Rhosyfelin - More glacial misunderstandings

There is another post on Mike Pitts's blog, relating to the latest paper on the dating of the Fishguard Volcanic Group rocks.  As we have said before, this paper is not really of any relevance to the Rhosyfelin quarrying debate,  since it simply confirms that the FVG rocks are indeed in the right place in the Ordovician stratigraphic column.  Pure geology. 

https://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/another-chip-at-the-bluestone-problem/

Mike accepts that the new paper is "not dramatic",  but then he says: 

"But it confirms the direction of current work which suggests that many of the Welsh bluestones came from north of the Preseli hills, rather than the top or to the south as traditionally believed (HH Thomas identified Carn Alw as a source for these particular stones, see map). The significance of this, as argued earlier by Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer, is that while Carn Alw might allow for ice transport of stones at least part of the way to Wiltshire, the nearer the sources move downslope towards the coast, the less supportable that becomes. And Mike Parker Pearson may have another quarry to look for."

Where on earth does this strange and convoluted line of thinking come from?  Whoever said that a Carn Alw provenance for stones at Stonehenge might suggest glacial transport, but that provenances from the northern slopes of Preseli do not?  That is complete nonsense, as I have tried to explain many times on this blog.  Precisely the reverse is true.  Because ice crossing Preseli must have been compressing as it crossed the rising land between the north coast and the ridge of Mynydd Preseli, conditions for glacial entrainment would have been significantly enhanced.  Why do people keep on expressing these views when it is clear that they know nothing whatsoever about glaciology or glacier behaviour?

MPP also demonstrated his lack of understanding the other day by stating (so we are reliably informed) that glaciers never flow uphill......... that's almost as bad as his statement of a few years ago that there is no evidence of ice ever having travelled eastwards in the UK........ oh dear oh dear.......

Here, Mike Pitts gets more sensible, in referring to the newly dated rock samples:  "The other two, from the coast, are a little older, at around 464 and 465 million years old. Interestingly, the archaeological sample (which can be linked to stones 38, 40 and 46 at Stonehenge as well as 48) is also around 464 million years old. Not from Craig Rhos-y-felin, then, but, say the scientists, probably from Fishguard outcrops exposed across the low ground north of Mynydd Preseli. “This region”, they conclude, “provides an obvious target to search for further Neolithic quarry sites.”

Forget about the geologists' obsession with quarry sites -- if we want to put any interpretation on this work, it is to say that fragments from the FVG found at Stonehenge have come from several different localities in North Pembrokeshire -- and that that significantly increases the likelihood that they have been entrained and transported by glacier ice.  Nice and simple.