Current Archaeology -- too much marketing of myths

In my last post I had a go at Current Archaeology for its apparent acceptance of the contents of that infamous press release about strontium isotope signatures and a "West Wales connection" -- and for publishing a piece which bore little relation to the actual evidence contained in the recent Nature article by Snoeck et al.

Well, now I am moved to have another go at the journal, this time for a piece which shows far too little scrutiny of a paper by Bevins and Ixer, under the banner of "Science Notes" with the heading "The Stonehenge bluestones and research replication."  The article is unattributed -- so it might have been written by one of the editors of the journal, or by one of the authors of the paper.  The paper being lauded is in Antiquity 2018.  These are the details:

Retracing the footsteps of H.H. Thomas: a review of his Stonehenge bluestone provenancing study.
Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer
Antiquity, Volume 92, Issue 363
June 2018 , pp. 788-802
https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.10
Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall, but the authors kindly sent me a prepublication copy which I kept quiet about until it appeared in print.  Referred to here:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/06/herbert-thomas-scrutinized.html

These were my thoughts when I read the Bevins/Ixer paper carefully: interesting, but could well have been edited more tightly so as to cut out superfluous material. 

Overall, it's a good contribution to our knowledge of how HH Thomas worked, where he got his samples from (mostly in 1906) and what he did with them once he had them in his possession.  Of course, Bevins and Ixer make the point that HHT was a good geologist working with a limited range of samples, with limited technologies at his disposal -- so it was almost inevitable what without the benefit of geochemistry and other new areas of research he made mistakes. Probably he also made mischief -- as we have discussed at length.  But my gripe with the 2018 paper is that the authors seek -- quite gratuitously -- to flag up the Neolithic quarrying hypothesis and to make their own provenancing of spotted dolerites and foliated rhyolites sound a great deal more certain than it actually is.  

For example, we can see that in their initial papers on Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog Bevins and Ixer were quite circumspect about provenancing, using good scientific phrases like "it is likely that"  and  "we suggest that".........  But over the past few years these qualifications have disappeared, and a degree of certainty has appeared in their papers in spite of the fact that there is no new evidence either in private or in the public domain.  So now, in this paper on HH Thomas, Bevins and Ixer state quite definitively that Carn Goedog was the source of most of the spotted dolerite monoliths at Stonehenge.   They have NOT demonstrated that, as I have pointed out:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/09/more-thoughts-on-carn-goedog.html

Neither have they demonstrated that "most of the rhyolitic debitage" at Stonehenge has come from "within a few square metres" on the rock face at Rhosyfelin.  I have pointed this out over and again on this blog, after many consultations with other geologists:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/08/rhosyfelin-spot-provenancing-and-few.html

Back to Current Archaeology and its rather careless promotion of dodgy statements.  In the article on p 12 of issue 343 (Oct 2018) it says that many of the foliated rhyolite samples studied by HTT ".. .....as well as the stones themselves, likely came from Craig Rhos-y-felin......"  Wrong.  No evidence has ever been produced to show that any of the Stonehenge orthostats or buried stumps are related to the site in question.

In a later paragraph, it states that it was thanks to geochemical analysis "that it could be established that the majority of Stonehenge dolerites came from Carn Goedog and not Carn Meini."  That's extremely careless and misleading.  The evidence in the paper is quite convincing in the apparent elimination of Carn Meini as a spotted dolerite source, but the evidence from 22 analysed samples does NOT demonstrate that the majority of Stonehenge dolerites came from Carn Goedog.   There is such a wide scatter of geochemical and petrographic signatures in the samples that they could have come from a wide variety of locations in the area between Cerrigmarchogion and Carn Alw, across at least 5 sq km of countryside.

And then in the last paragraph of the CA article, the author refers to "exciting evidence for the location of Neolithic bluestone quarries, as described by MPP in CA311."  Again, a blithe acceptance that the quarrying hypothesis is now established as fact, and a refusal to mention that there is actually a dispute going on..........

Careless and misleading journalism, and it's about time the magazine got its act together.

Ironically, towards the end of the article we find this exhortation:

IT IS NOT JUST ANTIQUARIANS WE SHOULD BE QUESTIONING, THOUGH.  NO PAPER OR FINDING IS EVER ABSOLUTE, AND IT IS THE ROLE OF THE INQUISITIVE ACADEMIC TO CONTINUALLY QUESTION AND RE-EXAMINE.  IN ACADEMIA TODAY, TOO OFTEN GRANTS AND OTHER SOURCES OF FUNDING ARE ONLY GIVEN TO RESEARCH THAT OFFERS TO EXAMINE 'NEW' QUESTIONS.  PROPOSALS THAT HOPE TO REPLICATE RESEARCH, PROVIDING INCREASED SURETY IN THESE FINDINGS, REMAINS UNDERFUNDED.  BUT, AS BEVINS AND IXER'S WORK PROVES, THIS TYPE OF RESEARCH - IN ANY DISCIPLINE - IS ESSENTIAL IN MAINTAINING ACADEMIC RIGOUR.

So here we are.  In the article CA shamelessly promotes the work of Bevins and Ixer in sorting out "the truth" as a consequence of re-analysing earlier work.  Thank goodness for academic rigour.  I'm very pleased to be able to do my bit, as an inquisitive academic, in questioning and re-examining some assumptions that are too fondly held and too readily promoted by magazine editors who should know better.