Now that the focus at Waun Mawn (and indeed in the Preseli area more generally) has changed from trying to understand our Neolithic ancestors to trying to understand MPP and the Quest for the Holy Grail, one wonders what will come next.
I think we can make some educated guesses....
1. MPP has said on several occasions that he wants to complete further work at Waun Maun, but I have doubts about that for several reasons. First, since virtually nothing of interest has come out of the digs of 2017 and 2018, he is probably very worried that nothing of interest will come out of a 2021 or 2022 dig either -- and that might make a further dent in his ruling hypothesis. Second, in view of the paucity of results from the earlier digs, will anybody really want to fund any further works up there? (If I was in charge of the Rust Family Foundation or any other funding body, I would say that two years of grant aid is quite enough to be going on with, and give my money to somebody else. And third, it's not an easy place to dig, partly because of the exposure. In 2018 the digging volunteers and professionals had to brave horrendous weather, and at times the mood was close to revolutionary, as the TV programme confirmed (I had picked up on that too, from some of the diggers themselves.)
2. If they have got any sense at all, I hope the excavation team will move on and look at some of the other fascinating features at Waun Mawn, Waun Maes, Tafarn y Bwlch and Banc Llwydlos. At the latter place, in particular, with a settlement site that looks as if it might be Wales's Skara Brae, that should be the priority if funding and volunteers are available.
3. I predict that the research team will concentrate initially on investigating as many dolerite and rhyolite outcrops as possible, in the hope of finding further "matches" with samples from the Stonehenge bluestone monoliths and debitage. I get a sense, from reading the geology papers from Rob Ixer and Richard Bevins, that they are moving towards an acceptance that there are indeed as many as 30 different provenances included in the assemblage of rock types, and that means, according to the prevailing hypothesis, as many as 30 different quarries in the Preseli region. (Don't ask me why everything has to be quarried instead of picked up off the ground -- but ask the geologists that......). That all sounds rather absurd, but there is a lot of absurdity about these days.
4. Since MPP has stated in print on several occasions (because he desperately needs evidence of some sort, and there wasn't any at Waun Mawn) that he now thinks that stones were taken from N Pembs to Stonehenge from SEVERAL dismantled circles. I suspect that he secretly hopes that nobody will ever get to look for them, because then he can continue to assert that they are out there somewhere, just waiting to be discovered. He has looked at no less than ten "candidate sites" already, and found nothing.......
So watch this space........ I will report any developments just as soon as I get news of them.
My most educated guess is that the quarrying / Proto-Stonehenge-Stonehenge - dismantling - stone shifting narrative has now become so convoluted and ludicrous that it cannot possibly withstand any further elaboration. So the MPP team will sit tight until the 3 new Stonehenge books are published, this year and next, hope that nobody much will read them, and then move on quietly to other things. That would leave the field open to Dyfed Archaeology or Cadw to get on with some impartial and objective research on the prehistoric remains of the area, allowing things to get back to normal.
Ref: https://www.sidestone.com/books/stonehenge-for-the-ancestors-part-1
STONEHENGE FOR THE ANCESTORS: PART 1Landscape and Monuments
Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Chris Tilley & Kate Welham | 2020
Paperback ISBN: 9789088907029 | Hardback ISBN: 9789088907036 | Imprint: Sidestone Press | Format: 210x280mm | 606 pp. | The Stonehenge Riverside Project Volume 1 | Language: English | 202 illus. (bw) | 190 illus.
7 comments:
For the last couple of editions, my British Archaeology magazine has a rather exciting looking advert for Olympus ZRF on its back page. This was the tool used to classify the sarsens at Stonehenge. The advert points to this blog:
https://www.olympus-ims.com/en/insight/a-monumental-discovery-xrf-sheds-light-on-the-origins-of-stonehenge/
If the process is so 'quick and easy' (there must be complication), could it be used for a survey of all rock outcrops on Preseli? Even if it was only in reconnaissance form needing further detailed analysis, it could stimulate a transformation in understanding.
Or is each outcrop so variable that the results would be useless or misleading.
Of course, I'm speaking as one who knows nothing about this aspect of geology.
Dave
There's such a caboodle of characters desperate to be having their names involved with all the written - up reflections on the Preseli - Stonehenge ruminations that it's brought to my mind this James Taylor song called "Line 'Em Up" about the aftermath of Watergate for then - President Richard Nixon:-
" I remember Richard Nixon back in '74
And the final scene at the White House door
And the staff lined up to say good - bye
Tiny year in his shifty little eye... "
Dave -- the problem with the X-ray gadgetry (and indeed with traditional geochemistry and petrography) is that there is so much variability in the outcrops that no two samples come out the same. At Rhosyfelin, for example, all the sample slides look different, and what causes those differences is what Rob Ixer and Richard Bevins are mulling over. That's why I have always argued -- and other geologists agree with me on this -- is that you cannot do geological provenancing to within a few sq metres, because you do not know the extent over which that particular layer might be exposed. Have been saying this to them for years, but they refuse to listen......
The quarry hunting imperative overrides everything else.
I recall getting a letter from Olwen a long time ago about the huge variability in the rhyolite at Carn Alw -- meaning that the analysed samples from that big rocky mass may or may not be giving a "typical" picture of the geochemistry or petrography. Might some of the Stonehenge rhyolite debitage have come from Carn Alw, in spite of denials by Ixer and Bevins? She seemed to think it was possible.......
Would the XRF technique mean that a whole outcrop could be analysed at metre interval network, to demonstrate what is going on there?
The speed of the process and relative lower cost would be a benefit, but the problem would then be the huge mass of data that could be used to answer whatever question you wanted to model.
Does this variability include different parts of a single standing stone?
That sounds like an excellent idea, Dave. Something like this would certainly have benefitted the Ixer /Bevins research, since each part of the rock face at Rhosyfelin reveals a different part of the foliated rhyolite sequence. I observed that the sequence currently exposed is around 2 m thick on the "face" assumed to be a quarry. Would need to get some specialist advice on this...... Of course, the full sequence in the whole crag will be at least 20m. The wide variation in the characteristics of the Rhosyfelin samples must be because they have come from different parts of this sequence.
Post a Comment