A. Colhoun, David Fink, Nicholas C. Pepin.  05 March 2025 
Restricted cirque glaciers in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland, during the Nahanagan Stadial (Greenland Stadial-1/Younger Dryas). 

Journal of Quaternary Science  

https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3699

ABSTRACT

In Ireland, the Nahanagan Stadial (NS) was characterised by cirque glacier, plateau icefield and mountain ice cap expansion and is named after the cirque glacier type-site of Lough Nahanagan in the Wicklow Mountains. This period is broadly equivalent to the Younger Dryas Stadial and Greenland Stadial-1 (GS-1: ~12.9–11.7 ka). Here, we provide the first evaluation of the full extent of NS glaciation in the Wicklow Mountains by combining solar radiation modelling, mapping of glacial geomorphology, 10Be and 26Al cosmogenic surface exposure dating, 3D glacier reconstructions and analysis of snowblow and avalanching potential. We identify seven sites that hosted cirque glaciers at this time. Glacier extent was very restricted, with most glaciers only partially filling their cirques. Equilibrium line altitudes (ELAs) ranged from 470 ± 5 m a.s.l. (Lough Nahanagan) to 721 ± 5 m a.s.l. (Lough Cleevaun), with an average ELA of 599 m a.s.l. Higher snowblow and avalanching contributions at sites with lower ELAs demonstrate local topoclimatic influence on glacier growth and preservation alongside regional climate. The Wicklow Mountains provides a good example of marginal cirque glaciation during GS-1 and the importance of local topography and microclimate for sustaining glaciers in some mountain areas of Britain and Ireland.

One would expect similarities between the Wicklow situation and that of Wales -- and indeed there are a number of known "late cirque glaciers" in Snowdonia (Eryri) and in the Brecon Beacons.   The only small glacier of equivalent age in Pembrokeshire was that of Cwm Cerwyn, close to Foelcwmcerwyn:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2012/02/pembrokeshires-last-glacier.html

There are two other locations, both on the Preseli north face, where I think there might have been small Younger Dryas nivation hollows, firn fields or  mini-glaciers.  But the evidence is very subtle, as suggested in this post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-enigmatic-landform-on-north-slope-of.html

The hunt for the Morvil Scottish erratic.....

Today, on a fine sunny winters day, we went up into the mountains on a hunt for the "Scottish erratic"............

Quote:  Erratic clasts, including gneissic rocks from northern Britain, for example at Morvil Farm [SN 037 307], Puncheston, confirm an Irish Sea provenance.

Reference: Burt, C., Aspden, J., Davies, J., Hall, M., Schofield, D., Sheppard, T., Waters, R., Wilby, P., Williams, M. (2012). Geology of the Fishguard district: a brief explanation of the geological map Sheet 210 Fishguard. British Geological Survey.

https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/memoirs/docs/B06909.html

As far as I know, there are no gneissic rocks in Pembrokeshire, so to find an erratic of Lewisian gneiss from the island of Lewis would be quite something.  Mind you, there are also gneissic rocks on Skye, Iona and the NW Scottish mainland -- including some areas near the Irish Sea Glacier ice shed, from which there was a southward flow of ice.  There vare some related rocks in Ireland as well.  

The six-figure grid reference given by Burt et al is not adequate, and after hunting around Morvil Farm, along the road and in the adjacent paddocks today I found plenty of dolerite erratics, but nothing made of gneiss......  I might go and take another look when the weather is warmer.

To find a gneissic erratic here, at an altitude of 210m high up in the foothills of Mynydd Preseli, would be almost as exciting as finding the "shelly drift" high up (c 400 m asl) above the North Wales coast at Moel Tryfan.....

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-shelly-sands-and-gravels-at-moel.html

Citation mistake: St Lawrence Estuary boulder movements

Apologies to Guillaume Marie for the mistake in the citation of his article, in my recent QN note on the Limeslade Boulder.  In the text, the citation should be "Marie, 2022" and not "Guillaume, 2022".

This is incorrect in the reference list:

Guillaume, M. (2022) Boulder transport by ice in the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada): Influence of shore platform geomorphology and ice-foot development, Marine Geology 449, 106815.

and it should be: 

 Marie, G. (2022) Boulder transport by ice in the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada): Influence of shore platform geomorphology and ice-foot development, Marine Geology 449, 106815.

The mistake probably arose because of the confusion of having a christian name as a surname.  It has happened to me on a number of occasions too!

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

Response: The provenance of the Limeslade igneous erratic: a matter of no importance?
Brian John
Quaternary Newsletter 164, pp 19 - 27 (February 2025).
https://www.qra.org.uk/quaternary-newsletter/quaternary-newsletter-current/


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389436022_Response_The_provenance_of_the_Limeslade_igneous_erratic_a_matter_of_no_importance

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

This is an interesting presentation nby Guillaume:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341653982_Boulder_transport_by_sea_ice_on_a_rock_coast_of_St_Lawrence_marine_estuary_Canada

Submerged forest exposures at Abereiddi

 

Many thanks to Ruth Crofts for these photos, taken at Abereiddi after one of the winter storms had exposed quite a large expanse of the submerged forest at Abereiddi.

These photos are important bcause they show a stratigraphy of three layers:

3.  Peat bed incorporating tree roots and branches and other detrital debris

2.  Purple clay layer which is clearly "churned"

1.  Buff clay layer which contains many erratic clasts of all shapes and sizes

It is possible that the purple layer is the weathered "cap" of the layer below, but the churning is quite spectacular.  In this situation we cannot be dealing with a violent liquified mud flow -- and the interpretation must be that this is a periglacial feature, created at a time of permafrost.  In the lowest layer I think we are looking at a deposit of the Irish Sea till, similar to that of the Abermawr exposure some miles to the east.  

So my interpretation here would be:  Late Devensian glaciation and deposition of Irish Sea till  >>> late glacial cold climate episode with permafrost and creation of involutions  >>>  Holocene temperate conditions with peat growth and climax woodland  >>> sea level rise and inundation of the woodland and peat bed, probably within the past 5,000 years.