One of the things that I find most intriguing, in the literature relating to Stonehenge, bluestones, quarries and lost circles is the refusal, on the part of MPP and his colleagues, to admit that any of their ideas are disputed or challenged by anybody else. It really is rather bizarre.............
I was reminded of this when I was sorting out some of my maps the other day, and came across this one which shows what an extraordinary mess there is across the landscape of South Wales when one plots proposed last glaciation ice limits. Remember that all of these geologists and geomorphologists have looked at the same (or very similar) field evidence, and all have tried their best to interpret what they have been looking at. It's actually far more complex than this, because DQ Bowen (who made the map) omitted to include some of the other lines drawn by myself and others over the years, in different publications, as we tried to make sense of things.
There were some quite intense discussions and arguments in the decades between 1960 and 1990 -- and occasional animosity bubbling up in conference discussions and on field trips -- but by and large we all found the debate stimulating, and accepted it as a normal part of academic life. And we all got on pretty well together, in spite of our disagreements.
So why, when it comes to the bluestone debate, are MPP and his colleagues so scared of criticism and challenge from outside their inner circle, and so determined to pretend that it does not exist?
4 comments:
Hubris and fear
Yes, I suppose fear often goes with hubris. If you promote a narrative with endless energy and utter conviction, and you suspect or actually know that it is actually all nonsense, the fear that you will be exposed as a charlatan can become quite strong.
This is from Dan Vergano's report published on the "Grid" website in December:
“On balance of probability, few, if any, of the stones from Waun Mawn ended up at Stonehenge,” concedes the “Debate” report from Parker Pearson and colleagues. It was a “delicate moment,” to come to that conclusion, said University College London geologist Rob Ixer, one of the authors of the new reports. The combination of geological and archaeological research that has uncovered Stonehenge’s quarries had taken decades, and required the application of much more high-tech geochemistry to Stone Age questions.
But there is more to the Stonehenge “Lost Circle” contretemps, added Pitts, than whether Waun Mawn supplied Stonehenge’s bluestones. For one, there is a fresh debate over whether the Welsh site was ever really a monumental stone circle, doubts voiced by Bournemouth University archaeologist Timothy Darvill in Antiquity. Darvill argues that the four bluestones at Waun Mawn are more likely just a row of stones erected there in prehistory, rather than the spoke ends of a circle."
You get a sense here of how incredibly difficult it is for Parker Pearson and Ixer to say, on the record, "We were wrong....."
I covered all this in a post in December:
https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/12/good-science-and-self-correction-come.html
The Emperor has no clothes. In fact, as some of us remember Danny Kaye singing, " The king is in the all-together, the all-together, the all-together it's very plain to see.....
Out of the mouths of babes/ let the little children come to me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven/ Preseli
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