Yet more on the "quarries"-- scientific malpractice unrestrained

Here we go again......... more media coverage arising from the same old non-story.  The gullibility of the media knows no bounds. This "new" article was published on 18th February, and of course the "exciting" new idea of the A40 bluestone transport route is heavily featured in The Guardian and elsewhere. Free public access to the paper is here:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/megalith-quarries-for-stonehenges-bluestones/AAF715CC586231FFFCC18ACB871C9F5E/core-reader

The most despicable thing about this paper -- and here I blame both the authors and the editor of "Antiquity"  -- is that there is no mention of the dispute about the origins of the "quarries" and no citation of the two "inconvenient" peer-reviewed papers by Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes any myself that were published in 2015.  The authors know all about them.  They have never questioned the reliability of either our observations or our conclusions -- and yet they have wilfully ignored the research, in order to bolster the false premise that the quarrying ideas are unchallenged.  That is scientific malpractice, pure and simple -- and it is hardly credible that the community of academic archaeologists allows these people to get away with it.  Do they really think that their reputations are enhanced by such behaviour?   What do their own departmental colleagues and their students think?  What does English Heritage think?  What do the research funding bodies think?  I wonder.........  

This paper has been floating around for some time, and I have dealt with it in detail already:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-carn-goedog-files.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-4.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-3.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen-2.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/08/more-from-megalithic-quarrymen.html

As I said back in August:

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.......

Please, dear God, when is this nonsense going to come to an end?

I also said this, and assume that somewhere there must be an archaeologist who took note of it:

This paper is so seriously defective, in almost every respect, that I find it bizarre that it ever found its way into an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. It is not a research paper; it is piece of unabashed marketing. I have asked this before, and I ask it again -- where is the scrutiny from within the archaeological establishment? How is it that so many serious and senior archaeologists -- and two senior geologists -- have allowed their names to be attached to it as co-authors?

And the most serious issue of all. If I, as a local person with a detailed knowledge of this site and with an academic background, had not been around at this moment in history, and had not been able or willing to look at the excavation site and to scrutinise the research output from the MPP team, everything in this article would have been accepted as THE TRUTH. Just think about it..........

And think about this. If this is the level of non-scrutiny applied to Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, how many other British archaeological sites are there which have been wildly misinterpreted and which have had nonsensical narratives attached to them?

Rhetorical questions, I know. But sometimes they are needed. Actually, rhetorical questions don't need answers. Maybe these questions do.

There are plenty of sensible archaeologists around. But when are they going to speak up? Quite seriously, if they do not, archaeology will become a standing joke.

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Megalith quarries for Stonehenge's bluestones
Mike Parker Pearson , Josh Pollard , Colin Richards , Kate Welham , Chris Casswell, Charles French, Duncan Schlee, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins  and Rob Ixer

Antiquity, Volume 93, Issue 367
February 2019 , pp. 45-62

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/megalith-quarries-for-stonehenges-bluestones/AAF715CC586231FFFCC18ACB871C9F5E

ABSTRACT
Geologists and archaeologists have long known that the bluestones of Stonehenge came from the Preseli Hills of west Wales, 230km away, but only recently have some of their exact geological sources been identified. Two of these quarries—Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin—have now been excavated to reveal evidence of megalith quarrying around 3000 BC—the same period as the first stage of the construction of Stonehenge. The authors present evidence for the extraction of the stone pillars and consider how they were transported, including the possibility that they were erected in a temporary monument close to the quarries, before completing their journey to Stonehenge.

There is a reference to the "Millennium Stone" fiasco, no doubt designed to discredit the "sea transport" hypothesis and bolster the A40 hypothesis:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1343999/Stonehenge-dream-is-sunk-by-the-Millennium-jinx.html

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These are the two 2015 articles -- both carefully edited, peer-reviewed and revised in line with referees' comments -- which Parker Pearson and his colleagues apparently cannot bring themselves to read, let alone cite or discuss in print.

https://www.academia.edu/19788792/Quaternary_Events_at_Craig_Rhosyfelin_Pembrokeshire
Brian John, Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes (2015a) "Quaternary Events at Craig Rhosyfelin, Pembrokeshire." Quaternary Newsletter, October 2015 (No 137), pp 16-32.

Brian John, Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes (2015b)  "OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUPPOSED “NEOLITHIC BLUESTONE QUARRY” AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE". Archaeology in Wales 54, pp 139-148. (Publication 14th December 2015)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_