The strange methods of the megalithic quarry-hunters

MPP and colleagues in the early stages of the Rhosyfelin dig. (Pic: Green Man Tours)
The big stone on which MPP is standing was announced (somewhat prematurely) to the world as an abandoned orthostat originally intended for transport to Stonehenge, from "the Pompeii of prehistoric stone quarries........"  By 2012 the myth machine was hard at work.

Satellite image of the hillside to the east of Carn Goedog tor.  This route, crossing the lowest col on the Preseli Ridge, has been used for millennia by travellers -- so nobody should be at all surprised if multiple traces of occupation are found.

I have dealt with this before, on a number of occasions, but once again it has come to the top of the pile of issues, in the light of the latest (2019) Antiquity article by Prof MPP and his merry gang.  The bizarre methods of the megalithic quarry-hunters might -- in another context -- cause amusement rather than concern, but we have seen in recent days how a piece of fundamentally flawed research can be "sold" to the media through a high-pressure PR campaign backed up by very carefully placed and orchestrated social media comments -- for example on Facebook and Twitter.  The media, as we have all noticed in many contexts, no longer has any concern for the truth, and lacks any instinct for checking the reliability of what they publish.  They seem to accept without question that if something comes with the name of a professor (or two, or three) attached, it is probably reliable........  Lack of scrutiny and time pressures mean that press releases are immediately regurgitated and even elaborated upon -- encouraging readers to accept as "the truth" things that have already been falsified in other media coverage weeks or months earlier!  Strange old world.........

There are three reasons why the strange "research" of the megalithic quarry-hunters should be dismissed out of hand by the science community:

1.  It is assumptive research, based entirely upon the assumption that its findings were predestined to be found correct.  On other words, the researchers have arrived on-site (at both Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog) with a ruling hypothesis in their minds, and they have orchestrated all of their findings simply in order to "prove" it.  They have even retreated into a state of denial about the fact that the research is hotly disputed.

2.   Without apparently realising it, the researchers have attached "artificial significance" to the two sites investigated, simply because these are the sites they happen to have worked on. By the same token they have attached artificial significance to many of the features observed, assuming them to be "unique" or "significant" and apparently not asking themselves whether they are commonplace natural features not at all affected by the hand of man.

3.  They have not examined any control sites.  So again, the things that are labelled as engineering features cannot ever be demonstrated as being unique or significant, since it is never demonstrated that these features do NOT occur in other contexts.

These are three fundamental flaws in the work, which Dyfed, John and I have flagged up in our two peer-reviewed papers and which I have explored in my book.  But apparently the archaeological community is completely unconcerned.  The popular and "learned" papers by MPP and his colleagues continue to be accepted for publication, I suppose because they are deemed by editors and referees to be original and exciting -- I have seen no mention anywhere in the archaeology literature of any concerns about the methodology employed in the field.

Let's just look at these matters in a bit more detail.

Heavily abraded (and probably very old) fracture scars at the so-called "monolith extraction point" at Rhosyfelin.  No evidence has been cited by MPP and his team to demonstrate that a "bluestone monolith" was taken from here.

1.  Assumptive research.

From the very beginning, the research involving bluestone megalith sources and quarrying has been underpinned by an interconnected set of assumptions.  It was accepted (for reasons that are shrouded in mystery) that the glacial transport of bluestones from west Wales towards Salisbury Plain was an impossibility.  Therefore the stones must have been carried by human agency.  Therefore they must have been "special" of even magical.  Therefore the places that they came from must have been revered. And if they were revered, it must be possible to find them.  They must also have valued these places so highly that the stones must have been quarried, rather than just picked up, because quarrying would have been deemed an act of reverence -- with the sheer effort involved deemed to be a pleasure and a sacred duty.  The act of carrying of the stones would also have been invested with huge sacred significance -- enhancing the status of all those involved.  So it goes on -- and before we know where we are, there is a vast edifice of assumptions, speculations and fantasies piled up sky-high, blotting out the sun.
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/07/assumptive-research.html   
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen.html

One of the most deeply flawed of the assumptions made by the archaeologists is that some of the Stonehenge bluestones have been "spot provenanced" to "within a few square metres" at both Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The geologists (Ixer and Bevins) must know that they have NO precise matches between samples from these two sites and the megaliths found at Stonehenge.  All they have is an approximate match between some fragments of "debitage" found at Stonehenge and some samples taken from the Rhosyfelin rock outcrops.  The foliated rhyolites with Jovian fabric found at Rhosyfelin also outcrop at multiple other locations that have not been sampled.  The geologists know this, but they too have been swept along on a wave of euphoria into "over-selling" their own work.  That will come back to haunt them.  By the same token, they have indications that maybe five of the spotted dolerite monoliths at Stonehenge might have come from the Carn Goedog area.  They cannot say that they have come from the tor -- and they have to accept that the dolerite sill which has a number of identified characteristics outcrops across a wide swathe of countryside between Cerrig Marchogion and Carn Alw -- a distance of more than 3 km.

http://brian-mountainman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/rhosyfelin-some-geological-questions.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-rhosyfelin-monolith-extraction.html

In other words, the assumption that certain bluestone monoliths MUST have come from Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog is not supported by the published geological research, and it is fatally flawed.

