More from the Megalithic Quarrymen (1)

We have complained on this blog for many months about the lack of field reports and peer-reviwed publications relating to the so-called "bluestone megalithic quarries" in North Pembrokeshire. Seven years after Prof Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues started their project, there are still no detailed excavation reports or annual progress reports, and apart from assorted glossy popular articles which can be dismissed as academically irrelevant there is still only one peer-reviewed paper that we can get our teeth into -- published in 2015 in "Antiquity".  I have described that as one of the poorest papers I have ever seen in print, since it flouted a host of academic conventions relating to evidence presentation, analysis, interpretation and discussion. Other senior academics were similarly appalled when they read it, including Prof Danny McCarroll who referred to it as "one of the worst papers I have ever read".  He also described the "quarrying evidence" presented in the paper as "just plain silly".

Anyway, at long last we have another paper to look at -- in pre-publication form, on the University of Southampton web site:

"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

So does this new paper move things forward, and give us the solid material we have been waiting for?  Sadly, no.  This is another flimsy piece of assumptive research, in which the central hypothesis (namely that there are Neolithic bluestone quarries in Pembs, used for the extraction of Stonehenge megaliths) is never questioned.  It is simply taken as read by the authors (all 11 of them) that there are Neolithic quarries at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, and that there is no need to convince their readers of the correctness of their assumptions.  This demonstrates extraordinary arrogance on the part of the authors, and it also demonstrates an almost complete lack of editorial scrutiny on the part of a serious academic journal.  What does this tell us about the state of British archaeology? That's a question for another day.......

On to the article itself.  This one concentrates on Carn Goedog, whereas the 2015 paper concentrated on Rhosyfelin.

Even in the introduction (dealing with the geology of the stones), there are serious problems.  Contrary to what the authors claim, there are not 43 bluestone pillars at Stonehenge; there are 43 known "bluestones", only a few of which can be described as "pillars."  Boulders are far more common.  This section also overstates the accuracy of geological provenancing, for obvious reasons.  If you are intent on talking about Neolithic quarries and flagging up the vast significance of  specific locations such as Carn Goedog and Rhosyfelin, clearly it is very inconvenient to admit that the bluestones and the fragments at Stonehenge could have come from multiple unknown locations.  But as we have pointed out many times on this blog, the geological papers by Ixer and Bevins have NOT unequivocally identified the rock outcrops a Carn Goedog and Rhosyfelin as THE places from which monoliths have been removed.  There is far too much variability in the geological samples described, and the best that can be said is that they have identified the general areas from which some of the Stonehenge spotted dolerites and foliated rhyolites have come.

There is similar sleight of hand when it comes to the suggested provenancing of the Lower Palaeozoic sandstones at Stonehenge.  On the Figure 2 map, just one small area of "sandstone" is shown, around the headwaters of the Nevern River. This is patently absurd -- there are Ordovician sandstones outcropping all over North Pembrokeshire's "Ordovician province", interbedded with shales and mudstones and sometimes in close contact with the Fishguard volcanics.  As far as I know, there has been no geological work capable of defining a "Stonehenge" source area to the Nevern headwaters.  But the authors have mischievously stuck this in because it is their clear intention to flag up this small area on the north flank of Mynydd Presely as the place where "Stonehenge started life".

Then, after all this dodgy nonsense, the authors have the gall to say:

"The geological and archaeological evidence from Carn Goedog, and the results from Craig Rhos-y- felin (Ixer & Bevins 2011; Parker Pearson et al. 2015), have firmly identified Stonehenge sources and Neolithic megalith-quarrying at those outcrops. This persuasively lays to rest the misconception that Pliocene or Pleistocene glaciers might have been responsible for transporting the bluestones to Salisbury Plain (e.g. Kellaway 1971; Williams-Thorpe et al. 1997)." 

That's bad enough, but then they make matters even worse by saying:

"The dating of quarrying activity at both outcrops places the megaliths’ extraction from the Preseli sources within two or three centuries of the bluestones’ first erection at Stonehenge Stage 1 (Darvill et al. 2012)."

Sorry to be a party pooper, but the geology is still full of uncertainties.  The published dates for Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog do nothing whatsoever to confirm the idea of quarrying, or to give a time-scale that makes any sense.  As we have pointed out before, there are no dates that can be tied to specific and convincing quarrying features,  and the range of dates obtained is so large that the best that can be said is that there is a long prehistoric history of intermittent use (Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age) adjacent to both rock outcrops.  This has been pointed out, specifically for Rhosyfelin, in the two 2015 papers by Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and myself.  You could go to almost any rock outcrop in Pembrokeshire, examine it in detail as a control site, and come to the same conclusion............

Now, on to Carn Goedog.  I'll deal with that in another post.