The Pensarn Treasure Hunt site? (revised)

This is the field near Pensarn (near Crosswell) where the digging action might be concentrated this year in September, when MPP and all the other boys and girls roll up for the annual Pembrokeshire dig.   At least, we think this might be the field, if several little birds have tweeted the right info towards us, and if Hugh is right.  The grid reference is SN 123359.

Not sure whether all those things we can see are bales of straw, animals or boulders -- must get over there one of these days and take a look.  Maybe Hugh can enlighten us?  Apart from these prominent features on the photo, there do not seem to be any traces of patterns in cropmarks, parchmarks or subtle shadows showing raised surface features or hollows.  All very intriguing.

Modification with extra images:

The blobs on the image clearly were animals! 

Thanks to Simon K for alerting us to the much better definition on Bing Maps.  Here are two images from the Bing web site.

Two further images of the same field.  On the top image, with the sun in the south, a more or less circular mound can be seen to the east of the tree with a shadow, with a slight shadow on its north flank.  It is approx 25 m across.  On the lower (oblique) image, with the sun low in the west, the mound shows up even more clearly, just at the tip of the elongated tree shadow.  Courtesy:  Bing Maps.  

Now this starts to get interesting -- not at all what I expected.  Round mounds like this are normally from the Bronze Age;  the earlier Neolithic mounds (mostly stripped away in Pembrokeshire to expose the dolmens or passage graves that were partly within them) were generally elongated.  They would be called "long barrows" in Wiltshire.

So what might this feature, of probable Bronze Age origin, have to do with Stonehenge and Rhosyfelin?  We can be pretty certain what the working hypothesis for the September dig will be, from some of the things said by Prof MPP and others.

It'll be on these lines:

1.  Stones were taken from the supposed quarry at Rhosyfelin, hauled up out of the Brynberian Valley via the little cwm to the east of the rocky spur, and then across country for about a kilometre to the slight rise near Pensarn, to be put up as a bluestone circle with a diameter of c 25m.  Date:  probably around 5,500 yrs BP.

2.  The circle (which also included stones from Carn Goedog) became greatly revered as a sacred site -- maybe cremated bones were placed into stone sockets prior to the placement of the monoliths, as in some of the Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge.

3.  The bluestone circle was dismantled and hauled off to Stonehenge, still during the Neolithic.

4.  Later, in the Bronze Age, the sacredness of the site at Pensarn was confirmed by the building of a round barrow or burial cairn, which is still in place although greatly denuded over the passing of the millennia.

We can but hope that this will be treated as a working hypothesis rather than a ruling hypothesis;  given the track record of this particular group of researchers, I am not very confident on that score............. 

Needless to say, a huge amount of hard evidence would have to fall into place if this hypothesis is to have any chance of standing up to scrutiny.  Ever more intriguing.......