I was looking at some old posts, and came across a comment by Paul Sambrook to the effect that the "pits" at Waun Mawn (which are deemed by MPP and his merry gang to be bluestone monolith sockets) look to him and other archaeologists to be hollows from which inconvenient stones have been removed during pasture clearance work.
That interpretation looks more and more attractive. For a start, the depths and widths of the "sockets" are all wrong, as pointed out by Mike Pitts last year. See the above diagram published originally on Twitter. The hollows are of all shapes and sizes -- and indeed they are very difficult to measure at all, since they are not at all clearly defined. They are not neatly spaced, or located accurately on the circumference of the putative "lost circle of Waun Mawn." And the radiocarbon dating is chaotic, suggesting to me that if any stones have been removed they have been taken away at different times -- which is exactly what you would expect of pasture land clearance work.
Well, MPP has of course admitted that there probably never was a "lost stone circle" at Waun Mawn, even though there may have been an intention to build one. So that's all right then...........
The tragedy is that so many people still believe the nonsense trotted out in that appalling Alice Roberts TV show. Nice story -- who needs evidence anyway?
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/01/lost-bluestone-circle-did-not-exist.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-glorification-of-waun-mawn-with.html
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/02/more-waun-mawn-sceptics.html
Part of the excavation at Waun Mawn. If you are keen enough, you can say that there are two "bluestone monolith sockets" here, but they are shallow, irregular and in the wrong places. The hollows are much more likely to be natural features exaggerated by the selective removal of sediments by the archaeologists -- as has also happened at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog. The pits may also have been formed when inconvenient stones were removed during the ongoing process of improving pasture land.
Another of the hollows at Waun Mawn described as a bluestone socket. It's too shallow, too small, and appears to be an "excavation artefact"..........
7 comments:
Yes,and as my favourite Paul Simon quote goes:
"A Man [in this case, MPP] sees what he wants to see...
And disregards the rest......." !!!!
THE BOXER
I have a little experience of getting boulders out of the way of ploughs. It takes quite a bit of effort, even when using machinery. So much so that in the days before tractors, it would be easier to take the horse pulling the plough around the stone and leave it there.
I have heard stories of people using explosives to remove stones. The stone goes up in the air and comes back down in the same hole.
There is also the maybe apocryphal, story of farmers paying a contractor to remove stones from their fields, which were then paid for again to build a sea defence.
I hardly think that farmers would have removed any stones on Waun Mawn because they were in the way of cultivation. On the other hand, if they wanted stones for gate posts or wall building, then shallow pits may well be the result.
Dave
Good points, Dave. You are talking about really big boulders -- but I have personally moved boulders weighing over a tonne each with levers, wedges and packing stones, and if the "sockets" are anything to go by, the "missing boulders" were all rather small......... But as you say, we could be talking about removals over a vast span of time. Was anything done in the deer park, I wonder? And were any removed boulders used in the big embankments down near the Gernos Fach farm track? It's possible.......
There is a famous local story about a farmer who hired John Seymour to blow up an inconvenient ten-tonne boulder that was in the middle of a field. It wasn't THAT inconvenient, but the plough kept on hitting the top of it, which just projected through the ground surface. John did all the preparatory work, and there was a vast explosion, following which the boulder was still there, completely unharmed, with a moat all around it which then gradually filled with water. It's still there, as a landscape feature!
As far as I know, (on good authority) the 'arc' of the circle was derived from a small excavated section using geometry. Test trenches were then dug across sections of this circle and pits 'stone holes' were found, albeit shallow and irregularly spaced. It may be that were the entire area to be stripped and scraped, that more, similar depressions would be found right across the site. The main objection I have to this as the site for a large and supposedly important circle is that it is on sloping ground, and the west side cannot be seen from the east side. There are no other (surviving) circles anywhere in the UK built on a hillside like this, and it just looks and feels wrong...
Is a tonne boulder 1 metre by 1 metre?
Trying to get a feeling for scale.
If it was half in the ground, or less, then it might be a target for moving. If it was largely buried with only part showing, then obviously it would be less tempting.
What sort of material filling the resultant pit should we expect? Bits of shattered stone, topsoil in patches and bits of disturbed subsoil. Would this be any different from the removal of previously erected standing stones?
The biggest issue might be the interpretation of any radiocarbon results, which may come from the original erection of the stone, or from the subsequent removal, or possibly from pre-activity casual sources that may be kicking around.
Dave
A solid cube of rock 1m x 1m x 1m could weigh c 2.7 tonnes. A rounded boulder with all the corners chopped off and with max dimensions c 80 cm x 80 cm x 80 cm could be about a tonne. I have easily shifted (on my own) rough and irregularly shaped boulders of that size in my garden at home and in Sweden. The technique is to get under the boulder with a long lever, lift it a bit and pack stones under, move the lever, lift a bit more, pack a bit more, keep on moving the lever around and packing more until the whole boulder is actually above the ground surface, resting on crossed branches, logs, stones or whatever else is handy. Great fun and very satisfying........... all sorts of rubbish might end up in the hole after the boulder is removed, and there would be considerable damage to the sides of the hole.
The radiocarbon results from Waun Mawn are pretty chaotic, and there is no clear pattern that suggests extraction of stones / backfilling of holes as we might expect from the wholesale removal of even a partial circle.
Olwyn -- yes, I have made the point in my article on Waun Mawn and on this blog that there have been no control digs anywhere which might show that there are similar hollows and surface indentations across the whole landscape. On visibility, you mean between north and south? I agree this is a duff place for a large ceremonial stone circle anyway........
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