Fig 20 from the Haverfordwest Memoir, showing the distribution of erratic boulders discovered by the field surveyors. No ice limit is shown -- they knew that the ice flowed well to the east of Pembrokeshire. The stippled areas represent areas of sands and gravels.
I have been looking again at the Geological Survey's Memoir No 228, published in 1914 and covering "The Country around Haverfordwest." It also covers a large swathe of country eastward of the county town, as far as the border with Carmarthenshire. It's noteworthy that the authors were Strahan, Cantrill, Dixon, Jones and -- here is the important name -- HH Thomas.
In the section of the memoir on Glacial Deposits, the "local details" are attributed to each of the key field researchers, and the section relating to the stretch from Whitland through to Haverfordwest was written by Cantrill and by HHT himself. Thomas was clearly the man tasked with describing the fluvioglacial deposits of this stretch. Like the others, he knew that glacier ice had covered the whole of the area and that it had flowed from Pembrokeshire out into Carmarthen Bay and well to the east.
In a previous post, I wrote this:
In the Pembroke and Tenby Memoir, as in the others relating to West Wales, a vast amount of evidence (collected by Thomas, Cantrill, Strahan, Dixon and Jones) is presented which shows that glacial deposits are widespread, and that erratic transport was not just possible but well documented. In the memoir, there is reference to erratics transported from Pembrokeshire to the Swansea area and to Pencoed in Glamorgan. Thomas knew that boulders could be carried by ice for at least two hundred miles -- and indeed he was perfectly familiar with big erratics of Scottish origin in Pembrokeshire -- and yet he deemed the transport of Stonehenge bluestones to have been impossible.
I am struck yet again by the sheer illogicality of Thomas's position on the transport of the bluestones, since the human transport hypothesis with regard to the Stonehenge bluestone boulders flew in the face of all the evidence that he and his Geological Survey colleagues had so painstakingly collected over the years of fieldwork. They deduced that ice carried spotted dolerite (diabase) and other igneous erratics from Pembrokeshire and Scotland at least as far east as Glamorgan -- but without any solid evidence to support him, Thomas argued that the glacier responsible could not have progressed any further towards Somerset and Wiltshire. Weird.........
I'm forced to the conclusion -- yet again -- that Thomas was motivated not by good science but by the desire for notoriety, when he gave that famous lecture in 1921.
Ironically, Brian, somewhere on the map you illustrate from the 1914 Haverfordwest Memoir, to the east of Haverfordwest, is located the fairly recent Bluestone Holiday Park,of which I think I am correct in saying Geoff Wainwright was a Director whilst he was alive. (My daughter and family have stayed there 3 times).
ReplyDeleteSo you are stating that HH Thomas was illogical in arguing that the glacier couldn't have proceeded any further than Glamorgan, towards Somerset and Wiltshire, because he had his own notorious axe to grind, which he did 7 years later?
Yes -- the Bluestone resort is just a nice piece of marketing, based upon the fact that the word "bluestone" has a certain marketing or branding value. For the same reason we have "Bluestone Brewery" just up the road. Neither of the two locations has anything to do with bluestone outcrops, let alone with Stonehenge. But there you go........ it's a free word. Sort of.
ReplyDeleteI am still mystified why HTT, who knew so much about the glaciation of Pembs, and the rest of South Wales, should have declared the glacial transport of the bluestones to have been impossible -- thus flying in the face of virtually all of his geological peers.
So HH Thomas was affected by hubris in his "desire for notoriety", as you put it. I suppose he'd have called it his desire for celebrity status and fame.
ReplyDeleteRob Ixer, Richard Bevins, and Mike Parker Pearson & Team should take note - it's not too late to modify some of your claims.
A common facet, in the last hundred years or so, of geologists' claims about the mode of transport (human or glacial) of the Pembrokeshire bluestones, is that HH Thomas, Rob Ixer & Richard Bevins all made their pronouncements to the Society of Antiquaries and/or through its Journal. By doing thus, their messages reached a very wide and seemingly august audience, and a consequence their messages also reached newspapers, radio and, in modern times, TV.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this doesn't mean their claims are valid!
As I have said many times "Antiquity" is culpable, both in the publication of papers that most other journals would have rejected outright, and in the promotion of what I still think is a hoax. Like the MPP gang, it is now in so deep that there is no way that it can extricate itself without looking very foolish indeed.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course it is also complicit in scientific malpractice, since it is deliberately perpetrating the myth that the MPP quarrying and human transport hypothesis is essentially unchallenged. The Antiquity editor is perfectly aware that the hypothesis has been challenged in the peer-reviewed literature -- and still it pretends that it is greeted with universal acclamation. Despicable.