This is from the well-known scientific journal called THE ONION -- so it must be true.... finally an explanation of the debitage, to satisfy the most sceptical.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/discovery-of-neolithic-gift-shop-suggests-stonehen,37945/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview%3A1%3ADefault
WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND—In a significant finding that sheds new light on the mysterious monument’s past, a team of archaeologists working near Stonehenge this week unearthed the remnants of a primitive gift shop, suggesting that the site had always served as a tourist attraction. “After uncovering piles of Stone Age goblets, deer-hide tunics, and animal-bone bracelets all etched with images of Stonehenge, we realized that this was not an ancient Celtic ritual site or Druidic pilgrimage destination as previously thought, but instead a popular attraction for Neolithic vacationers,” said lead researcher Amelia Stroud of Oxford University, who explained that preserved footprints found at the site indicated that ancient visitors had to walk through the gift area on their way out of the circular stone structure. “We also found a wide array of ancient coins at the site, clear evidence that large bands of Romans and Anglo-Saxon tribesmen came from far away to visit the attraction and were charged exorbitant prices while there.” Stroud went on to speculate that numerous small rocks found scattered around the site were most likely the remains of prehistoric “Make Your Own Stonehenge” kits.
40 comments:
Brian,
What I find most bewildering about these new excavations at Stonehenge is the EH would grand permission for digging up the place in search of Neolithic "gift shops" but refuses to grand permission to our friend Dr Ixer to make a surgical incision at very specific locations to get tiny samples of the buried stumps 32d/e.
These samples would help answer the key question whether the Rhosyfelin rhyolite flakes found in the "debitage" could be "chips off these old stumps". And so go a long way in settling the transport issue.
It seems the EH and archeologists working at or on Stonehenge are not interested in true scientific research. But only in what can further fit their narrative and can be sold to the public.
"We also found a wide array of ancient coins at the site, clear evidence that large bands of Romans and Anglo-Saxon tribesmen came from far away to visit the attraction and were charged exorbitant prices while there."
How did the Roman and Anglo-Saxon tourists traveled back in time to a Neolithic "gift shop"? But if Stonehenge was a Roman or Medieval "stone factory" producing among other things "stone ramming heads" (see the recent discussion under "Stone 69"), it would stand the reason Roman and Anglo-Saxon coins would be found at the site. These being used to pay for the stones or to pay the workers working the stones.
Kostas
Where is the gratuitous tottie excavating, it clearly is not Stonehenge.
I just love the make your own Stonehenge kits.
M
Myris -- she seems like a nice young lady.... and I agree the background does not look much like Stonehenge either. It's amazing what you can do with Photoshop.
Kostas
!!!!!! Please check out the credentials of the source...... always a good idea.
Nice young lady, she is clearly a post-processualist archy-ette, look at those glasses.
Why are the lithics covered in pi symbols, that Kostas is something we should worry about.
M
Dr Ixer has been looking at new lithics from close to the Avenue, excavated during the restoration of the ex334. No pi symbols on them.
Only a few and the same as elsewhere in the Stonehenge landscape.
I love the Onion!
Photoshopped insert of the pretty girl notwithstanding, the background site actually IS Stonehenge, seen from the west northwest.
Neil
I have it on very dubious authority that the young lady pictured is indeed lead researcher Amelia Stroud (pronounced Strood, to rhyme with vulgar).
As the song had it all those years ago, "The world is just a great big ONION..." I certainly laughed until I cried as Kostas fell into the well - prepared honey trap. I was not so naïve....there were clearly no such things as "Neolithic vacationers" - much too modern a phrase.
Brian,
The "credentials of the source" is YOU! Since this was reported in your block. And it isn't April 1st.
But I must admit, "The Onion" did raise eyebrows!
Kostas
I still cannot see it.
Look at the bushes in the background and all the stones are the same.
Convince me.
I adopt Thomason view.
M
.
Hi Myris,
Go get Anthony Johnson’s 2008 plan of Stonehenge. (That’s the easiest one.)
The two upright stones directly behind the girl are Stones -22 and -21, left to right. Between them, laying on the ground, is Bluestone-42.
Moving to the right, behind her head is Stone-57 of the West Trilithon. The next upright is Stone-56, with broken S-55 just on its other side. Then it’s Bluestone-37, and finally, stumpy Stone-11.
The bushes you see on the far-distant right are trees around the New King Barrows. The camera lens probably exceeds 85-mm, so they look closer than they are in reality.
