More from the Megalithic Quarrymen (4)

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

The last two sections of the paper are entitled "Megalith-quarrying at Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin" and "From the bluestone quarries to Stonehenge" .  These are the sections that would be called -- in a conventional academic paper --'"Interpretation" and "Discussion".    But this is no ordinary paper, and as as we have seen, the authors see no merit at all in presenting their evidence and considering any alternative explanations for the features described.  So with a degree of certainty which we continue to find  quite amazing,  they simply continue with their narrative.........

And it gets ever more convoluted and confusing, with more radiocarbon dates thrown into the mix.  Rhosyfelin is also brought into the narrative, with some dates previously unreported.

The authors start by saying:   "At least five bluestone pillars (Stones 33, 37, 49, 65 & 67) were taken from Carn Goedog, and probably many more (Bevins et al. 2013). The multiple and large recesses in the rock face are further evidence that pillar removal was extensive at this outcrop....."   I don't recall Bevins et al saying that  at least five bluestone pillars (with numbered identities) came from here;  their paper was much more circumspect,  and as I have pointed out many times, they did not demonstrate that any spotted dolerite bluestones actually came from the tor rather than from other places along the sill that extends towards Carn Alw.  But one doesn't want the truth to get in the way of a good story, does one?

As for Rhosyfelin, there is a change of tone.  In this article the authors claim that "at least one pillar" came from here, and maybe one or two more.  That claim is still, of course, completely speculative, and is unsupported by any evidence, as my two colleagues and I demonstrated in 2015.

The authors claim that "artificial platforms" were constructed at both of their putative quarrying sites, and that at Rhosyfelin there was a vertical drystone retaining wall at the platform edge. We have looked at this before, and have shown it to be entirely fanciful.  Equally fanciful is the "hollow way" cut into soft riverine sediment.  New radiocarbon dates of 4434 yrs BP, 4404 yrs BP and 4627 yrs BP have been obtained for charcoal fragments in the alluvium resting in the "hollow way".  Parker Pearson et al argue, on this basis, that the hollow way had gone out of use by this time;  but if you consider (as I do) that the hollow way is simply the product of a fertile imagination, the dates simply indicate that during the aggradation or accumulation of sediments on the valley floor there was possibly burning and forest clearance somewhere upstream.   That would not have been surprising, in an area full of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement traces.  A so-called rhyolite end-scraper was found in the sediment fill on the platform, with two radiocarbon dates of around 6,000 yrs BP;  these are extremely inconvenient, and are therefore classified as being "residual in redeposited material".  Ah, if in doubt about something, call it a ritual feature, and if a date is wrong, call it residual........

In seeking to demonstrate a common history for Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, the authors do not make a very good fist of it.  They confuse the issue by using phrases like "the second half of the fourth millennium BC", but essentially they are saying that most of the prehistoric dates for Carn Goedog fall within the period 3350 - 3000 cal BC or 4500 - 4300 yrs BP.  But their own table of dates shows that only five or six dates fall into this period, whereas about twenty do not!  Just as we argued at Rhosyfelin, there is absolutely no reason to connect any of these dates with quarrying activity, and the only way for any reasonable person to interpret them is to say that there was a long history of intermittent occupation by hunters and gatherers -- just as there was at Rhosyfelin.  The authors argue that there was a "slightly longer chronological span" at Rhosyfelin.  Who are they trying to kid?  Their dates show that the site was occupied, off and on, between the Mesolithic and the Iron Age,  with a time span of 6,000 years or more......

There is then an attempt by the authors to match up their perceived "peak quarrying period" with the age of cremated human bone in Aubrey Hole 32, and they repeat the assertion that the holes held bluestones. But as we know, no sound evidence has ever been produced that there was any link at all between the bluestones and the Aubrey Holes.  As ever, we are solidly into the realms of fantasy.

Then to the final section called "From the bluestone quarries to Stonehenge".  This is all speculation and no evidence.  At the outset, the authors refer to "the stone-dragging teams"and the various routes they might have followed.  Then they seek to make a link with Banc Du -- broadly early Neolithic, broadly coincident with the supposed placing of bluestones in the Aubrey Holes, and broadly coinciding with (so they say) the end of megalith quarrying at Carn Goedog.   The trouble is that no connection is established between any of these,  and we could equally well say that everything that happened broadly in the early Neolithic in the British Isles was connected to everything else, as part of a cunning plan.

Banc Du is considered as a possible "stopping place for the bluestones" and as a place where a sort of proto-Stonehenge might have been erected.  But that is considered unlikely, and the latest favourite is Waun Mawn, as we all know, even though Prof Grimes thought it unlikely that there ever was a stone circle here. MPP and his colleagues love the fact that Waun Mawn is only (so they say) 3 km from Carn Goedog, 3km from Rhosyfelin, 2 km from Cerrigmarchogion, and (so they say) 3 km from Banc Du.  A perfect location!  They will soon turn up and will dig it all up.  Watch this space.

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My final thoughts about this paper?   Well, I thought that the 2015 paper on Rhosyfelin was one of the worst papers I had ever read.  This one is even worse. It is a mish-mash of assertions, and very little of what the authors say is actually supported by their own cited evidence or by their own radiocarbon dates.

Just a reminder -- this is from the Rhosyfelin dig.  The archaeologists refer to this as "vertical drystone walling and revetment at the edge of the loading platform..."  They apparently expect us to believe this.