Feeling irritated tonight. I have spent much of today trying to get assorted people to stop the archaeologists from filling in the Rhosyfelin excavation hole. I sent messages to many of the key players urging them to ensure that some independent geomorphologists should have a chance to look at the sediments and assess the reliability of the MPP "quarry hypothesis" -- but to no avail. The spoil is being dumped, and presumably the job will be finished tomorrow by a man with a digging machine........
I know the dig was planned to end this coming weekend, but a few days' delay would not greatly have inconvenienced anybody, I'm sure.
If (heaven forbid!) you are of a cynical turn of mind, you might think it rather convenient that MPP and his colleagues can now put their own spin on what is there, beneath the ground surface, without anybody else being able to assess the reliability of what they see as "evidence." So when those involved talk of proto-orthostats, railway tracks, trackways, pillars and pivots, monolith extraction points, forecourts, jetties and embayments, crush marks and stone support mounds, listeners will have no option but to assume the reliability of everything fed to them. The trouble is that all of it is fantasy, and I will say it again -- I have seen no convincing signs of any human activity at Rhosyfelin, apart maybe from the signs of a campsite hearth near the tip of the spur.
So it appears that yet again an opportunity has been missed for a proper interdisciplinary approach to the interpretation of this site.
I too think that is a missed opportunity and to be regretted and diminishes many data from Cryf.
ReplyDeleteR.A.Ixer.