Chronicle 1972 -- the famous Stonehenge debate

 

The assembled experts in the Chronicle studio in 1972.  Glyn Daniel, Richard Atkinson, Magnus Magnusson (chair), Geoffrey Kellaway, Colin Renfrew ?? and David Bowen.

I have mentioned this famous 1972 Chronicle programme before.  It came to mind again after reading one of Tony's recent comments.  Parts of the programme were re-broadcast in 1985 in a Timewatch programme, and Mike Pitts reminded us of it in a post on his "Digging Deeper" blog.

https://mikepitts.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/the-heart-of-the-stonehenge-bluestone-problem/

Here is what he said:

I enjoyed Magnus Magnusson talking to Richard Atkinson and Geoffrey Kellaway about bluestones for a Chronicle film in 1972, like a polite Newsnight interview (love that rug!). Glyn Daniel sits beside Atkinson, struggling to conceal a quizzical smirk. (Photo above is from the film.)

Did the bluestones get to Stonehenge by human transport or glacial action?

The fundamental problem with resolving this issue is clear in the film clip, and it hasn’t changed a bit. Kellaway (a geologist) talks about archaeology and the motivations of people who built Stonehenge. Atkinson (an archaeologist) talks about geology.

Kellaway: What nobody has explained is why were rotten stones that have in fact come out of a peat bog, which are absolutely useless for building, which have come from north or central or south Wales, we don’t quite know which, why those should be gathered together in heaps on Salisbury Plain?

Atkinson: If the bluestones were brought by ice to somewhere on Salisbury Plain, it seems to me highly improbable that what was brought was subsequently sufficient just for the needs of the builders of Stonehenge and left nothing over.

It began like this:

Magnusson: Professor Atkinson, do you think that Mr Kellaway is talking nonsense?

Atkinson: If I were to say yes, that would be rude.

Things are not always so polite now, but it’s an enduring academic shouting match that hasn’t moved on in 40 years. We’ll only progress if geologists and archaeologists work together, rather than lean on their ignorance of the other’s field for support.

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https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/01/that-hilarious-exchange.html

In the programme, which I watched many moons ago, there was a gruesome hatchet job done on poor Geoff Kellaway by some very senior members of the archaeology establishment, working together.  It's a pity that the programme does not seem to be available anywhere on the web, since it is quite revealing.  But Mike Pitts reminds us of two things that I had forgotten:

1. Kellaway drawing attention to the "rotten stones" (by which he means the weathered and abraded glacial erratics of all shapes and sizes)  at Stonehenge -- a point which is conveniently forgotten to this day by EH and almost everybody else.  And Kellaway was right in drawing attention to the fact that the bulk of the bluestones were "completely useless for building." I'm not sure about the peat bog, but we'll let that pass......

2.  Atkinson using (and getting away with) the preposterous argument about "exactly the right number of bluestones" being delivered by ice to Stonehenge as being "highly improbable".  Many people have used the same argument, in all seriousness.  But it is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that Stonehenge was at one time complete and immaculate -- with exactly the right number of bluestones happily sitting in their designated places.  As I argued in my "Do" lecture some years ago, we do not know that, and it is much more likely, if we assess the evidence impartially, that Stonehenge was never finished, and was abandoned when the builders ran out of stones.  In that scenario, the use of locally sourced glacial erratics in the building of the monument makes perfect sense.