I have now made some revisions and layout adjustments to my online article called "Waun Mawn and the Search for Proto-Stonehenge". You can check the changes here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge
As you will see, I am even less impressed by the research methods and results of the MPP team than I was when this article was first published. I have tried to give an appropriate regional context to the current digging exercise and the claims being made concerning a "lost giant circle" with links to Stonehenge.
23 comments:
Excellent article - but McCarroll 2018 still doesn't appear in the references.
This was not from a published article. It was a written comment from Prof Danny CcCarroll, which I quoted with his permission:
"I had the pleasure to visit one of those sites, at Rhosyfelin, while the material was still exposed and was singularly unimpressed with the supposed evidence for quarrying activity; it all looked completely natural to me. At the time I thought that maybe I was just missing some subtle evidence that the trained eye of the archaeologist could discern, and that the many radiocarbon dates produced for the site would doubtless be used to critically test the quarrying hypothesis. Those dates have now been published in the journal Antiquity and in fact they lend absolutely no support whatsoever to the quarrying hypothesis; a fair appraisal would be that they actually falsify it conclusively. Unfortunately that is not the interpretation of the authors of what is, sadly, one of the worst papers I have ever read."
Agree with Philip Denwood.
Looks like our two comments have crossed in the sending, Brian......and you'll also be delighted to know Harry Kane has just got a long distance " screamer".............. so it's Poland 0 England 1
Hmmm -- then came the equaliser. And as for Wales, best not to mention it.....
Wales was very unfortunate not to win, from the highlights.... Bale is such a joy to watch even now.
One of those matches in which the side with 90% possession still doesn't manage to put it away. happens in rugby too, now and then.......
......those England fans with very long memories know this occurred back in the early 1970's in a World Cup qualifier, ironically also against Poland....
Not sure what any if this has to do with Stonehenge. Own goals/ open goals / failure to deliver / over-dependence on superstars?
Thanks for the comments from Danny McCarroll.
Published quite a long time ago, but no harm in repeating them.......
This is where Danny's comments were first published in 2018:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/05/another-book-review.html
In the bad old days cited sources for information had to come from books or from published (preferably peer-reviewed) papers. Now, however, things are "published" across a wide range of media. Blogs, web sites, newspaper articles, digital versions of conference papers, video lectures on YouTube -- these are all, according to the law, counted as "publications." Some, of course, are more reliable than others -- and some are completely free of any review or editorial control. But as we have pointed out frequently on this blog, the process of journal publication is now so corrupt that something appearing in a "learned" journal is just as likely to be rubbish as something published on Facebook. We see just how much the world has changed when a group of archaeologists gets its 2018 annual field excavation report published, without any editorial input whatsoever, by our local Bluestone Brewery..........
Hi Brian,
I was wondering in what capacity you are presently affiliated with Durham University?
Hi Simon -- none whatsoever. I left Durham in 1977, but Researchgate insists on publishing an affiliation, no matter how old. To show you how ludicrous it is, I got a note from somebody a couple of years ago congratulating me on being the most-cited Durham University member of staff in a particular month, even though my teaching career there was back in the Stone Age.......!!
I have now added the McCarroll item to the reference list. Thanks for pointing out the omission, Philip.
Brian and All who have made Comments, just to say on the matter of cited sources of information, "pers. comment" [personal comment] often appears in non -fiction books or publications including those to do with, say, archaeologists or geography. I did use "personal comment" in my Geography undergraduate dissertation way back when ........
"Personal communication" is also used.
An example: FROM The Making of Prehistoric Wiltshire, David Field & David McOmish, Notes, Chapter 2, 17 Hosfield pers comm
Over 3,500 reads of this article now, including 200 new ones. Rather a lot of people are taking it seriously..........
As Wales' Richard Burton described in the musical version of "The War of the Worlds" so it is with folk coming to read and reflect upon the updated version of Brian's article on Parker Pearson's Waun Maun dubious claims:
"......And still they come........"
Now at 3633 reads. I can see that about a third of people read the article properly, and the rest just read part of it. That probably means reading the abstract, looking at the pictures, and reading the conclusion. That is what I do too with scores of articles in learned journals --unless I am in "detailed scrutiny" mode.........
I should have used the latter method Brian recommends above, i.e.NOT being intent on reading the WHOLE of research articles, but concentrating instead on the introduction and the conclusions! An old school friend/ fellow Geographer recommended I do that and he got a First Class Honours Degree!
Ah, the trick is to choose those articles worthy of being read from top to bottom, and then to read those properly, with all of one's critical faculties switched on.........
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