I have discovered that this classic paper on Stonehenge is now available on the web:
www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/proc/files/77p133.pdf
On reading it again I am impressed by its clarity and its scholarship, and am saddened by the thought that Richard Thorpe died before it was published. We are talking about an article published in 1992, so the info in it is 25 years old. Therefore a lot of the detailed geology has been shown to be inadequate, and has been replaced by the more modern work by Rob Ixer, Richard Bevins and others. Nowadays the "rock terminology" has changed too. The science of bluestone provenancing has moved on.
But this remains one of the clearest and most concise discussions of the evidence for and against the bluestone "human transport" hypothesis. It is also very careful and even meticulous in its presentation of evidence and in the citation of sources. Bravo!
Still a classic!
ReplyDeleteNothing like consulting the literature as regularly advised, and none of this has been refuted by recent work, rather the paper is strengthened.