A Tale of Two Narratives

Indiana Jones and the Quarry of Gloom

It's only when you dig about a bit, and pay close attention, that you discover that there are two narratives going on here, in the wilds of North Pembrokeshire.  Both of the narratives are assiduously promoted by a certain archaeologist who does not particularly wish to remain anonymous.  And they are dearly loved by the media, who can be counted on to spread the word at the drop of a hat, with banner headlines, beautiful illustrations and lashings of purple prose.

Narrative one: 

This is pretty well known by now.  It explains how and why the bluestones of the Preseli district were quarried from remote locations far from the coast, and were carried or shipped (depending on which version of the narrative you are listening to) off to Stonehenge.  They were of course sacred stones, embodying the spirits of the ancestors, and they were carried during a great act of political unification, with tribes from the far west of Wales contributing their own special stones to the great monument of Stonehenge that was being built on Salisbury Plain.  The stones were of course special, but it has never been explained why they all came from the west, and not from the north, east or south.  But we'll let that pass.  Neither has it ever been explained why the monoliths (which for the most part simply look like weathered and rounded glacial erratics) had to be quarried rather than simply being picked up from the ground surface in the Preseli uplands.  We'll let that pass too.  The monoliths, made from a vast range of different rock types, were of course imbued with ritual and political significance; but of even greater importance to the tribes involved was the act of quarrying the stones in all but impossible locations and the act of carrying them cross-country through bogs and forests, uphill and downhill in very hostile terrain.  The suffering and the loss of life must have been appalling, but the bonding and the sense of triumph on the completion of the task made it all worthwhile.  Then of course, because neither the geology nor the radiocarbon dates made any sense, the idea of the "temporary bluestone parking ground" was conceived and promoted as a part of the narrative.  So it came to pass that the bluestone monoliths were parked in several stone circles (including a giant lost circle at Waun Mawn) for 500 years or so, or until such times as the radiocarbon dates could be made to fit.  You know the sort of thing -- and so it goes on, getting ever more elaborate with every successive digging season............

Narrative two:

This is much more exciting.  Once upon a time an archaeology professor (who maybe saw himself as a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones) decided, on the basis of some moderately interesting provenancing work by a couple of geologists, that the bluestone monoliths at Stonehenge must have been quarried from very difficult places by people who believed them to be imbued with the spirits of the ancestors.  The shapes, geological characteristics and dimensions of the Stonehenge bluestones flew in the face of this theory, and most geologists, geomorphologists and glaciologists thought that the stones could have been entrained and carried by ice for (at the very least) the greater part of their journey.  But the great professor refused to be cowed or diverted away from his quest.  He persisted, and assembled a team of willing helpers around him.  He found it hard to raise the funding he needed for his fieldwork, because it was labelled as "too speculative" -- but he persisted, and at last managed to rustle up the funds.  And lo and behold, in the years that followed he found not one bluestone quarry but two!  Still there were those who were sceptical, but he decided simply to ignore all the objections raised.  He decided that there must be other quarries too, waiting to be discovered.  Even more exciting!  Everything on the digs looked very scientific, but the radiocarbon dating evidence from the two "discovered" quarries did not fit with the required timing of the quarrying activities, so the good professor conceived the idea that the quarried stones were initially used in a giant lost circle somewhere in the vicinity of the quarries, and were then, after the passage of 500 years or so, removed lock stock and barrel off to Stonehenge as part of a corporate act of political unification and homage to a great warrior tribe resident on Salisbury Plain. He searched at Waun Mawn for this great circle, but the technical wizards found no supporting evidence.  But he persisted, and looked at eight or nine possible sites -- all to no avail.  At this point most diggers would have given up.  But this professor was made of sterner stuff, and retained his complete faith in the correctness of his hypothesis.  He decided to go back to Waun Mawn and to revert to good old-fashioned digging with spades and trowels.  And lo and behold, he found the sockets of lost standing stones, more or less neatly arranged on the periphery of a giant lost circle which had the same circumference (give or take a few metres) as something convenient at Stonehenge.  Through gales and deluges the great professor and his sturdy helpers laboured on, finding more and more titbits of information that could be passed off as evidence.  And so it continues to this day, and everybody knows about the bluestones, the quarries and the great lost circle.  And the great professor, vindicated and famous throughout the land, lived happily ever after.

