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Monday 11 June 2018

Craig Rhosyfelin -- "the monolith extraction point" -- again


Fracture scar left when a small slab (maybe 5 cms thick and c 20 cms wide) fell away relatively recently.  The scar edges are sharp and fresh.

I applied some close scrutiny to the "monolith extraction point" at Rhosyfelin on my last visit -- referred to by Mike Parker Pearson and colleagues as located in a "recess."  There isn't any recess there, and there is no evidence at all that a single stone might have been taken from the point at which MPP has charmingly posed for a thousand photographs.

As I have pointed out before, the rock face here has several prominent fracture scars which must have been created when small slabs of foliated rhyolite fell away and accumulated at different times at the foot of the crag.   If they were present in 2011, these must all subsequently have been carted away and dumped by the archaeologists, who were interested above all else in the 5 years of digs in looking for monoliths capable of being carted off to Stonehenge or to "proto-Stonehenge".  It's possible, of course, that some of the slabs broke away while the site was affected by glacier ice and torrents of meltwater;  they may have been incorporated into overriding ice, or moved downstream before being dumped.  They must all have been quite small, and easily modified or destroyed.


A very old fracture scar on the same face; note how heavily abraded the outer edge of the scar is.  The slab that dropped away from above it must have parted company wit the rock face many thousands of years ago.


Another clean fracture, also heavily abraded.  A late Devensian feature?


Irregular fracture scars towards the base of the exposure.   Several slabs have fallen away here, one c 6 cms thick and probably another around 4 cms thick.  Again the scars are heavily abraded -- suggesting the action of either ice or meltwater.

The sample that was taken away for cosmogenic exposure dating about 3 years ago must have come from somewhere on this face.  The dating must have been completed long since -- I wonder why the result has never been published?  But then nobody likes to publish inconvenient evidence, do they?

3 comments:

TonyH said...

Ah well,.....DIONNE WARWICK said it all, many years ago, in a song......

.......take a message to Michael,message to Michael
He sings each night in some cafe
In his search to find wealth and fame
I hear Michael has gone and changed his name.
It's a year since he was here
Kentucky BLUEbird, fly away

TonyH said...

And OF COURSE Julian Richards trotted out the old, old story in his 2017 book on behalf of Historic England (between them, they really OUGHT to know better by now)

See this Blog's Post dated 6th November 2017 where Brian skilfully dissects all that author's claims/ regurgitations with respect to Rhosyfelin.

Rob Ixer did a good review of it too, pointing out several deficiencies.

JR is to do a talk at the Frome Festival on Monday 9th July entitled "a Career in Ruins".

You said it, JR.

Books will be on sale!

TonyH said...

Similarly, presumably, the News today that Antarctica is shredding ice at an alarmingly accelerating rate,based on Satellite monitoring, will also be completely ignored by those with a Ruling Hypothesis (or more straightforwardly, vested interests) that denied even the POSSIBILITY of Global Warming.

In both cases, glaciation and its immense powers, are being completely ignored as being of no serious consequence.