The picture was taken from the tourist walkway.
Neil
It must be true - just look at the symbols on the pots, Well - who'd have thought they could be so clever!
Neil
Many thanks,it is not a side that I know. I am convinced, not for the first time has the wood been hidden by the trees in my personal thickette (sic).
M
It must be true for the lady in the photo is using the latest in archaeological excavation equipment, namely, the rubber trowel which reduces damage to artefacts.
Neil/Myris
Can we now agree the photo is authentic and recent, and the excavator a real Oxford researcher?
Brian, that now having been established, doesn't that make my original comment credible? Let me repeat,
"What I find most bewildering about these new excavations at Stonehenge is the EH would grand permission to dig up the place in search of Neolithic "gift shops" but refuses to grand permission to our friend Dr Ixer to make a surgical incision at very specific locations to take tiny samples of the buried stumps 32d/e "
You can overlook my comments about all the Roman and Anglo-Saxon coins found at Stonehenge! Though these coins are consistent with my claim Stonehenge was a Roman /Medieval stone factory!
Kostas
KOSTAS- relax and laugh. When you are in a deep hole and can't get out, for God's sake stop digging.
Kostas the picture is Photoshopped.
I cannot find anything about the woman, certainly nothing associated with Oxford University.
Also no excavation at Stonehenge takes place without much publicity.
There has been no excavation, this has been photo shopped.
M
... and in case of any further doubt, the whole thing is a spoof. That's what THE ONION does! Entertainment, rather than education...
"When you are in a deep hole and can't get out, for God's sake stop digging"
Wise words, Brian! Tell that to MPP et al who continue to dig seeking love at all the wrong places.
Kostas
Oh! I get it! British humor! Make what's false look like it is true and watch unsuspecting people trip over it!
Can't get enough used to it! I'll stick to truth!
Kostas
Is that where the saying "she knows her onions"comes from?
Kostas,
Seriously, dude?
The article was from the Onion. It's a gag. More, it was a very funny gag.
SH was a Roman Rock Factory? This is very cool news. Alas, all these long years of research destroyed by the patently obvious.
Seems odd that those pesky Romans would put 4,500 year old deer antlers under the stones, though - don't you think?
Neil
AMERICAN humour, Kostas! The Onion is an all-American outfit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion
Neil
But did not the Neolithic people do just that in Stonehenge phase 1, there are some old bones in the ditch?
I am using the Darvill et al timing.
I guess a third year u/g essay might be "C14 dates a force for good or evil.
Residual versus intrusive.
M
Neil,
Not everything Stonehenge dates to the Neolithic!
Kostas
Myris and Kostas
In several cases, the antlers and bones found in the Ditch are indeed very old. For example, the 2 ditch-skulls flanking the Southern Entrance are thought to have been curated for about 300 years before the Ditch was dug.
But we know the date for installation of the big boys because of antler tools found UNDER them. These were the tools used to dig the sockets and are Not curated. Additionally, they are all more or less the same age ─ unlike those found in the Ditch, which are wildly variable in date.
Though this time-frame leans toward the swiftly approaching Bronze Age, it's still considered part of the Neolithic.
(No wide use of metal and no metaphoric art.)
Neil
Neil,
You are making many assumptions here in reaching your conclusions! Any one of these not being true will nullify your argument.
Kostas
Neil,
You are making many assumptions here in reaching your conclusions! Any one of these not being true will nullify your argument.
Kostas
Kostas
"Assumptions" sir?
These are facts. The antlers and skulls in the Ditch are older than those found under the Sarsens.
Rule Number One: If it's Under, it's Older.
If an antler is found under a Sarsen, it can only have been put there at the time of installation.
If this antler dates to a certain time, it follows that this is when the Stone was installed.
How is this an Assumption?
Neil
Neil -- As Kostas will inevitably remind you, you are wrong. this is not how you interpret stratigraphic relationships. If an antler pick is underneath a sarsen, all you can say with a degree of confidence is that the antler was there before the sarsen was put in place. The sarsen may have arrived minutes later, or years later, or even centuries later.
If you want to say that the antler and the sarsen emplacement happened more of less simultaneously, you will have to cite other evidence showing that.
Neil,
I am feeling rather kind today, Valentine's Day, so I won't add to what Brian already said.
The most pernicious assumptions we make are the assumptions we don't even know we are making!
