The proto-Stonehenge checklist

Waun Mawn on the flank of Mynydd Preseli -- the site of the latest fruitless search for Proto-Stonehenge.   Maybe the intrepid diggers will find the Holy Grail instead?

Below is a list of the sites that the archaeologists have been looking at since 2011, when geologists Ixer and Bevins published their first paper referring to Craig Rhosyfelin as "the dominant source of the Stonehenge rhyolitic debitage".  (The title of that paper was a nonsense, because the authors were depending on just the KNOWN debitage, given that only around half of the area of the stone settings has ever been excavated.  Let that pass........ but it was a sign of things to come, with the tendency for "over-interpretation" becoming increasingly obvious with every year that passed from 2011 until today.)  But even before that date, the two of them had been showing increasing interest in the origins of the bluestones and the debitage at Stonehenge, with a number of papers on the dolerites, rhyolites and sandstones.
Some of the earlier references are listed here:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-ixer-compendium.html

.... and it's interesting that not one of them is in a geological journal.  All of them are in archaeological journals and popular magazines -- some of them peer-reviewed, and others involving publication at the invitation -- or the discretion -- of the editor.   One wonders how many of these articles would have been accepted for publication in geological journals, given the extra level of scrutiny which would have been involved.

Without going back through twenty or more articles, I can't be sure of this -- but my impression is that originally the two geologists were rather circumspect about how the bluestone monoliths at Stonehenge were picked up and transported.  But as soon as the two tribes of archaeologists (the Darvill - Wainwright tribe and the Parker Pearson tribe) became involved in the research  the glacial entrainment / transport hypothesis was dumped for no particular reason -- and from that point on the research flipped from being good science to being bad science -- with the focus placed firmly upon the confirmation of two ruling hypotheses.  The first was that the stones were quarried from sacred of significant sites, and the second was that the stones were transported from West Wales to Stonehenge by human agency.

So the working assumption has been, from 2011 onwards, that there are at least two Neolithic bluestone quarries in the Preseli area, and that the research simply has to concentrate hard on confirming that.  We have referred to this before as "assumptive research" -- we can perhaps forgive that within a "storytelling" discipline like archaeology, but it is unforgivable in a truly scientific discipline like geology.  The reputations of Ixer and Bevins as serious research scientists will eventually  be decided not by the likes of me and the followers of this blog, but by academic geologists.

I have said on many occasions -- in print and on this blog -- that the "spot provenancing" of Stonehenge rhyolite fragments to Rhosyfelin and Stonehenge spotted dolerite fragments to Carngoedog is deeply flawed, for a number of reasons.   But Ixer and Bevins, like the Parker Pearson team of archaeologists, are in a state of denial about the fact that their evidence and conclusions are disputed -- and a refusal to acknowledge  the existence of  the two 2015 papers by Dyfed, John and myself is not just academically indefensible but also an admission that their own evidence is very shaky indeed.

These are the "invisible"papers:

Brian John, Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes (2015a). "Quaternary Events at Craig Rhosyfelin, Pembrokeshire." Quaternary Newsletter, October 2015 (No 137), pp 16-32.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283643851_QUATERNARY_EVENTS_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE

https://www.academia.edu/19788792/Quaternary_Events_at_Craig_Rhosyfelin_Pembrokeshire

Brian John, Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes. 2015. OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUPPOSED “NEOLITHIC BLUESTONE QUARRY” AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE". Archaeology in Wales 54, pp 139-148. (Publication 14th December 2015)
https://www.academia.edu/19788912/Observations_on_the_supposed_Neolithic_Bluestone_Quarry_at_Craig_Rhosyfelin_Pembrokeshire

The latter article has had 1,386 reads so far, and it's intriguing that Messrs Ixer, Bevins and Parker Pearson appear to have missed it.

