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Saturday 11 May 2019

The Boles Barrow quarry


I was looking the other day at Christopher Chippindale's 1983 book called "Stonehenge Complete" and noticed that he has a section on Boles Barrow (around p 186).

There are two things of particular interest:

1.  He is pretty familiar with the correspondence relating to the Boles Barrow excavation of 1801, when William Cunnington and Wyndham dug down ten feet and found a "floor of flints" with many human remains.  The stones making up the bulk of the long barrow ridge were for the most part sarsens, but much smaller than those used for the trilithons, pillars and lintels at Stonehenge.  Ten of the "best stones" were taken to Heytesbury and set into a circle around a weeping ash tree in Cunnington'e garden.  He noticed that one was not a sarsen, but was of the same rock type as some of the upright stones in the inner circle at Stonehenge.   Later on his grandson BH Cunnington noticed this reference in the old papers  and latched on to its significance.  He tracked it down and discovered that it had been moved across the road into the grounds of Heytesbury House.   It was a piece of spotted dolerite weighing "about 750 lb".   Its importance was thus well known, but it could not be scheduled because it was a "loose stone".  But when Siegfried Sassoon bought the house in 1934 he presented the stone to Salisbury Museum, where it remains. (It looks like a broken stone -- so there is still a possibility that a bit of the original might still be found somewhere else......)  It's interesting that Chippindale -- like Mike Parker Pearson -- has no doubts at all about the authenticity of this lump of spotted dolerite  as having come from the Neolithic burial mound of Boles Barrow, and no doubt about it having been present on the chalk downs long before Stonehenge was dreamed of, let alone constructed.

2.  Chippindale draws attention to the "quarry ditches" which have been smashed up by Army vehicles around the flanks of the "seemingly unimpressive earth mound."   The ditches and scars left by the people who built long barrows are not often remarked upon, but they had to get their raw materials from somewhere, and naturally enough they would not have carried soil, rubble and stones from far away if there was plenty close at hand.  We see the same thing on Carningli Common, where the burial cairn called Carn Briw  is surrounded by little pits from which boulders and stones have been taken.  
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/04/carn-briw-stone-collection-zone.html  

Economy of effort was clearly the basic rule, and Chippindale accepts that sarsens, bluestone (or bluestones) and chalk rubble and soil were all counted as "building materials" and dug up in the immediate vicinity of the burial site.  Indeed, as I have speculated before, it may be that the abundant availability of these materials may well have been a key locational factor.  Forget about solar solstices, planetary and lunar alignments, ley lines, sighting lines, hilltop prominences and magnificent views............  we are talking about a construction team seeking to get a job done as efficiently as possible.

As I have said often before, if 80 bluestones were quarried and then carried all the way from Preseli to Stonehenge by our Neolithic ancestors, it would have been an aberration of truly spectacular proportions, since there is no history either before or afterwards of any long-distance carriage of monoliths. Such a project would have defied all the rules of prehistoric engineering.

The quarrying or stone collection area around the Bronze Age (?) burial mound of Carn Briw

9 comments:

TonyH said...

There may well be an as yet undiscovered Neolithic henge monument nearby in the Wylye river valley adjacent to Warminster, according to former English Heritage field archaeologist David Field. Also, there are many long barrows between Boles Barrow and Bishopstrow.

TonyH said...

Perhaps MPP's next magnus opus, when he has lost faith in Preseli giving up the secrets he was convinced he would find, will be to turn his attention to Boles Barrow and/or the putative henge near Warminster. Would he find bluestones?

BRIAN JOHN said...

I doubt it. MPP only finds what he is looking for.

Alex Gee said...

MPP could well find Bluestones! They don't half get about.

TonyH said...

Absolutely, Alex. For example, I think there's one outside the Service Station on the A36 Warminster Bypass, next to a great big bit of English Heritage propaganda/mythology in the form of an advertisement.

MPP's favourite Irish band Blarney U2 song is:- "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For....". He'll never give up.Fantastabulouso!

BRIAN JOHN said...

Did you mention that stone before, Tony? Tell us more.......

TonyH said...

Haven't passed the stone and the Warminster Services where it stands for a while, but I did remark on it on the Blog at the time.

NGR is approximately 863465. It's close to the junction of the A350 and the A36. What if it was unearthed during the biuilding of the Warminster Bypass, on which it lies?

To quote Bob Dylan, Julie Driscoll and the Absolutely Fabulous theme tune, "If My Memory Serves Me Well", it is close to the entrances to the Travel Lodge and the Burger King. Right near it a gurt big brazen advertisement for Stonehenge and all its singing - and - dancing and highly ripping - off "facilities", notably the Visitor Centre.

Looks like it could be a blue stone to me. Who knows!........ Arn Hill long barrow is up above it less than 2 miles away on the edge of the Plain, and that had an orthostat in it when dug donkeys years past (David Field). I think someone else made an additional comment about having seen this ?blue stone.

BRIAN JOHN said...

We had a bit of a discussion about a year ago -- haven't had the chance to look myself....https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-warminster-boulders.html

TonyH said...

Yes, Brian, extremely easy for you to get over to this spot from Nunney next time you visit. Do let me know, and we can meet up again, it's equally easy to access for me from home.

That discussion we had a year ago, April 2018, is well worth others reading.