It's in The Times today, so it must be true and it must be exciting.......... anyway, this is the latest big story, as also published in the latest edition of "British Archaeology" (editor: Mike Pitts). The Times article is, as we might expect, somewhat garbled, and includes a statement that the Avebury stones are made of granite.........Quote:
If the granite stones at West Kennet were carried south by people, rather than glacial movement, the distance is almost double that covered by the Preseli mountain bluestones that formed Stonehenge 5,000 years ago. The researchers wrote in British Archaeology that while more research was needed it was already “beyond doubt one of the most extraordinary and puzzling occurrences of non-local material in neolithic Britain”.
This is actually an old story, already covered on this blog back in November, following a video presentation by Josh Pollard:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/11/breaking-news-another-igneous-erratic.html
It's about the rotten granite or grus found at West Kennet, assumed to have come from Cheviot and now shown to have probably come from near Cunyan Crags. We know how keen Josh Pollard is on gigantic stone transporting expeditions, so it should come as no surprise that this is the premise upon which these latest fantastical revelations are based. But the occurrence of Cheviot and other erratics from the north in southern England has been known for many years, and in 1999 Olwen Williams-Thorpe and colleagues wrote a substantial paper on the erratic occurrences in the landscape around the northern fringes of London.
So none of this comes as a surprise to those of us who know anything about glaciation and postulated ice limits -- but I suppose that archaeologists have to make hay while the sun shines. I will try to take a look at the Brit Arch articles (there are two of them), and will report back.
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