EVIDENTIAL COVER

This brings me to "Proto-Stonehenge" and the concept of EVIDENTIAL COVER.  If you are a researcher proposing the existence of bluestone quarries, and your supporting evidence from your putative quarrying sites is very thin,  you need supporting evidence or evidential cover which has the capacity of giving you backup.  Ixer and Bevins and the archaeologists desperately need to demonstrate that their Neolithic quarrymen were digging for a purpose.  Because the rocks were sacred or because the locations were sacred?  Because there were political or religious motives for the digging?   Because they needed the monoliths for small local stone settings?  Or for  megalithic burial sites like long barrows or passage graves?  Or -- best of all from a PR point of view --for a giant ceremonial stone circle which would demonstrate both the skills of the Neolithic inhabitants of the area and the "value" or symbolism of what they created?  It's a easy hop from there into all sorts of wonderful hypothesising and mythologising -- and in such a scenario the storytelling skills of MPP of course come into their own.

If we listen to the contents of MPP's 'annual lectures between 2012 and 2018 (and look at his articles) all sorts of wacky ideas have been thrown in -- and these are the very ideas which have featured in his annual requests for research funds.   The media love it, the students who turn up for the September digs love it, and  apparently the funding bodies love it too, which is why there seems to be a continuous stream of research grants into MPPs bluestones project.  It seems that the funders are just as incapable of independent scrutiny and the editors of learned journals.

https://theconversation.com/stonehenge-isnt-the-only-prehistoric-monument-thats-been-moved-but-its-still-unique-51962

As the years have passed, the search for evidential cover has become more and more desperate.  How many sites have been investigated in the hope that they will "validate" the quarrying and human transport hypotheses?  We know of about nine, but there may well be more.  And what has been turned up?  Nothing at all -- no reasons have been found for the supposed quarrying activity, no quarrymens' villages have been found, no evidence has come forward to show that spotted dolerite or foliated rhyolite were somehow preferred to other slabs, boulders and pillars, and no evidence has been found for the use of sharp-edges or freshly quarried monoliths, either at Stonehenge or in West Wales. The proposed episodes of quarrying at Rhosyfelin and Carngoedog do not match up with anything relevant at Stonehenge, and indeed they are falsified by the radiocarbon evidence obtained and cited.  Worst of all, from the point of view of Ixer and Bevins and the archaeologists, is the fact that no trace has been found of Proto-Stonehenge............

Why don't they just give up, admit that they have already wasted enough public money on this wild goose chase, and get on with something more worthwhile?  More to the point, why is it that the funding organizations continue to feed public money into this worthless project? Answers on a postcard please.........

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The "Bluestone Quarries"

Craig Rhosyfelin -- a so-called "bluestone quarry" falsified by the researcher's own dating evidence and otherwise hotly disputed.

Carn Goedog -- ditto

Carn Meini / Carnmenyn -- thought by Darvill and Wainwright to be the key spotted dolerite Neolithic quarrying site. It's now doubted that any of the Stonehenge monoliths or debitage fragments came from here.

The "Proto-Stonehenges"

Castell Mawr -- proposed as Neolithic henge linked to the "quarries" and now shown to be a Bronze Age / Iron Age feature with no links to bluestones or Stonehenge.

Bayvil -- ditto

Felindre Farchog -- prehistoric (?) enclosure / earthwork? A Neolithic henge site or quarrying settlement? After a short dig, idea dropped. Probably a medieval site.

Carn Goedog (traces below the tor, on the edge of Brynberian Moor) -- Neolithic quarrymen's village? Shown to be medieval.

Pensarn -- A site connected to Rhosyfelin? Shown in 2016 to be a Bronze Age cist grave with nearby Iron Age site.

Parc y Gaer -- A site linked to the Rhosyfelin "quarry"? Shown in 2016 to be a Roman site -- probably a villa.

Waun Mawn -- still being referred to as the possible site of "proto-Stonehenge" -- full results awaited, but apparently no links with bluestone quarries or with Stonehenge.

Bedd yr Afanc -- suggested as another proto-Stonehenge site, but previous excavations have shown up no signs of a henge or stone ring.

Banc Du -- "Might the Banc Du enclosure, with its extensive views across south-west Wales as far as the isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, have been a stopping place for the bluestones? Might they even have been erected here as a large stone circle?" (Parker Pearson et al, 2019). It's strange that this should be flagged up again, since Darvill and Wainwright demonstrated that there was nothing here other than a causewayed enclosure.