Waun Mawn -- 110m and confirmation bias

A lot of people who read the articles on Waun Mawn, and who watch the "Lost Circle" TV documentary, will have the impression that there was wonderment in the MPP digging camp when they realised that the giant stone circle that they had "discovered" had the same diameter as the Stonehenge outer ditch, thereby confirming a link between the two places.

Well, it wasn't like that at all.  I have delved into this matter before, in a 2019 post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-waun-mawn-circle-diameter.html

Back in 2012 there was a lot of dithering about the possible diameter of a circle at Waun Mawn:

This is what I said at the time: 

In his 2012 book MPP said on p 283: "Andrew (Chamberlain) pointed out that the diameter and spacing of this possible former circle would have been almost exactly the same as that of the Aubrey Hole Circle at Stonehenge." So in 2012 the calculations were that the circle had a diameter of c 86m. Other older calculations placed the diameter at c 100m. In 2017 MPP stated that the circle had a diameter of 115m, and in 2018 he said it was 110m. My best calculation initially was that the circle might have had a diameter of 140m, although that would have taken the southernmost stones over the lip of the Waun Mawn "platform".

So in the 2017 field report the preferred circle diameter was 115m:

The main discovery was that four standing stones in an arc at Waun Mawn, above a source of the River Nevern, are the likely remains of a prehistoric stone circle, most of which was dismantled and removed in prehistory (fig.6). Its 80m-long arc suggests a former diameter of c.115m, which would make it the largest stone circle in Britain except for the outer ring of Avebury.

Mythical rings? Waun Mawn and Stonehenge Stage 1. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365135872_Mythical_rings_Waun_Mawn_and_Stonehenge_Stage_1

Following the failure of the original geophysical work to find anything interesting at Waun Mawn, it's obvious that by the time the second dig was done at Waun Mawn in 2018 the diggers had decided on a circle diameter of 110m because that was the most convenient one from a Stonehenge perspective.  So they drew it onto their map, traced it out on the ground as then used it as the basis for their second and third digs, in 2018 and 2021.  So there was no discovery at all -- there was a predetermined outcome.  The diggers opened up several more pits on the circumference of their measured circle, plotted everything on or very close to the circumference line that could be called a socket or a stone hole, and ignored everything else. As I have mentioned on the basis of my examinations of the digging sites, there were (and still are) slight pits and hollows right across this landscape, unrecorded and uncelebrated.  In other words, there was massive bias from the very beginning, with the diggers intent upon the confirmation of their 110m hypothesis.  The circle diameter "link" between Waun Mawn and Stonehenge was not discovered, but manufactured.

Tim Darvill is equally sceptical about the "circle" and its diameter:

The Waun Mawn ‘circle’, as presented in the 2021 publication, is unlike any of the 100 or so other recognised examples of the Great Circle Tradition of the late fourth and early third millennia BC that are scattered across Britain (Burl 2000: 43–63; Richards 2013; Darvill 2022a). These sites typically have a continuous circuit of regularly spaced pillars (variously close-set or wide-spaced), the selected stones are fairly consistent in shape and form within each example, and one or more ‘entrances’ are usually marked by large, flanking stones that are often doubled-up on the outside to form a portal. In contrast, at the proposed Waun Mawn circle, long stretches of the circumference are completely lacking in stones or empty sockets, the few stones and putative sockets that are recorded are irregularly spaced and of different shapes and sizes, and there is no entrance setting.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365135872_Mythical_rings_Waun_Mawn_and_Stonehenge_Stage_1

The dating point is also a good one.  If stone circles were being built in other parts of Britain in the period 5,200 - 4,500 yrs BP it is eccentric -- to say the least -- for Parker Pearson and his colleagues to be suggesting a much earlier date for the "lost circle" at Waun Mawn of around 5,500 yrs BP or even earlier.  Darvill argues that at that time there were small stone rows being built in other parts of the country, and that therefore it is much more likely that the crude stone rows at Waun Mawn were a part of that tradition.  After all, the remarkably early suggested date for the Waun Mawn stone settings arose from the fact that the radiocarbon and other dates just did not fit into the timescale of the "Great Circle Building Phase"............... now where have we heard that before?

The Stonehenge ditch is thought to have been dug around 5,000 years ago and the stone settings followed around 4,500 years BP.  Archaeologists like to use the term "arrival date" for the first use of stones on the site -- but I think the term "first use" is much more scientific, since it may well be that the stones were already in the vicinity long before some bright spark had the idea of making use of them in the grand Stonehenge construction project.  

Anyway, the only way to make all of this fit into a coherent stone setting chronology is to suggest that the "lost circle" at Waun Mawn was built (or partially built) far earlier than any other stone circle in the British Isles, presumably because people were that much more advanced in Pembrokeshire, and that they somehow transmitted the desirability of the 110m diameter to Stonehenge in time for them to use this measurement for the digging of the ditch, before anybody had thought about the use of stone monoliths.  

Ah, once you inhabit a fantasy world, there are no limits to the narrative that you can create for the entertainment of your loyal fans......

 

Swinside stone circle in Cumbria -- one of the earlier (Neolithic rather than Bronze Age) circles in the British Isles, thought to have been created around 5,000 years ago.