Waun Mawn and the fantastical "major Neolithic monument complex"

Lots of nice stones -- but how many of them were used for "ceremonial" purposes?

Since MPP is once again promoting the idea that there was a magnificent and ancient ceremonial complex in the area around Waun Mawn, it's worth reminding ourselves that this is not actually supported by the evidence.  Dyfed Archaeology has recorded a host of features around Waun Mawn,  on Brynberian Moor and on the northern slopes of Mynydd Preseli, and has rather pragmatically stated that some of them are "ceremonial" (associated with burials etc) but that many others are somewhat utilitarian (walls, enclosures, tracks, hut circles etc) and associated with the humdrum practicalities of everyday life.  Many of the features are not Neolithic at all, but from the Bronze Age and later.

This is the key report which gives the regional context:

www.dyfedarchaeology.org.uk/projects/schedulepembroke2011.pdf

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2020/11/waun-mawn-and-banc-llwydlos-tribe.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2017/04/more-banc-llwydlos-records.html

In this Dyfed Archaeology leaflet there is no mention of a concentration of "ceremonial features" in the Waun Mawn - Tafarn y Bwlch area -- and the emphasis is on the scattered occurrence of features of all sorts, including stone settings linked with defensive, domestic and land use activities.  Interestingly, several of the standing stones often assumed to have been used for "ceremonial" purposes are referred to simply as possible way markers.

http://www.dyfedarchaeology.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/walkerpreseli.pdf

I agree with the assessment that this is a landscape with a scatter of prehistoric features of many types and purposes. The concentration of "ceremonial features" is not especially dense around Waun Mawn as compared with other parts of Pembrokeshire, and no cultural links with Stonehenge have ever been demonstrated.  The supposed cultural links with southern Ireland or other parts of South Wales are also difficult to establish, as pointed out by Tim Darvill, Nora Figgis, Steve Burrow and many others.

I have tried to summarise the range of prehistoric features to be found in the Waun Mawn landscape in my Waun Mawn Report published on Researchgate. 

Brian John. 2021. Waun Mawn and the search for “Proto-Stonehenge”. Researchgate: Greencroft Working Paper No 4, March 2021, 32 pp (updated September 2022)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345177590_Waun_Mawn_and_the_search_for_Proto-_Stonehenge

By the way, I have just checked on Researchgate, and the article has now been read 6,150 times.  Some people are taking it rather seriously.........

Steve Burrow'a book "The Tomb Builders", published by the National Museum of Wales in 2006. Although he goes with the establishment flow and accepts that Stonehenge was "the great exception", he points out that all of the Neolithic monuments in Wales were built where the stones were, regardless of rock type.  As for a major ceremonial complex in the west Preseli area,  there is just nothing to support the idea.