Kostas
Gentlemen
In many other cases your argument would be valid, of course.
In the case of Stonehenge specifically, if we have antler picks not only beneath the stones, but among the packing material around its sides -- and if all these tools date similarly -- I think it's safe to assume that the picks are contemporaneous.
Neil
(PS - In the middle of yet another huge snowstorm over on this side. 20 cm so far. 06.45. Miraculously, the powers still on!)
Neil, hesitantly...
You are assuming the deer antlers were tools. Further, you are assuming, if tools, these were used to dig the pit. And to have been inentionally placed in the pit for some ritual we can have no knowledge of.
There are other more sensible ways of explaining all you see and say.
Kostas
I'm not assuming they're tools, actually.
They could be anything. They could be Neolithic golf clubs for all I know.
But I do know that they were put there when the Stone was installed, and that they date to 4500 years ago.
The ones in the ditch (Golf Tees, perhaps?) date to between 4900 and 5100 years ago.
Neil
Neil,
You write, "In the case of Stonehenge specifically, if we have antler picks not only beneath the stones, but among the packing material around its sides -- and if all these tools date similarly -- I think it's safe to assume that the picks are contemporaneous."
You write, "I'm not assuming they're tools, actually."
This is called contradiction. But it's OK to change your mind!
You write, "But I do know that they were put there when the Stone was installed"
You are now making another assumption at the very least. Namely, these antlers were put at the pit by people.
Kostas
Off the top of my head I know there's at least 16 standing Sarsens at Stonehenge that have been adjusted in one way or another.(22, if you include the Lintels and Bluestones.)
Every one of these uprights has antlers in the socket - in the bottom and along the sides - mixed in with packing stones, chalk lumps and, in some cases, bits of shattered pottery.
Every site in Wiltshire that has a ditch or a stonehole also has antlers in them.
Are you saying that these pin-point locations were specifically selected by deer to shed their horns?
I guess it makes sense, as no self-respecting deer could be seen with horns so crusted with chalk, or as broken and work-worn as every one of these examples are. That wouldn't be good form at the Larkhill Fish & Goose Soiree.
The antlers are tools used by humans to dig a trench or stonehole. Auroch and ox shoulder blades were used as shovels. (Also perfectly datable, no one seems to talk about these too much.)
If this is in some way an 'Assumption' on my part, then I'm in company with about 99% of the people who study these things.
If you're going to be this pedantic with regard to Stonehenge 101, please bring your A-Game.
Neil
Neil,
So now its back to “tools”! Changed your mind about changing your mind?
You write, ”Are you saying that these pin-point locations were specifically selected by deer to shed their horns?”
No! That is what you are saying! That is what is misleading you to misunderstand the evidence.
An “assumption” does not become a “fact” because more people make it. You can keep making your assumptions and that is OK. As long as you acknowledge they are assumptions.
There are other explanations to all the 'facts on the ground' you point. I can give you mine, but Brian will block it! As he has a recent post of mine to Peter Style under “Understanding the Bluestone Circle”.
If you want me to discuss my explanation, contact me kostadinos@aol.com
I don't play games! Unless its Go.
Kostas
"If you're going to be this pedantic with regard to Stonehenge 101, please bring your A-Game."
If only it were pedantry .
Pedantry suggests a knowledge of the subject /circumstances , that is not apparent in this caee .
GeoCur,
Stalking and sniping again? It won't work. Here Hermione can't cover your exposed back.
Kostas
" Exposed back ",what are you are talking about ?
Do attempt to make an effort that is related to the posts .
“confused and convoluted in his thinking. “ .Kostas speak for “I don’t understand , is the Onion peer reviewed ? “ .
You have failed to respond to the central point which is simple ,( but may be beyond your ken as it does require the slightest knowledge of the history of the Stonehenge ) and has had to be repeated in the same form multiple times and , is to be found at least once earlier on this blog .
Having to repeat that same point ,which has not been refuted , is neither confused nor convoluted .
Confusion is to be found in ; getting the detail about granite use in Egyptian monuments wrong , misunderstanding the reason for it’s mention , not understanding that the constant use of certain terms are examples of the logical fallacy of appeal to common sense , not understanding the relationship between “truth “ and the scientific method , attempt to make a point about sense that would make Professor Stanley Unwin and Count Arthur Strong appear eloquent rhetoricians , and none of which were addressing the central point .
Keeping to the simple point whilst others change theirs is not convoluted from my perspective .
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