I was intrigued by the manner in which Prof Mike Parker Pearson (in his recent video) used the dating evidence from Waun Mawn as his "clinching argument" relating to the imagined links between that site and Stonehenge. He went to great lengths to "fit" the Waun Mawn dates (or some of them) into the Stonehenge radiocarbon chronology -- using some to demonstrate "occupation of the site" at the right time, some to demonstrate the digging of sockets at the right time, others to date stone removal from the sockets at the right time, and others to date the export of the stones off to Stonehenge. At the right time, of course. Except, of course, that many of the dates were not at the right time at all, and could be conveniently ignored by MPP as being aberrations, bits of "residuality" or caused by contamination.
It's all very weird, but the MPP team has done it before, at both Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, where wide scatters of dates have been fitted into the Stonehenge chronology by ignoring most, using some, and assuming causal relationships. The dates actually falsify the quarrying hypothesis, but MPP and his colleagues claim that the dates (or at least a few carefully chosen ones) confirm it and fall neatly into their evolving narrative.
The only sensible way to interpret the dating evidence from these three sites (Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn) is to say that it is effectively irrelevant. If you were to visit any one of the thousands of Neolithic / Bronze Age megalithic sites in the British Isles, dig up organic samples and then date them, you would -- with virtually 100% confidence -- expect them to come out between 3,500 BC and 2,500 BC. OK -- some dates would come in outside of that "thousand year window", for variety of technical reasons and maybe the odd local cultural aberration, but that's how old the remains are because that is when the activity was going on. We have talked of Neolithic tribes and settlements before -- just type "Neolithic population" into the search box on this blog and you'll see the posts and the discussions. In the period under review agriculture and animal domestication were well established, people were beginning to use stones of all sizes for their structures, and they were living more sedentary lives, in settled communities. But there was still a lot of hunting and gathering going on, and temporary camps were still being used in convenient locations for hunting, gathering and fishing expeditions. As in many other parts of the British Isles, the landscape was well used and its resources were exploited on a much larger scale than during the Mesolithic or Early Neolithic, partly because the population was much larger. Land was cleared by burning, charcoal and other organic remains were left behind, and camp sites were used and abandoned, with debris (including tools) left behind to excite the interest of future generations.
So why are such innocuous and commonplace traces of occupation flagged up as having vast importance? Answer: because of the obsession with the Stonehenge bluestones. Let's be clear about this -- the only radiocarbon and OSL dates that have any significance for Stonehenge are the dates obtained from within the Stonehenge landscape. All the others are irrelevant as far as Stonehenge is concerned -- although of course of interest for the dating of activities within the landscape of North Pembrokeshire, or wherever.
As I said in my last post, if MPP and his diggers can be bothered to do some excavations at Carn Alw, Carn Bica, Bedd Arthur, Gors Fawr or Bedd yr Afanc, they would certainly obtain a host of radiocarbon dates that would match very tidily with those obtained from the three "bluestone" sites about which they have got very over-excited. In the absence of such control studies and comparative radiocarbon and OSL age determinations, the claims made about the uniqueness and the significance of the "bluestone quarries" and the "giant stone circle" are simply ludicrous.
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