The Rhosyfelin shrubbery

 

Almost six years have passed since the archaeologists finished digging at Rhosyfelin, and I called over there today to see how things might have changed.   What I found was the upper part of the site completely choked with brambles and the lower part (see photo above)  transformed into a shrubbery, with birch, hazel, gorse and other plants taking over the "debris slope" left behind when the exploration pit was filled in.  Some of the saplings are already 2m high -- and within a few more years most of the big stones will have disappeared beneath a blanket of greenery.

I was reminded of the responsibility placed on archaeologists who conduct digs in places such as this to record their finds accurately and objectively, for posterity, given the fact that a pit opened up exposes the truth, which is then covered or obliterated when the dig is finished.  The excavation, involving the shifting of hundreds of tonnes of sediments, was filled in before it could be examined carefully by people other than the excavation team, and now the rest of the site will soon be rendered very difficult for anybody else to examine either.  Luckily, the open pit was examined by my colleagues Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and I before it was filled in, and we were able to bring our own experience to bear in the interpretation of what was exposed.  Tragically, the key publications relating to this site, written by Parker Pearson and his team, are essentially worthless, since interpretations, foregone conclusions and evidence presentation are so mixed up that proper scientific scrutiny was rendered impossible...........

Quite literally, the evidence is buried and lost.  Very convenient indeed.