The Waun Mawn "circle diameter"

The famous painting by JC Young of the most prominent standing stone at Waun Mawn.  This one is not a part of the putative stone circle.

The standing stone at the northern edge of the putative stone circle.

In his latest (Bluestone Brewery) publication, Prof Mike Parker Pearson makes great play of the "equivalence" of the diameters of the putative stone circle at Waun Mawn and the outer ditch at Stonehenge -- claiming that both are 110m.  Clearly that is an attractive proposition if you are trying to prove that the Waun Mawn circle (if it existed) was a "proto-Stonehenge" and that it was dismantled here before being carted off to Salisbury Plain.

How realistic is it to make this link?

First up, as we have explained in other posts, the "proof" of a circle here is extremely shaky, and as the evidence currently stands, we cannot accept that there ever was a stone circle here. If there was, what diameter did it have, and how many stones might it have contained?

On the diameter, the essential problem is that there are only four stones that might be interpreted as part of an arc, and they are irregularly spaced and difficult to place on any circumference at all.  In his 2012 book MPP said on p 283:  "Andrew (Chamberlain" pointed out that the diameter and spacing of this possible former circle would have been almost exactly the same as that of the Aubrey Hole Circle at Stonehenge."  So in 2012 the calculations were that the circle had a diameter of c 86m.  Other older calculations placed the diameter at c 100m.  In 2017 MPP stated that the circle had a diameter of 115m, and in 2018 he said it was 110m.  My best calculation initially was that the circle might have had a diameter of 140m, although that would have taken the southernmost stones over the lip of the Waun Mawn "platform".

 

So there is a lot of disagreement as to how large the stone circle might have been.  However, MPP and his colleagues have obviously settled on 110m because that helps to establish a Stonehenge link -- and so the 2017 and 2018 digs were devoted to the investigation of a range of locations on a carefully surveyed circumference. This much is obvious from the 2018 map published by the Brewery.

This is the jolly map showing the positions of the existing stones and the so-called stone sockets described in 2018.  As we can see, the method of research used here is "assumptive research" -- in which the archaeologists have set out their hypothesis and then set out to find the evidence to prove it.    As we know, the "stone sockets" found are anything but convincing, and they have been designated as sockets largely because they are on, or close to, the circumference of the preferred circle.  In my view there are slight depressions, hollows and pits like this all over the Waun Mawn moorland, down to the undulating nature of the till and broken bedrock interface and down to small-scale stone extraction and rearrangement on the many prehistoric features which I have flagged up but which MPP and his team have ignored.  The evidence of a stone circle is scanty enough as it is, but where are the control digs on other parts of the moorland which might convince sceptics like me that the "sockets" enumerated are really unique and significant?

One final point.  The "matching" of the Waun Mawn "stone circle" with the circumference and diameter of the outer ditch at Stonehenge really is rather weird.  MPP and his colleagues are not talking of two stone circles that might be related, but one stone circle and one earthwork which did not, as far as we know, involve any stones.   By common consent, the outer ditch at Stonehenge was dug at a very early stage, at least 5,000 years ago.  The stone settings came much later, and if (as suggested by MPP) the Aubrey Holes held bluestones, the diameter of that circle must have been c 86m.

As far as we know, the stone circles of the British Isles are nearly all dated to the Bronze Age.  By suggesting a link between a Neolithic earthwork at Stonehenge and a possible Bronze Age standing stone setting at Waun Mawn, what is MPP getting at?  Is he really suggesting that the 110m diameter was something recorded and something significant?  Is he suggesting that the outer ditch measurement was somehow transmitted from Stonehenge to Waun Mawn and used for the setting of a 110m stone circle which was then dismantled and carted off to Stonehenge, where the bluestones were later used in a stone setting that was much smaller?  Or was the measurement first used at Waun Mawn and then transmitted to Stonehenge prior to the excavation of the outer ditch?

Does anybody have a clue what MPP is on about?  I grow weary, and need a cup of coffee.....