Another extremely worrying feature of the research at both sites is the tunnel vision of the archaeologists in using radiocarbon dates (of which there are many) to confirm the quarrying hypothesis.  As many have pointed out, the sheer range of dates from organic materials is such that all that can be said is that there has been intermittent use of these sites from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages.  It has not been demonstrated that this "long occupation" scenario has anything to do with quarrying, and neither is there any clustering of dates in the "right places" and "at the right time" for any confirmation of Neolithic or Bronze Age quarrying activity.  In fact, so haphazard are the dates that Prof Danny McCarrol and myself have both come to the view that the dates falsify the quarrying
hypothesis: "Those dates have now been published in the journal Antiquity and in fact they lend absolutely no support whatsoever to the quarrying hypothesis; a fair appraisal would be that they actually falsify it conclusively. Unfortunately that is not the interpretation of the authors of what is, sadly, one of the worst papers I have ever read."

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/05/did-antiquity-authors-conclusively.html

2.  Artificial significance.

When Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and I started to look at Craig Rhosyfelin during the extended dig by MPP and his colleagues, we immediately realised that they were looking at multiple natural features and interpreting them as "engineering features" indicative of  quarrying activity -- because that is what they wanted to find.  In our QN paper we described the stratigraphy and Quaternary features of Rhosyfelin, as exposed in the dig, and concluded that this is an interesting site displaying perfectly normal and predictable traces of glacial, periglacial and glacio-fluvial processes.  In our "Archaeology in Wales" paper we enumerated the features attributed to quarrying, including things referred to as an extraction recess, a loading platform, a quarrying face, a quarried monolith, a revetment, a transporting trackway, hammer stones, and elongated "railway tracks" -- just to mention a few.  We examined all of them, and found no traces of human agency.  (That having been said, we were happy to accept the traces of occupation -- including a hearth and a camping site -- as perfectly valid.)  In our paper, we accused the archaeologists of over-enthusiasm in the allocation of "engineering labels" without convincing evidence -- but we also accused them of selective citation of evidence and also of the selective removal of inconvenient rock fragments and sediments in order to enhance the "quarrying"hypothesis.  We referred to the creation of archaeological artifices at Rhosyfelin, and we stand by that accusation.  We will go further, and say that exactly the same thing has happened at Carn Goedog, as illustrated in the paper just published.  For example, in recent press coverage the Carn Goedof "loading platform" is given great prominence and illustrations of it are endlessly reproduced.  But when you look at these illustrations you will see not the slightest trace of anything that looks like a platform......... some people, I fear, seem to inhabit a fantasy world........

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-artificial-significance-of.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/12/bluestone-quarry-archaeologists-are.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_OBSERVATIONS_ON_THE_SUPPOSED_NEOLITHIC_BLUESTONE_QUARRY_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/01/parker-pearson-et-al-on-carn-goedog.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/12/rhosyfelin-manufactured-evidence.html

Rhyolite crags in the Brynberian Valley.  There has been no "control dig" in the vicinity of this crag -- and the archaeologists cannot claim "uniqueness" for anything at Rhosyfelin.

3.  Control sites.

In some ways, the failure of the archaeologists to examine control sites is the most serious condemnation and invalidation of their research methods.  They have not conducted any control digs in the Afon Brynberian Valley beneath any of the other crags (of which there are several) in order to demonstrate that Craig Rhosyfelin is unique in any way.  They have not conducted any digs adjacent to any of the other spotted dolerite tors on Preseli (of which there are many) in order to demonstrate that the platform, "monolith extraction locations", soil layers, stone arrangements and other so-called "quarrying features" are in any way unique.  I have examined many of these tors over many years, and as far as I am concerned there is NOTHING unique at Carn Goedog which points to it being either a sacred location or a site for monolith quarrying.  There is nothing significant, either, in the presence of organic materials beneath, adjacent and on top of some of the stones uncovered during the dig.  This is after all a perfect temporary camp site which must have been used by local people over many thousands of years.  It lies very close to the lowest col or crossing point on the Preseli upland ridge, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it lay on one of the most important drovers routes in West Wales.  It is virtually inevitable that there will be more traces of human occupation here than on any other of the Preseli tors up on the top of the ridge -- and this has nothing whatsoever to do with quarrying. The authors of the latest "Antiquity"paper seem to be blissfully unaware of any of this.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/11/brynberian-gorge-paradise-for-neolithic.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-2.html

------------------

This is all profoundly depressing -- since I cannot for the life of me work out why the points made above have not been made by other archaeologists.  The conclusion must be that they are no more aware of scientific methodology than the authors who have written these weird papers on Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog.