I'm aware that my initial review of the recent "Antiquity" article on the "Lost Circle of Waun Mawn" was rather undercooked, so I have been through the article again and have elaborated on some of the points made. (One can do such things during a lockdown when there is a monsoonal gale going on just outside my window......) I am no more impressed by the article on this second reading than I was on the first -- and in many ways I am now even more surprised by its manifold shortcomings.
Here is a link to Researchgate:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349439694_The_Lost_Circle_at_Waun_Mawn_a_commentary
... and also on Academia:
https://www.academia.edu/45153660/The_Lost_Circle_at_Waun_Mawn_a_commentary
It's interesting that there is some feedback from Prof Tim Darvill on the new work:
“They’ve got a ragbag of stones and I’m rather sceptical of it being a stone circle,” says Tim Darvill at Bournemouth University, UK, who has carried out many studies of Stonehenge.Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2267537-stonehenge-was-built-with-bits-of-an-older-welsh-stone-age-monument/#ixzz6mvvKCPmC
On another site:
"There’s reason to be skeptical about the new study", says archaeologist Timothy Darvill of Bournemouth University in Poole, England. “Whether the discoveries at Waun Mawn are really the remains of a stone circle needs further work, including more extensive excavations to sample a wider area,” he says.
There are several problems with the new report, says Darvill. Known stone circles typically consist of evenly spaced stones, whereas the four stones discovered at Waun Mawn are irregularly spaced. Most large stone circles in western England and Wales have clearly defined entrances, but it’s not clear that the proposed entryway at Waun Mawn served that purpose. And some earthen sockets at the Welsh site might have been created by farmers clearing fields.
I don't often agree with Tim but on this we are as one........
4 comments:
I, too, am in agreement with Prof Tim, for once. He is sceptical, like me. But I don't think either of us is sKeptical, that is a horrible Americanism!!
Tony,
If Prof TD's predictive text device is anything like mine then he's even lucky to get sKeptical, I just had sPectical.
I get some VERY unpredictable, leftfield predictive text on my contraption: e.g. "phenomenology" is substituted for geomorphology!!!
Certain senior archaeologists might heartily approve!....
Can I tell you a story which goes back to 1975. Dad was renovating our holiday cottages, and he took us with a trailer to a get beams for a roof. We stopped outside the gate at the above site as he wanted to let the radiator cool down a bit. My sister & I we were about 6 or 7 yrs and asked if we could get out the car. Yes he said, and he climbed over the hedge eating an apple, to stretch his legs. My sister and I were just about to follow him when a woman with long hair flowing in the wind wearing long grey coat or robes approached us with a long stick. She asked who we were and she lent into us and began to tell us that they use to tie up & burn the prettiest girl of the village on the stone. She said something about rope and that we were to follow her, come come She beckoned to me with urgency, she said its just there come and look, what is where we said, she held her hand out and she vanished and a few feet awat dad appeared and asked who were we talking too- we told him and he looked concerned and he climbed back over the hedge exclaiming there's noone there . Dad told us to go back in the cat while he went to have another look. He came back to the car asking if we were telling fibs- we laughed as we thought he was joking. No we laughed and re told him what she said. We went home and to this day I wonder what that was.
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