Following requests for more images to illustrate the points we have been making in the "Archaeology in Wales" paper, published on 14th December, we have now taken advantage of the Researchgate facility for adding data sets and supplementary information.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286927485_Photo_Gallery
We hope these photos (of modest quality because of uploading constraints) will be helpful for those readers who are trying to work out for themselves what on earth went on at Rhosyfelin in the distant past.......
7 comments:
Other photos of 2012 and 2013 digs.
www.chrisjohnson.nl/Neolithic/CRF2012
www.chrisjohnson.nl/Neolithic/CRF2013
Thanks Chris -- splendid photos! Everybody who has an interest in this site is encouraged to take a look at them.
Looking at the sediment that enclosed the proto-orthostat it is striking how anomalous it is in terms of size, also there appears to be a dearth of large blocks or any cobbles even in that sediment. Nice straight edges to the trenches.
The calumny that vast numbers of large lithics surrounding the orthostat were removed to create its splendid isolation seems untenable . Have you pictures of the large removed lithics?
it is also interesting to note how close to the present land surface it was I expect it came as a surprise to the excavators. Just a pity the dates are 'wrong' a bit like the Roman coin at the bottom of the shaft at Stonehenge.
Phil is just being wicked in suggesting that the (dolerite I guess) quarries have yet to be found. But hey this is THE blog for unfettered/untrammelled speculation.
M
Is there no end to this calumny? Quote: "vast numbers of large lithics surrounding the orthostat were removed to create its splendid isolation"..... have I ever said that? Not to my knowledge. The big block was bedded in stratified slope deposits that included broken chunks of rhyolite and also some erratics -- that much is obvious from the 2011 and 2012 photos. By the time the rest of us got to see what had been there, it had all been chucked onto the spoil heap. I have no idea how large some of those lithics might have been, but there were many boulders on the spoil heap and we don't know where they came from. Not that this is a very important point -- it's of rather marginal interest, I think.
Agree that the whole point of this blog is that nobody believes what anybody else says, no matter what their expertise might be! Long may it continue.
So these boulders in the soil heap may not have been within ten metres of the proto-orthostat?
M'lud I rest my case. Send him down
M
Who knows where they came from? It's not my problem -- it's theirs.
I can tell you now that Bedd yr Afanc and the landscape around includes nothing more than a small gravel island on which a gallery grave - Bedd yr Afanc stands. The monument, one of two or three within Wales stands within a bog in the bottom of a classic U-shaped valley. The site was excavated by Grimes in the 1930's who found nothing more than what is visible today (plus a few pieces of flint). In 2011/12 I got permission to undertake a geophysical survey in and around the dry areas surrounding Bedd yr Afanc. The research area was 0.5km square. Due to ground conditions, the survey was abandoned. However, I did manage to undertake a ground survey of all the large stones around site and discovered several interesting patterns, both relating to possible prehistoric land tenure and a possible remains of a second monument (alas, not a passage grave or a gallery grave). My report is available and will be published soon.
Post a Comment