The Rhosyfelin Quarrymen

Thanks again to Phil M for this photo -- it might be from 2013, and it shows a group of quarrymen beavering away at Rhosyfelin.  I think these are the first quarrymen ever to have worked at this particular site.

What the chaps are doing is selectively taking away certain materials (the fines) and leaving the rest behind.   The abundant blue buckets tell the story.  I suppose that is what quarrymen do -- they target the stuff that is most desirable -- or in this case, the least desirable -- and take it away. 

The archaeologists had already decided, of course, that the "monoliths" or "orthostats" were at the centre of attention, and that the rubble and finer sediments were not all that interesting.  That's precisely the opposite of the attitude that a geomorphologist would have taken here -- since the finer sediments, their sequence and the arrangements of particles within them, are really where the key clues lie as to the history of this site.  This is what Dyfed, John and I homed in on when we wrote our recent article for Quaternary Newsletter:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283643851_QUATERNARY_EVENTS_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE