The new Carn Goedog paper

It's interesting that the new Carn Goedog paper, published on Researchgate just 4 days ago, has already had 181 reads.    I know who some of the readers are, because Researchgate shares some randomised information --  suffice to say that some of them have a "professional" interest in what I have to say, since they are cited in the text.

Prof MPP and his colleagues will probably pretend that this article does not exist, just as they have pretended that those two articles published in 2015 do not exist -- but sure as eggs is eggs they will read it in short order, and know all about its contents and its conclusions......


DOI:
10.13140/RG.2.2.12677.81121


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332739336_Carn_Goedog_and_the_question_of_the_bluestone_megalith_quarry


Abstract

Geological analyses show that the dolerite sills of the Fishguard Volcanic series on the north flank of Mynydd Preseli are geochemically heterogenous, with substantial lateral and vertical variations. Many sills are still inadequately mapped and sampled. The Carn Goedog sill is exposed at the surface at Carngoedog, Carn Breseb and Carn Ddafad-las and at multiple other locations, with a surface outcrop extending over at least 450,000 sq m. While geological differences have been demonstrated between the three main tors, claims of “precise provenancing” of certain Stonehenge fragments to the Carngoedog tor are of questionable validity. Even more dubious is the claim that nine of the Stonehenge bluestone monoliths have been quarried at Carn Goedog, since eight out of the nine are heavily abraded boulders and slabs which look like ancient glacial erratics rather than sharp-edged and fresh pillars extracted from the parent rock. Geomorphological studies on the extensive Carn Goedog tor reveal that it is dominated by terraces, crags and hollows with very little scree. Pillars suitable for use as monoliths are restricted to a few small areas on the tor, in locations difficult to access. Jumbled frost-shattered blocks of all sizes dominate the tor landscape, with dolerite outcrops in various stages of disaggregation and collapse under gravity. There are many boulders and slabs with sub-rounded edges, indicative of either many millennia of weathering or of abrasion and redistribution by glacier ice. Frequent moulded and smoothed surfaces on the tor also indicate that the influence of over-riding ice (probably during both the Anglian and Devensian glacial episodes) has been considerable. Examinations of the supposed “Neolithic quarry” site on the south flank of the tor have revealed no traces of quarrying, apart from a few signs of modern activity. All of the features referred to as “engineering features” are found to be entirely natural. Stone tools, if they are correctly labelled as such, owe nothing to quarrying activities, and are present simply because there is a long history of intermittent occupation at this site adjacent to a major routeway across Mynydd Preseli. Soft shale “wedges” supposedly used in the process of extracting fracture-bounded pillars from the rock face are entirely natural; indeed the idea that soft pieces of shale would be hammered into dolerite fractures defies the principles of rock mechanics. Radiocarbon dates ranging from Mesolithic to medieval times do nothing to underpin the quarrying hypothesis. It is concluded that there is no Neolithic quarry at Carngoedog, and that if blocks of spotted dolerite have indeed been extracted and transported away from the vicinity of the tor, the agency was glacier ice.

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This is the Carn Goedog paper from MPP and his team.  Why on earth didn't they do any proper geological and geomorphological fieldwork on the tor and its surroundings before rushing into print?

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.


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