Pembroke Castle and Silbury Hill -- scheduled ancient monuments that probably do actually exist. As for the "bluestone quarries" and the "lost circle", we have a problem...........
I have discovered that requests are in for the "ancient monument" scheduling of Craig Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog as Neolithic quarries and for the revision of the scheduling citation for Waun Mawn on the basis that there is a "lost stone circle" there. These are the guidance notes published by Cadw:
It's open to anybody to request the scheduling of a particular site or structure, but one can only assume that the requests in these three cases have come directly from MPP and his team. This is a pretty extraordinary state of affairs, given that there is nothing visible at any of these sites to tell us what they are, or might have been. All we have are some "interim reports" which have at last come to light, and some opinions articulated in three papers published in "Antiquity" journal. The other glossy articles and book chapters are just froth around the edges, issued for marketing purposes. The flood of geological papers by Bevins and Ixer is entirely irrelevant in this case, since the publications tell us something about provenancing, but nothing at all about how stones and fragments were picked up and transported from A to B.
The only traces of human activity to have emerged from the digs between 2011 and 2021 relate to camping and hunting activities, and we can be sure that such traces would be discovered in any excavation adjacent to any prominent rocky crag anywhere in Wales, except maybe adjacent to very exposed locations in high mountain areas. Prehistoric camp sites may be very interesting for students of the hunting and gathering economy, but I am not at all sure that they are worthy of ancient monument designation or of enhanced levels of protection.
Rhosyfelin is of course already protected to some degree, by a RIGS designation, and I think we have some reason to be concerned about the actions of the MPP digging team in destroying the sediment sequence at the site, removing and dumping hundreds of tonnes of deposits that were considered to be of no interest, and leaving the landforms at the site vastly changed from those that were originally encountered. In other words, the site is considerably rearranged and damaged, and the diggers would not have got away with it if the RIGS designation had been in force at the time of the excavations.
At any rate, I hope we can count on Cadw and the other organizations involved to be very cautious indeed in their assessment of the requests that are now on file. Powerful evidence of quarrying and "lost circle" construction will have to be brought forward, and I simply do not believe that such evidence exists.
Cadw will not want its reputation to be sullied by getting caught up in hoaxes or pieces of fraudulent research work -- and they would look very foolish indeed if they were to schedule something that simply a figment of somebody's fertile imagination. So they will look very hard at the hard "evidence" presented, and will ask for it to be submitted in detailed and archived final reports. Then they will consult widely and gather in as many independent opinions as they can. They will certainly not be swayed by personal reputations, press coverage or TV programmes fronted by Alice Roberts. There will be consultations on whatever they recommend. The bar will be set very high. Don't expect any decisions any time soon.
Even if these sites are scheduled -- which I think is highly unlikely -- there is scope for protests to be entered and for scheduling to be revoked. So things could get very messy indeed........
3 comments:
Regarding Fantasy Landscape Features, having purchased the latest edition of the English Heritage Stonehenge Guidebook (2017) I was delighted to find NO mention of the "prehistoric Preseli quarries". A triumph for common sense and not being inclined into the temptation of speculation by one - eyed interlopers with their tame geologists
Well, it is reassuring that some people out there recognise that an opinion is an opinion and is not necessarily the truth........ the 2017 edition must have been written after the publication of the 2015 Rhosyfelin article by MPP and his colleagues, and the robust responses in those two 2015 papers by Dyfed, John and me.
Also, it was splendid to find, in the Gift Shop of the Stonehenge Visitor Centre, 13 copies of Brian's "The Stonehenge Bluestones" (2018) on the bookshelves. So at least Stonehenge's visitors from all over the world have the opportunity to leaf through this book and also to purchase it.
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