THE BOOK
Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
To order, click
HERE

Monday 1 March 2021

Current Archaeology joins the media circus

This supposed stone hole does not even have a pentagonal base -- and any comparison with 
stone 62 at Stonehenge is entirely fanciful.

Here we go again.  Current Archaeology joins the media blitz by simply regurgitating the press releases and repeating all the Waun Mawn speculations without offering a shred of independent scrutiny.  Have the people in charge of magazines like this simply lost the capacity to analyse for themselves anything that is presented to them?  Have they no way of identifying archaeologists who are in pursuit of their ruling hyopotheses?  It can't be that difficult.  After all, all you have to do is to apply the standards of common sense to the reading of an article in a journal..........but maybe nobody actually reads articles any longer?  The scale of the gullibility within the archaeology community in the UK seems to me to be quite staggering.......

https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/news/stonehenge-a-recycled-welsh-monument.htm

Here is just one of the bits of nonsense in the "Current Archaeology" write-up:

"...........the project also revealed that one of the empty holes at Waun Mawn had a pentagonal base, very similar in size and shape to Stone 62 at Stonehenge. Subsequent analysis of stone flakes recovered from the bottom of this stonehole suggests that its former occupant was made of unspotted dolerite, very likely quarried from the same location as Stone 62 and the other two unspotted dolerites that have been identified at Stonehenge."

When looking at this supposed stone hole, the average primary school pupil would probably ask why one particular stone at Stonehenge is supposed to have fitted into it, when many thousands of other stones scattered all over the UK would probably have fitted better.  Stone flakes recovered from the bottom of the stone hole are no different from the broken dolerite fragments scattered right across this landscape -- any speculation about quarrying and distant "shared sources" just does not make any sense.

And so it goes on.

I wonder if all of the articles in this journal are equally unreliable?  

1 comment:

Tony Hinchliffe said...

The Maestro Pied Piper seems to have the hypnotic ability to lead, not just archaeology undergraduates a merry dance up to and round and round his imaginative Circle, but all those writing up his "discovery" in the red - top or posher Press, and now also Current Archaeology. Be very interesting to see to what extent Mike Pitts goes along with the general flow in his forthcoming account for "British Archaeology". Since he is also editor of Antiquaries Journal, I doubt whether he will step out of line very much, but he has already spoken up to say the stone holes so far revealed are too shallow to hold Stonehenge bluestones.