More from the Megalithic Quarrymen (3)

Herewith chapter 3 of my scrutiny of the latest paper from the quarrymen, which deals (mostly) with Carn Goedog, which has previously gone unreported in peer-reviewed journals.  Lots of mentions in glossy popular magazines, but after three seasons of digging (2014, 2015 and 206) there have been no field reports or annual updates -- just lots of assertions, photos and diagrams which give the impression, as ever, that everything is sorted and that there are no doubts about anything.........

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, June 2018 .

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

So we come to tools and quarrying techniques.  It's worth quoting this in full:

"...........the only surviving artefacts are of stone. These include a large number of coarse stone tools, a handful of quartz flakes and a single flint blade. The most common of the coarse stone tools are implements with wedge-shaped profiles (n=15), generally with a wide ‘blade’ at one end and a narrow, thick terminal at the other end (Figure 8). These exhibit numerous flake scars along the blade, along one or both sides of the implement. Some also have traces of battering on their thick ends. There are also occasional scars running between the blade and the thick end.
These wedge-sectioned coarse stone tools are interpreted as wedges, for opening up the joints between each naturally formed pillar so that it could be levered away from the outcrop. These tools are all of mudstone or sandstone, not the locally occurring dolerite, which raises the possibility that they were used because of their softness in relation to the spotted dolerite. One reason for this may be that the forces created by driving in soft stone wedges would not have caused fractures within the dolerite that might have weakened the pillar. Any fracturing would have been confined to the soft wedges and not to the monoliths."

Excuse me, gentle reader, but I really am trying to be polite here.  Have I got this right?  The quarrymen are saying that our Neolithic ancestors used soft shale and sandstone "wedges" which were hammered into cracks or joints in the spotted dolerite rockface to assist in the extraction of monoliths, and that the wedges needed to be soft so that they could be sacrificed without causing fractures in the dolerite?  What sort of fantasy world do these people exist in? If you have got metal wedges, that's fine; you might use them in the knowledge that some might be lost if a joint or fracture does not open up as expected, but they might just work.  But we are talking here about the Neolithic, not the Iron Age.  Wooden wedges might work too, if you hammer them in dry and then let them expand as they get wet.  But to use soft and flaky shale as wedges in spotted dolerite bedrock?  No, no, no.........

And what of the evidence that these wedge-shaped bits and pieces are really "implements" or engineering accessories?  Flake scars?  Battering traces?  Scars running from one end to the other?  We need to see the colour of the evidence, and all we have is this -- Figure 8:

Figure 8. Stone wedges and a hammerstone (bottom left) from Neolithic contexts at Carn Goedog (drawn by Irene de Luis).  

Note:  what are "Neolithic contexts"?  That's a nice little throwaway phrase, designed to cement the thesis.  But it is meaningless.  It probably simply means that these bits and pieces were found among the rocks and in the sediments at Carn Goedog.............

As far as I am concerned, bits and pieces of shale, mudstone and sandstone that look like these featured fragments litter the north Pembrokeshire landscape.  I found some lovely elongated and wedge-shaped pieces of shale, complete with facets (or shall we call them flake scars?) in the stream at the bottom of our garden, just the other day.  No attempt is made to show us that these fragments are special in any way -- we are just told that they are.  Not good enough.  In my view, this is just another example of the researchers being desperate to find something that can have been fashioned by human beings -- this will do, they reckon, and we are expected to believe them......

Then there is reference to "a handaxe-like implement with battering along its edges. Such a tool could have been used to open up narrow joints, by widening the sides of the joint sufficiently for a wedge to be then inserted and driven in."  We are not shown this so-called implement, but we are shown (in Figure 9) an apparently widened or broken joint  which could be very old or very new, or anything in between.  It could be natural and it could be man-made -- and we have no idea how unique or unusual it is. The authors tell us that they have seen two such features at Carn Goedog -- but they have not checked to see whether similar features occur on all of the other spotted dolerite tors in this part of Preseli.   As ever, their assumptions of uniqueness and significance are unaccompanied by any studies of control sites with which comparisons could be made. 

There follows a rather fanciful description of how wedges, ropes and timbers were used in the quarrying operations, to facilitate delivery of the delicate monoliths down onto the "platform" which has been referred to earlier.  The idea is that the monoliths would have been levered to the outer edge of the platform and then lowered onto a sledge and hauled away with ropes towards their ultimate destination.  The authors admit that there are no gullies, grooves, prepared surfaces or trackways that might have been used for stone transport.  They suggest that as in the last few centuries, stones would simply have been dragged away across the dry turf surface.

Then the authors say: " The ditch, when open and with its rubble fill, would have blocked movement from the platform and the outcrop, and may have been dug to decommission the quarry. "  (See my previous post for reference to the "ditch". )  This again is fanciful in the extreme.   Are we really expected to believe that Neolithic quarrymen actually decommissioned their putative quarries by digging ditches across their entrances?  Or indeed by filling their ditches with rubble?  Why would they not just have walked away, or moved on to pastures new?

The obsession with storytelling trumps everything.  I cannot understand why the editor of "Antiquity", or the referees, allowed this section (or indeed the whole of this paper) to have been based on the assumption or the ruling hypothesis that this was a Neolithic bluestone quarry, without any consideration whatsoever of the role of natural processes or indeed of the effects of intermittent occupation by people who were simply hunters and gatherers with no interest in quarrying.  I am not averse to the idea that some of the "implements" described may be manufactured;  but why could they not have been scrapers, cutting tools or hammer stones used in the fashioning of other implements required in normal daily life?  This refusal to even contemplate alternative explanations for features is one of the most depressing features of this paper.

Then comes the coup de grace.  Having explained at some length how the platform was used for the movement of monoliths intended for Stonehenge (ie around or earlier than 5,000 years BP) the authors tell us that the buried soil under the platform or within crevices in it contains six pieces of charcoal whose ages range from around 4,500 yrs BP to 4,300 yrs BP.   In other words, they claim that the platform must be later than that, in which case it can have had nothing whatsoever to do with Stonehenge bluestones.

Oh, what a tangled web they weave..........