Waun Mawn -- unfinished business?

The diggers are hard at work upon Waun Mawn, hunting for missing standing stones.  Visitors tell us that MPP and his team have marked out very accurately where the missing standing stones should be located on their giant stone circle, and they are checking out one location after another.  Their objective or unfinished business, as we all know, is to find proto-Stonehenge  or rather, to confirm its presence, since they have already announced that it is there.  Come hell or high water, their narrative will be "confirmed"........

Just as a reminder, the only reason why they think there has to be a proto-Stonehenge somewhere (preferably at Waun Mawn) is that the radiocarbon dates at Carn Goedog and Rhosyfelin were so chaotic that nothing sensible could be made of them.  They decided, on the basis of not much evidence and much speculation,  that quarrying at the two sites must have happened 400 years earlier than previously assumed -- ie around 5,600 years ago -- and that the stones must have been parked somewhere prior to shipment to Stonehenge 400 years later, around 5,000 years ago.  MPP needs installation at Stonehenge around that date because he is convinced that the stones were placed into the Aubrey Holes prior to lots of later rearrangements.

If you read the text below -- from MPP's report to his sponsors, the Rust Family Foundation, you can see some interesting material about sockets and extraction hollows.  I have no problems with any of that, provided that the evidence withstands scrutiny.  Waun Mawn has abundant stone settings.  Stones may have been installed, they may have fallen over, and it would not be at all unusual for some of them to have been taken away and put somewhere else.  I am not sure that the work done in 2017 demonstrated convincingly that some of the pits discovered were standing stone sockets rather than extraction hollows or indeed natural undulations in the surface of the broken rock regolith.  Where sockets are shown with packing stones in them, that's fine, as long as it can be demonstrated that the concentration of stones in the socket is greater than the concentration in the surrounding soil or regolith layer.  (Somebody commented on that in one of our earlier discussions -- and it is a valid point.  And sadly, the process of sediment removal in an excavation of this type can give you the result that you want, simply through the removal of all "inconvenient" stones and by leaving behind all those that you consider important for the confirmation of your thesis.........)   The published images -- see below -- are not exactly convincing.

We can already see how the archaeologists are "forcing" their thesis by making more and more dodgy assumptions.  It is clear that the diggers are desperate to find as many empty sockets as possible.  It is clear that they want standing stones to have been placed in the sockets around 5,600 years ago and to have been removed around 400 years later, since that is an already predetermined timescale.  It is clear that they want to find traces of spotted dolerite and foliated rhyolite standing stones, since they have to demonstrate links with Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog.  It is clear that they want to find haulage tracks or routeways by which the stones were brought in and then taken away again.

Even if the diggers are able to demonstrate that there was once a large stone circle here, that tells us nothing whatsoever about Stonehenge.  This is a landscape of stone settings, some of which are bound to fall into the same timescale as the famous old ruin.  All it tells us is that some time before 5,000 years ago some of our ancient ancestors enjoyed putting up big stones, and sometimes taking them away again as priorities changed.  But we knew that already..........

Are there any control sites being dug, which the diggers can refer to when they try to convince the rest oof is that what they have uncovered at Waun Mawn is atypical and even significant?  I doubt that very much.  Finding extraction pits and / or sockets without stones in them in other places would be very inconvenient.  And we know already that MPP and his colleagues do not like inconvenience!

Messages from the mountain suggest that thus far nothing much has been found by the diggers.  All will be revealed when MPP gives his 3 (or is it more?) talks in the local area  next week.

One final thought.  Even if people started to build a stone circle here, there is as yet no reason at all to think that it might have been completed.  Maybe this was just another example of unfinished business, like the elaborate prehistoric ditch and embankment constructed on the north flank of Carningli.  Somebody started it, with the best of intentions, and then abandoned it.  Who knows why?  Famine?  Loss of manpower following warfare or local tribal disputes?  Changed ritual or utilitarian priorities?  The nagging of a sensible wife who thought it would be better for her dearly beloved to spend time catching fish than building silly embankments?

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The Welsh origins of Stonehenge

[RFF-2017-23]

2017 Report from Principal Investigator: Michael Parker Pearson
Professor, University College London, Institute of Archaeology

https://www.rfamfound1.org/proj23find.html

Extract:


Waun Mawn

……….the four megaliths found at Waun Mawn do indeed appear to be part of a larger stone circle dismantled in antiquity.

In September 2017 we dug six trenches at Waun Mawn, two of them around the outer two recumbent stones and two pairs of trenches on the east and west sides at each end of the arc.

Waun Mawn, as the name suggests (‘peat moorland’), is a wet, peaty upland on which blanket bog has created a continuous surface layer of peat (Comment:  no there isn't.......) and creating severely gleyed podzol soils in which the old ground surface beneath the peat has become demineralised. The largest recumbent stone excavated in 2017 is that on the west side (fig.3). Its former stone socket is lined with many packing stones, and the peat fills of this socket indicate that the stone fell after the onset of peat growth. (Comment:  This is an extremely unconvincing socket.  It is more likely that this never was a standing stone, and that it always was recumbent.  In other words, it lies where it always did......)

Fig 3: The large recumbent stone (Stone 1), viewed from the south; its stone socket is on the left side beneath its end.

The smaller recumbent stone excavated in 2017 is on the east end of the arc and is just under 1m long (fig.4). The fill of the stone socket contains only brown loam and no peat, indicating that it filled before the growth of peat. Thus this stone came down before peat growth. (Comment:  again, very unconvincing.  This is just a nondescript boulder, lying where it always did.  No packing stones, no convincing socket.)

Fig.4: The small recumbent stone (Stone 4), viewed from the west; its stone socket is on the right, marked by two red plastic pegs.

