Stonehenge -- the authorised version (again)

Julian Richard's new book came out at the end of September.  It's called "Stonehenge -- the story so far", published by Historic England at £22.95 (or whatever), hardcover, 352 pp.

You can read bits of it if you look on the Amazon web site. It's very nicely packaged, with attractive photos and diagrams, and a modern page design.  But what about the text?  Well, from what one can see, we have the same old stuff as usual.  A friend very kindly sent me the text as it relates to the bluestones, in a section dealing with "sourcing and transporting the raw materials".  I am not impressed, since what we have --yet again -- is evidence of an author who is desperate not to rock the boat or to allow for any questioning of the fondly-held assumptions of decades.  Is this bland acceptance of the authorised version something that Historic England insists upon? Is it really true that it cannot admit to any disputes in an "official" publication? Does it really think that Joe Public cannot handle honest academic debate, in which there might be two (at least)  perfectly feasible explanations for one or another of the features at Stonehenge? I should have thought that honesty on this score would excite interest and enthusiasm for our historic heritage, rather then damping it down.........

So what does JR have to say?  Immediately we are into the ruling hypothesis, with confirmation bias flagged up for all to see. We are introduced to Carn Meini (Menyn) which is described as a place of "convenient slabs and pillars." JR continues excitedly: " In this showroom for monoliths tempting stones lie everywhere; some even look as if they have been propped up and are ready for loading onto a sledge for the start of their long journey - perhaps more stones intended for Stonehenge that never made it?" Oh dear. He forgets to tell us that there are at least a dozen other tors in the general area for which exactly the same words could be used.

He then goes on to talk of the geological provenancing, without any mention of the work of Ixer and Bevins, and he actually misrepresents their findings. They will surely not be amused.  Spotted dolerite does not just come from Carn Goedog and Cerrig Marchogion, as he implies. And the rhyolite at Rhosyfelin does NOT provide an "exact match" for bluestone fragments at Stonehenge. Quote: "At this outcrop excavations have shown where a pillar of stone was removed from the rock face, the quarrying dated by radiocarbon to c 3400 - 3300BC."  That weird "pillar" of stone and its "extraction point" pop up all the time, promoted by people who cannot be bothered to apply any scrutiny.  Has Julian Richards or any of the others who promote this nonsense ever been to the site and looked at the narrow natural fissure in the rock face that clearly has nothing whatsoever to do with monoliths or extraction points?  It was dreamed up by MPP in a moment of mad enthusiasm, simply because it was close to sampling point 8 used by Rob Ixer and Richard Bevins, and it has been re-imagined ever since by people who seem to have left their common sense behind.

And the radiocarbon evidence?  Most thoughtful human beings might think "It just doesn't fit.  Therefore, since there is no other evidence of quarrying anyway, we might as well give up on the quarrying thesis and think of something else instead."  But these archaeologists are made of sterner stuff.  "No, since we have already decided that this is a Neolithic quarry, we just have to shift the date back by a few centuries and work out what happened to all those nice bluestones before they were shifted to Stonehenge.  So we have to assume there was a convenient proto-Stonehenge somewhere in the vicinity....." Once these archaeologists have a nice ruling hypothesis to play with, there is no way they are going to abandon it.

And just as the geologists are going to be pretty angry about being ignored, we geomorphologists are also extremely displeased.  For Richards to trot out the quarrying story without question, in the full knowledge that there are two peer-reviewed papers in print which question every single bit of "evidence" presented by the archaeologists in one extremely dodgy "Antiquity" article, is not just careless but also disrespectful and deliberately misleading.  The author had two years to incorporate our findings into his text, and chose instead to ignore them.

Interestingly, having applied no scrutiny whatsoever to the quarrying hypothesis, Richards does devote considerable space to the glacial transport hypothesis.  So he does at least acknowledge that there are two competing theories.  But there is a complete lack of balance in the way he treats them.  He simply repeats the usual arguments about the Boles Barrow stone, the apparent lack of other erratics on Salisbury Plain, and the Christopher Green pebble counts. "Quite simply," says our intrepid author, "the theory of glacial transport does not stand up to scrutiny and should be dismissed."  And he concludes his section with a summary of the ideas of MPP, TD and others about highly prized or magic stones being brought to Stonehenge as a great sacred or symbolic gesture.

That's the authorised story, and Richards is sticking to it, come hell or high water.  If you are still tempted to buy this book, you will, I think, never find a better example of selective evidence citation and confirmation bias.