The 415 large pits investigated, using various techniques. Many more smaller pits are not shown on this map.
Journal of Archaeological Science
Available online 9 May 2022, 105557
De Smedt et al
"Novel insights into prehistoric land use at Stonehenge by combining electromagnetic and invasive methods with a semi-automated interpretation scheme."
Anyway, I have come to the view that the article is completely devalued because the authors have looked at hundreds of pits and hollows across the landscape, using electromagnetic surveys, boreholes and excavations and have recognized that some of them are probably tree throws, solution hollows or shallow "quarrying pits" used for the extraction of clay or building rubble or maybe even flint nodules. They were heavily focussed on trying to decide which of the pits (especially the larger and circular ones) might have been "anthropogenic" and which might be explained by social factors, with concentrations or clustering in settled or "special" areas. But the whole research project, as far as I can see, is based upon the assumption that all of the monoliths at Stonehenge were imported from far away. They do not even mention the possibility that some -- let alone all -- of the sarsens and bluestones might have been collected up in the very area they were examining. It may well be that more than a hundred pits and hollows across this landscape are the very places from which sarsens and bluestones were extracted for use in the Stonehenge stone settings. That, as an hypothesis, should have been mentioned and it should have been examined.
There is very little analysis here of the sediment fills in the examined pits -- this is unfortunate, because I would have liked some detailed information regarding the nature of the sediments that might have been associated with extracted or removed large lumps of stone!
The radiocarbon dates obtained from organic materials in the examined pits were preferentially obtained for the big pits that were assumed to be anthropogenic. They ranged from the Mesolithic to the late Bronze Age, but no particular pattern or consistent story could be discerned. The authors note that they obtained hardly any radiocarbon dates for the Neolithic and the early Bronze Age -- which might have coincided with the construction of Stonehenge. All of the radiocarbon dates have come from the selected features which were assumed to be significant -- so there is a very powerful sampling bias in the results.
An opportunity lost -- once again, because of a flimsy and unsupported belief in the long-distance transport of monoliths from far away, as specified in the EH Stonehenge Bible. What a pity....... nice work, but wrong question.
William Henry Hudson: "Far Away and Long Ago".
ReplyDeleteYes, as ever, let's make the archaeological narrative as pseudo - anthropolological / anthropogenic as possible, as glossy National Geographic as we can, ignoring any properly scientific approach!
I agree with your important point that you say there is very little analysis of the sediment fills in the examined pits. Didn't anyone even remotely consider even as a faint possibility that geomorphology might be a useful approach? That is, that analysis of the sediment fills might lead to academic connections being made, such as the discovery in the sediment of geological particles that implied links to one or many of the multifarious types of so-called "bluestones"; or sarsens?
ReplyDeleteFollowing on from my last Comment, Brian has told us many times here about the multiple geological varieties of "bluestone" identified by Ixer and Bevins generally across the Stonehenge Landscape. Brian also draws attention to Simon Banton's very useful photographic resource, which we can look at:-
ReplyDeletewww.stonesofstonehenge.org.uk/
......showing ALL the Stonehenge stones, including all the bluestones, HOWEVER SMALL, that are visible above ground.
I doubt that there is any evil intent among these authors -- but I think there is an unconscious bias in which they simply accepted without question that the stones were all "imported" -- so the idea that they might have been collected locally just never occurred to them.......
ReplyDeletePhilippe (the lead author) kindly sent this reply to my message:
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For functional analysis: as written in the paper, the geophysical data do not allow for this (irrespective of any subsequent automated interpretation process). This can only be done when adding invasive validation data (excavation results) as we did for nine anomalies that were indicated by the model to be possible prehistoric pits. We did indeed target circular pits with the analysis. As noted in the paper, a simplified interpretative characteristic.
Nature of the sediments: simplified borehole logs are included in the supplementary information. Indeed, at some places deposits were more complex, including combinations of loess, weathered chalk, and intercalated organic clay in solution features (for instance excavated in T13, see Fig. 5 in the paper). We did not find any indication for extraction pits.
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This confirms, I think, that they dod not look for any extraction pits and that local stone collection did not figure in their thinking..........
The more I think about it, the stranger this paper appears. The ultimate objective seems to be to automate the interpretive process --- that means creating models, which are always subject to "rubbish in, rubbish out" constraints. The model as described here needs to be vastly more complex before it even starts to compete with the brain of an experienced scientist.
ReplyDelete