Emptied stone sockets with stone packing (but no surviving monolith) were identified beyond both ends of the arc of monoliths. The socket on the west side was a circular pit (0.85 m- diameter and 0.3 m-deep) containing large packing stones set vertically. The emptied socket had filled with brown soil before any peat formation. Deformation of the edge of the pit showed that its former standing stone had been removed towards the north. 

We discovered two empty stone sockets on each end of the arc, suggesting that these stones may well be the remains of a dismantled stone circle (figs 5, 6). (Comment:  Are these really stone sockets?  Neither of these looks convincing, and the "packing stones" are even less convincing.)  Megaliths were removed from these sockets before the onset of peat growth on this site, indicating that the stone circle was dismantled in the distant past. (Comment:  if there really were standing stones in these locations, the suggestion that they were removed simply tells us that they were taken away and maybe put somewhere else.  Maybe just dumped somewhere nearby.  You cannot make any inferences about dismantled stone circles.......) If this is a former stone circle, as we believe, then its diameter would have been about 380 feet. This would make it the largest known stone circle in Britain except for the outer ring of Avebury, the great henge 20 miles north of Stonehenge.

Fig.5: Vertical photograph of Waun Mawn (north is at the top). The sockets for Stones 1-4 and the two newly discovered sockets are marked in red.

The socket on the east side of the arc was a circular pit (0.95m diameter and 0.35m deep) very similar to that in the west  (Comment:  they have to be joking.  The two are dramatically different....), with a similar brown loam fill, except that the two large packing stones were angled against the side and base of the pit’s southern edge, indicating that the monolith in this instance had been removed towards the south.

The dimensions of these emptied stone sockets compare well with those of bluestone holes at Stonehenge, except that the Waun Mawn pits are slightly shallower. (Comment:  there is no "standard size" for bluestone sockets at Stonehenge, nor is there likely to be one here at Waun Mawn.)  This may be accounted for by the more solid geology of Waun Mawn, in contrast to the soft, weathered chalk bedrock at Stonehenge.

(Comment:  If you look at Fig 5 you will see that two of the pits opened in 2017 revealed no stones or sockets in places where they were predicted to be.  The spacing of the stones is also irregular -- so there is a strong possibility that on this site there is a single standing stone with a random assortment of other recumbent stones arranged by chance in what might be thought of as a rough arc.....)
No carbonised materials were recovered from the brown loam fills of any of the stone sockets other than a few tiny flecks of charcoal, too small for radiocarbon dating. Until absolute dates are available from excavations in future years (possibly via optically stimulated luminescence [OSL]), the circle’s erection and dismantling cannot be dated. It can be assumed that the lack of peat in three of the stone sockets indicates that their standing stones were removed before the growth of blanket bog. This is likely to have started growing around 3,000 years ago, which would indicate that the stones came down in the Neolithic or earlier Bronze Age. (Comment:  There is no blanket peat bog here -- the peat is thin, intermittent, and is likely to have commenced growth at different time in different places, depending on slope, aspect and surface drainage characteristics.)

The four stones still present are likely to be of dolerite, indicating that their source lies to the east. (Comment:  as already pointed out, this is an absurd suggestion.  There is dolerite outcropping in the immediate vicinity, and dolerite "monoliths" littered everywhere across the local landscape.)  The dolerite lithology (spotted/unspotted still being investigated), the proximity of four of Stonehenge’s bluestone sources eastwards along the ridge and within the Nevern river catchment below make Waun Mawn a very promising candidate for the former location of Stonehenge’s bluestones prior to their transport to Salisbury Plain to form Stonehenge’s first stage in 3020-2880 BC.  (Comment:  I think we might disagree with all of that and label it as fantasy.)

Fig.6: The hypothesised diameter (outer red ring) of the stone circle of Waun Mawn is 115m.

Conclusions:

Investigations into the stones of Stonehenge in 2017 moved from study of the bluestone quarries to exploration of the prehistoric landscape in which Stonehenge’s bluestone sources were located.

The main discovery was that four standing stones in an arc at Waun Mawn, above a source of the River Nevern, are the likely remains of a prehistoric stone circle, most of which was dismantled and removed in prehistory (fig.6). (Comment:  this is not a discovery at all.  It is a speculation. Some years ago the sameteam looked at this site and decided it had no significance.)  Its 80m-long arc suggests a former diameter of c.115m, which would make it the largest stone circle in Britain except for the outer ring of Avebury. Although excavations in 2017 failed to obtain a date for the stone circle’s erection or dismantling, its stone sockets were emptied and the stones removed before the onset of peat growth. We are currently awaiting radiocarbon dates from the base of the peat, though it is likely to have started forming in the Bronze Age.

Further research is planned for 2018 to confirm that Waun Mawn is a giant stone circle (Comment:  not a good idea to announce your discoveries before you start work)  and, if so, when its standing stones were erected and dismantled. Using geological analysis, we aim to establish if the megaliths that once stood here can be matched with bluestones at Stonehenge.


Publications:

Burl, A. 1976. The Stone Circles of the British Isles. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Grimes, W.F. 1963. "The stone circles and related monuments of Wales." In Foster, I. Ll. and Alcock, L. (eds) Culture and Environment: Essays in Honour of Sir Cyril Fox. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 93-152.

Parker Pearson, M., Bevins, R., Ixer, R., Pollard, J., Richards, C., Welham, K., Chan, B., Edinborough, K., Hamilton, D., Macphail, R., Schlee, D., Simmons, E. and Smith, M. 2015. "Craig Rhos-y-felin: a Welsh bluestone megalith quarry for Stonehenge." Antiquity 89: 1331–52.

RCAHMW 1925. An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire. Volume VII. County of Pembroke. London: HMSO.


Acknowledgement: 2018 Rust Family Foundation