As the old saying has it: There's none so blind as those who will not see.......
I have just done another update on my Researchgate "working paper" on Waun Mawn and the so-called "lost circle", and in doing so I was struck again at the extraordinary omissions in the much-hyped 2021 "Antiquity" paper written by Mike Parker Pearson . (There are lots of co-authors, but I suspect they had nothing to do with the paper -- they were just contributors to the research......)
Just to summarise:
1. The paper misrepresents the local geology by pretending that the nearest rhyolite and spotted dolerite outcrops are located at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, where (purely by chance) there are assumed to be bluestone quarries. Most seriously, the paper ignores the unspotted dolerite outcrops and scatter of erratics in the immediate vicinity of the excavated site.
2. The paper ignores other recumbent and standing stones in the neighbourhood that must be related culturally and chronologically to the one standing stone and three recumbent stones approximately on the circumference of the putative stone circle.
3. The paper pretends that the land surface at Waun Mawn is or was covered by blanket peat bog, presumably as an explanation for the paucity of artefacts or organic remains turned up during the dig. This is misleading. The vegetation nowadays is dry acid heath, and in the past it was probably well wooded since it was used as a deer park.
4. The paper ignores at least a dozen other significant prehistoric features in the vicinity, including two large circular embanked features, two smaller "ring cairns", four prominent standing stones, at least one quarry that must have been used in prehistoric times for the extraction of meta mudstone rubble, two rectangular structures, one large stone-walled enclosure on Waun Maes, several prominent embankments, at least three "stone settings", and various extraction pits or empty stone sockets.
Without taking these features into account it is impossible to assess the cultural context of the features excavated in 2017 and 2918. The excavation teams have been so obsessed with finding their "lost circle" and with the Stonehenge connection that they have paid no attention whatsoever to the surrounding landscape. Whoever did the refereeing of the "Antiquity" article, it is pretty obvious that he or she had never been anywhere near the site being investigated.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge
4 comments:
I am thinking of letting Ian Hislop at 'Private Eye' read what you've written here! A serious, popular satirist could get miles and miles out of this!
haha! But people would probably not believe it -- too far-fetched........ and then add the point that the MPP team has systematically and consistently refused, over a period of 5 years, even to acknowledge the existence of two papers in peer-reviewed journals that seriously question the "evidence" relating to quarrying at Rhosyfelin. Not to mention my two articles on Researchgate which present the evidence from Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn as seen by somebody who knows a bit about local geomorphology. Nobody would believe that around 12 senior researchers could exist in a state of denial for so long.
Oh, I disagree.....Ian Hislop has seen a lot of weird decisions made worldwide during his decades - long stint as editor of Private Eyee
Private Eyeee.......sounds like the intro to "The Now Show" on Radio Four.......of which, more anon......watch this space
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