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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....
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Saturday 14 August 2021

The glacial transport theory is at least mentioned.....



Thanks to Tony for drawing to my attention a book called "Stonehenge - mysteries of the stones and landscape" by David Souden (1997) (Collins and Brown, in association with EH).  In a chapter called "The making of the megaliths" there is a mention of the bluestones and the two serious theories relating to stone movement.  The book was published in the same year as the "Science and Stonehenge" volume, with chapters by James Scourse and Christopher Green in which they attacked the glacial transport hypothesis with considerable vigour -- and the influence of their deliberations and conclusions is apparent in the words used by David Souden.

In the consideration of the human transport hypothesis, the author notes that "there are at least twenty-seven known monuments in SW Wales formed in part, or in whole, from the same 'bluestone' materials."  He says that these are in the same time-bracket as Stonehenge, and that Carnmenyn (Carn Meini) was the main source of the bluestones.  That has of course been overtaken by events -- the geologists now think that none of the Stonehenge bluestones came from there.  Also, the author should have reminded the reader that almost ALL of the stone  monuments, from all over Britain, are in the same time bracket.  He should also have reminded the reader that ALL of those monuments, across the British Isles, were simply built out of whatever stones happened to be conveniently lying around in the neighbourhood.  So the argument is twisted towards the establishment of a "link" between SW Wales and Stonehenge.  On the other hand I agree with him that "overland transportation" of the bluestones would have been "entirely out of the question" given the nature of the terrain.  He prefers the "sea route" explanation, in tune with most other authors of the past 25 years.

It's interesting that David Souden mentions the idea that there may have been an "earlier monument of standing stones" which was raided or else transported in its entirety from Wales to Stonehenge".  He also mentions a stone circle at Waun Mawn, failing to mention that early and flimsy speculations about its existence were hotly disputed even in 1997.

The consideration of the glacial transport hypothesis is brief and is heavily influenced by the thinking of Scourse and Green -- and we have already discussed that ad infinitum on this blog!  He says "the stones themselves have no visible signs of the scouring usually associated with the action of ice."  I disagree -- the stones look very much like a motley collection of glacial erratics, heavily abraded and in some cases faceted.  He asks why "these rocks, and no others, all of a broadly similar size and from very particular hillsides in Wales" were transported to Stonehenge; but that is the way with glacial erratics, picked up from some places and dropped in other places, in every glaciated area on the planet.

The author of this book concludes that the evidence points squarely at Late Neolithic transportation by people capable of impressive feats of organisation and thought.  I disagree with him, and consider his arguments flawed -- but all credit to him for not only mentioning the glacial transport theory but giving it some space.

3 comments:

T said...

I find it rather amusing that, for decades, those archaeologists who have written about or remarked upon the fact that various types of so - called " bluestone" fragments were found near the western end of the Greater Cursus, have INSISTED there is a probability that an earlier bluestone circle was constructed somewhere around there.

No archaeologist has seemed prepared to risk his reputation by even considering the likelihood that those fragments may have been deposited 450,000 years ago by the Irish Sea Glacier.

Basically, their level of arrogance is similar to their fundamental ignorance of Glaciology.

BRIAN JOHN said...

There are bluestone fragments all over the place in the Stonehenge landscape, and wherever they are found the host deposits are interpreted as later than 5,000 BP because "that is when the bluestones were imported." Another classic example of circular reasoning and confirmation bias. I shall do a post on this......

BRIAN JOHN said...

This is what MPP et al (2021) say about the history of circle speculation with respect to Waun Mawn : "These four monoliths—three now recumbent—originally stood in an arc, and were identified a century ago as remnants of a stone circle (Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales 1925: 258–59). Later researchers, however, classified this site as ‘doubtful or negative’ and ‘destroyed or unrecognisable’ (Grimes 1963: 150; Burl 1976: 371)."