Bedd yr Afanc -- the target for 2019?

Bedd yr Afanc is a passage grave on Brynberian Moor -- already much discussed on this blog. It is reputed to the the place where a terrible monster called an afanc was buried -- having become so bothersome to the locals that they at last slaughtered it and dragged it up onto the mountainside to be disposed of. A fitting parable, maybe........?

At the end of July, when MPP and the other archaeologists applied for permission to excavate at Waun Mawn, they also asked for consent -- and got it -- for the digging of three pits near Bedd yr Afanc.  But they didn't do any work there this year --my own guess is that they were so desperate to find something significant at Waun Mawn that they threw all their resources at that site instead.

But at Bedd yr Afanc they have done some surveying work and marked out assorted locations where they clearly want to dig.    Probably planned for 2019?  The marks are on the circumference of yet another putative circle which has the passage grave at its centre.  The diameter of the circle is approx 50m.  So they are clearly hypothesising that a stone circle was constructed around a pre-existing burial site, or that the burial site was built in the middle of a pre-existing stone circle.......

The circle stone circle obsession is as strong as ever........... but I wonder how long it will be before the funders of the work get fed up with all the hype and come to realise that they are constantly throwing good money after bad?  Eight years of hunting by the archaeologists, and nothing to show for it.

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By the way, Bedd yr Afanc is built on a slight ridge that seems to be made of rhyolite, although the standing stones in the monument setting are all (from a cursory examination) made of the same dolerites, rhyolites and ashes as all of the other erratics littering the landscape.  Today I walked all the way across the moor to Hafod Tydfil, across many small mounds of moraine, and with till underfoot along the ancient trackway, but I didn't see a single cobble or boulder of spotted dolerite.  I am still working on the directions of erratic travel on the northern flank of the mountain.