More from the Megalithic Quarrymen (2)

The so-called "platform" at Carn Goedog, tastefully tinted for emphasis.  In reality it looks nothing like a platform.  There are radiocarbon dates from some of the numbered contexts.  (Acknowledgement:  Prof Mike Parker Pearson et al, Antiquity, 2018)

MPP et al falsify the quarrying hypothesis with the aid of their own radiocarbon dating evidence

This is the paper:

"Megalith quarries for Stonehenge’s bluestones", by Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Chris Casswell, Duncan Schlee, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins & Rob Ixer. Antiquity 2018, yet to be published.

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/421631/1/Megalith_quarries_Antiquity_REVISED.pdf

In a previous post I looked at the introductory part of this paper, which I suspect is all we are going to get in relation to the supposed "megalith quarry" at Carn Goedog. You can see my comments here:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen.html

So now we look at the "detailed" research.  Was it worth the wait?  Sadly, no.  It's not really a scientific paper at all, in that it does not lay out the field research findings, interpret the evidence, and draw reasonable conclusions.  Like the Rhosyfelin paper of 2015, this paper dispenses completely with scientific method and simply gives us a sort of "quarrying narrative" which seems to be based on the assumption that everybody likely to read it accepts (without further ado)  that this is a Neolithic megalith quarry.  Sorry chaps and lasses, but some of us have retained our critical faculties, and are capable of scrutiny, and need to be convinced.............  so just give us the facts and the evidence, and let us see whether we agree with your interpretation of them.

Fact and fantasy are so inextricably intertwined that once again one has to express one's incredulity that this has ever got into print.

Let's look at the section entitled "Investigating megalith-quarrying at Carn Goedog." There is an immediate assumption that there are "surface traces of post-medieval quarrying." No evidence is given to us that any of the examined blocks are actually quarried, and then the authors say: "Cylindrical drill-holes in the surfaces of some of the quarried blocks discarded at the foot of the outcrop indicate that this quarrying was carried out using the ‘plug and feather’ technique. A worn trade token from beneath one of the quarried blocks dates this activity to c. AD 1800."   I'm not terribly inclined to disbelieve that blocks have been taken away from here in the 1700's and 1800's (indeed we know there are written records of it), but how many cylindrical drill-holes are there?  How are they located on the blocks?  Are there any lines of drill-holes, as we would expect with plug and feather stone splitting?  And the worn trade token -- was it really BENEATH a block, or was it BESIDE a block and buried by later sedimentation?  And a trade token certainly does not necessarily give a date to quarrying activity, since we know that Carn Goedog was on an old drover's route, along which thousands of animals were driven over the years.  Inevitably, many hundreds of drovers must also have camped here in the days before the railways arrived and took away their trade.  They were professional animal herders like the cowboys, not quarrymen.

Turning to supposed "prehistoric quarrying traces", there is no attempt whatsoever to present evidence for scrutiny. It is suggested that Figure 3 shows the site which had "the potential for surviving evidence of prehistoric quarrying unmodified by the later activity".  The photo in Figure 3 simply shows us the opened "trench 1", with no detail that might help in interpretation.  Figure 4 is a photo of some of the slabs and pillars in the outcrop.  This is deemed to be a quarry, as we are reminded on almost every line of text.   The authors say:  "Recesses in the face of this section of the outcrop reveal where pillars are now absent, with no trace of them being evident in the boulders and rubble at the foot of the outcrop. The fresh faces of the in situ pillars in this part of the outcrop contrast with the smoothed and weathered surfaces of the remainder of Carn Goedog’s outcrop."  What is amazing about this sort of narrative is that the authors of the paper seem to be blissfully unaware that they are looking at a tor which has been glaciated on several occasions, and which has also been subjected to hundreds of thousands of years of periglacial action.   Blocks have been removed by ice from all over the place -- some dumped in close proximity to their places of origin, others taken away (maybe to Stonehenge) and yet others broken up by ice action and frost action, with the assistance of gravity.  There have been rockfalls here too, as there were at Rhosyfelin.  Again, some faces are fresher (less weathered) than others, as one would expect.  There is absolutely no need for human intervention, and if the authors want us to believe their claims, they need to show us their evidence instead of simply telling us what they think and demonstrating their ignorance of geomorphological processes.

Figure 5, supposedly showing a large recess in the rock face from which "multiple pillars have been removed". In the text the authors are more specific, referring to the extraction of "four or five 4m-long x 0.7m x 0.5m pillars", without any supporting evidence. Then they claim to have dated the extraction, with the find of charcoal in a recess blocked by a toppled block. The dates are 3629±29 BP and 116±24 BP-- one modern and the other from the Early Bronze Age. But without any information about the setting or the stratigraphy, we have no idea at all when the "missing blocks" might have been removed.  Anglian?  Early Devensian? Late Devensian?  Holocene?

There is a paragraph which gives more detail about Trench 1, which was enlarged in 2015 and 2016 "to reveal a series of features that appear to relate to prehistoric quarrying activity." In previous posts we have examined some of these claims about "engineering features" and have found them to be fanciful in the extreme.  This new paper adds nothing new.  Organic materials collected  in some cases from supposed hearths (no evidence is presented to us -- we are simply expected to accept what we are told) date from the Mesolithic period, the Bronze Age, the Roman period and the Middle Ages.  There is nothing which points to a single neolithic quarrying episode, or indeed to ongoing quarrying activity.

Concentrating on their "artificial platform of slabs" (which I cannot see anywhere, no matter how hard I try) the authors claim to have found six pieces of charcoal whose ages range from around 4,500 BP to 4,300 BP. The authors say that the samples came "from the buried soil on which the slabs rested and from soil in amongst them."  Now this is potentially quite important, and in Table 1 the sample contexts are simply referred to as "platform sediment."  Nowhere is it demonstrated that the platform rocks were emplaced on top of the dated sediments, either by human or natural agency;  but even if they were, the dates  are of no use whatsoever in the promotion of a Neolithic quarrying hypothesis, since they are around a thousand years too late.........

This is all very confusing, and things get even more confusing when the authors describe (very briefly) an 11m long ditch filled with packed rubble and large stones. Organic materials in this fill have been radiocarbon dated to the Mesolithic and the Bronze Age -- with nothing apparently from the Neolithic.The authors make no attempt to show that the ditch is a man-made feature, and they make no attempt to explain what its purpose might have been.  So let's just assume that it is natural, like everything else on this site apart from the evidence of camping.

There are lots of reference locations (contexts) added to the sketch plans in Figures 6 and 7 (for the platform and the ditch respectively), but we are given no information on the symbols used or the sediments exposed.  Perhaps the authors think we are not interested......

I grow weary.  This section of the paper, which is really the core of the quarrying hypothesis, is so  slapdash and abbreviated that it provides us with no evidence whatsoever of Neolithic quarrying activity.  And the radiocarbon dates, abundant though they are, provide no support for the quarrymen.  If anything, as in the case of Rhosyfelin, the radiocarbon dating evidence in Table 1 actually falsifies the quarrying hypothesis.

There are still three sections of this paper to discuss.  One day, if I can summon up the energy, and still have the will to live, I will take a look at them for the benefit of my faithful readers.

Please, dear God, when is this nonsense going to come to an end?