The second narrative is much the more important of the two, and of course it has captured the public imagination.  It is an architypal quest narrative.  Those who are familiar with mythology -- and with TV screenplay formats -- will recognize all the essential components.  This is a typical summary of the quest format:

The Quest is the plot type most likely to have a group of main characters rather than one protagonist in the main eye of the story. The rest of the party generally takes one of four appearances:
A close friend who is loyal to our hero, but doesn’t have much else going for him or her;
An assistant who is the polar opposite of the hero mentally, physically, and emotionally;
A generic mass of identity-less colleagues who don’t get names because they’re not alive long enough to matter; or
A balanced party of brains, heart, and strength who support the hero, or who count the hero as one of their own.

The Call
This is what  kickstarts the plot and gives the hero and the rest of the party a mission to accomplish.

The Journey
Obviously our heroes are not going to get to their end goal that easily. Most of the journey is over enemy territory or hostile land, and obstacles pop up left and right, like dandelions in the spring. Obstacles come in several flavours, like monsters (kill/escape, rinse, repeat), temptations (see a good portion of the Odyssey for examples), a rock and a hard place (Scylla and Charybdis being the classic example), or a journey to the underworld. Amid these tests come periods of rest where the party can regain their strength (or count the bodies, if the party is the third type).

Arrival and Frustration
They’re so close! Our heroes can see the Emerald City! They’re almost there! Oh, wait, the Wizard won’t actually help them until they kill the Wicked Witch of the West. Damn. Well, that’s annoying. Our heroes still have some work to do before they actually complete their Quest.

The Final Ordeals
Now come the final tests of our heroes. Often these come in sets of three, like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Usually our main hero is the only one who can complete the final test. Success! And then our intrepid band of heroes (or just one hero, in case everyone else is dead) makes an amazing escape from death, either by running away or by killing whatever bad guys are left.

The Goal
Hurrah! Our hero(es) have completed their quest, and get their treasure/kingdom/princess/trip home.

Most stories involving the Holy Grail are Quests, as is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Princess Bride, and Finding Nemo. If information is considered to be the sought-after item in the Quest, most police/legal procedurals could be considered miniature quests. By varying the elements of the Quest story, the plot type can still stay fresh.

As indicated above, the quest narrative is used all over the world, and I remember a brilliant Irish storyteller telling the tale of the unlikely hero who, over and again, "should have went home", but decided instead to press on towards his goal.  There is no doubt at all that Tomos TV, the makers of the BBC TV programme featuring MPP and Alice Roberts, in February 2021, were perfectly clear about the mechanisms they wanted to use to tell the story, not about Waun Mawn and Rhosyfelin, but about MPP -- his persistence in the face of innumerable setbacks, his professional skills,  his leadership, and his clarity of vision.  This was picked up by various reviewers.  In short, MPP is the HERO in the drama, and we are told about HIS quest and sucked into HIS personal narrative.  Alice is the sidekick or the facilitator, used to draw the complexity of the story out of him for the edification of the viewers.  If you missed it, here is the programme in all its glory, on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/Ie7XhHwnuA4

Just read the comments on the YouTube page -- they are far more revealing than the video itself........... 

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So there we are then.  This isn't about bluestones, quarries or stone circles.  It has been distorted by the media so that it is now really about one man and his quest.  His quest for the truth?  The truth doesn't matter in the post-processual world.  The quest is one with fame and fortune as its ultimate objective, and not much else really matters.  As Wagner and many others told us a long time ago, the gold ring is a very dangerous thing.