Thanks to Les Hazell for sending a copy of his dissertation on the bluestone "open water" transport debate. It's well researched and referenced, and goes into all aspects of the prehistoric movement of large monoliths of bluestone across open water -- covering tidal streams, winds and waves, coastal hazards, human energy expenditure, route planning and adjustments, boatbuilding, sailing and rowing technologies, and much else besides. He examines in particular some of the notions in Rodney Castleden's book, and (not surprisingly) finds them wanting.
The thesis suffers from a rather too easy acceptance that the glacial transport of the stones was impossible -- he was clearly greatly influenced by James Scourse's 1997 book chapter. And of course a lot has happened since then. But nevertheless, this is a worthwhile contribution, and the author concludes that the sea transport of 80 or so bluestones around 5,000 years ago was "neither viable nor practical".
STONEHENGE AND THE TRANSPORT OF BLUESTONES
Les Hazell
2001 Honours dissertation, Deakin University
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306059127_Stone_Henge_and_Open_Water_Transport_of_Bluestones
ABSTRACT:
On the Salisbury Plains of Britain, a megalithic structure known as Stonehenge contains an inner circle of Bluestones weighing around 4 tonnes. Although the source for these Bluestones in the Preseli Mountains in Wales is generally accepted, how they were moved from there to the Stonehenge complex in southern England is debated. In contradiction to the possibility of glacial action being responsible, an alternative theory suggests an open water route. This hypothesis is analysed using environmental constraints as research parameters. In this methodology, human power cited from both replication experiments and ethnographic observations are adopted as a constraint to overcome tidal flows, their direction and velocity. This performance expectation is incorporated into analysis of log and canoe raft configurations to determine their structural integrity when challenged by forces induced by wind speed and waves created under the coastal conditions of this hypothetical route. I argue this analysis suggests much of an open water route options suggested in previous research is neither viable nor practical for the valuable Bluestones with the known watercraft options.
ABSTRACT:
On the Salisbury Plains of Britain, a megalithic structure known as Stonehenge contains an inner circle of Bluestones weighing around 4 tonnes. Although the source for these Bluestones in the Preseli Mountains in Wales is generally accepted, how they were moved from there to the Stonehenge complex in southern England is debated. In contradiction to the possibility of glacial action being responsible, an alternative theory suggests an open water route. This hypothesis is analysed using environmental constraints as research parameters. In this methodology, human power cited from both replication experiments and ethnographic observations are adopted as a constraint to overcome tidal flows, their direction and velocity. This performance expectation is incorporated into analysis of log and canoe raft configurations to determine their structural integrity when challenged by forces induced by wind speed and waves created under the coastal conditions of this hypothetical route. I argue this analysis suggests much of an open water route options suggested in previous research is neither viable nor practical for the valuable Bluestones with the known watercraft options.
Seems to be just an abstract in this link Brian
ReplyDelete"I argue this analysis suggests much of an open water route options suggested in previous research is neither viable nor practical for the valuable Bluestones with the known watercraft options."
What are the "known watercraft options"?
(at first glance, this seems an odd way to look at at)
Yes, the thesis has not been published on the web. Will send you the PDF. There is nothing particularly new in it, but he does come at it from the point of view of the sailing fraternity, and has some interesting comments on things like exposure and fatigue. I put this post up because I have not seen any previous mentions of this piece of work, which deserves to be on the reference list!
ReplyDeleteI would be grateful for a copy too, if it's not too much trouble.
ReplyDeleteComing over, Philip!
ReplyDeleteYou and I remember the Durham University Geography Department Professor of Maritime Studies who you quoted in your original "Bluestone Enigma" book around 15 years ago. He wasn't in favour of bluestone maritime transport, was he.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, my old friend Alasdair Couper, who was at Durham and then took up the Chair of the Maritime Studies Department in Cardiff. Sadly he died some years ago. He was thoroughly opposed to the idea of human transport of the bluestones, partly because could not accept that in Neolithic times people had adequate "mental maps" and knowledge of the geography of the British Isles for finding their way -- by sea or over land -- from Pembs to Stonehenge. He preferred to think of most trading and other journeys as haphazard and more or less random.
ReplyDeleteAs a reminder, this is what I said ten years ago, based on my discussions with Alasdair:
ReplyDeleteThere are also real difficulties in imagining the "mental maps" that Neolithic people might have had of seaways and coastal configurations, and hazards including reefs and shoals. What was their capacity for planning long-distance routes? The fact that we know that long voyages were completed in the Neolithic does not necessarily mean that people were actually planning to get from A to B. They may have hoped to go to C, because some seafarer told them there were wondrous things there, fifteen days' sailing towards a particular star in the heavens, and ended up at B instead. There must have been a huge random element in these ancient voyages. And of course for every successful voyage that we may be able to reconstruct, there would have been hundreds or thousands that failed, with seafarers lost without trace. Also, if the landlubber Wessex tribes had wanted to carry stones from Wales to Salisbury Plain, they would have needed the active cooperation not only of the coastal tribes who lived on both sides of the Bristol Channel, but also of their “navigators” who knew (and fiercely protected) the secrets of travelling by the stars, the sun and the moon. In trying to assess the extent of their knowledge, all we have to go on is historical information about the “Stone Age” Pacific traders who came into contact with the early European explorers of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. By the 1700’s these “Stone Age” navigator families had a sophisticated knowledge of how to navigate by the stars, but by then they had hundreds of generations of accumulated knowledge and observations to build on. It would be dangerous indeed to assume that Early Neolithic navigators around the western coasts of the British Isles had anything like the same degree of knowledge, since they were moving about in newly explored and newly settled territory. So while the technical side is one problem (relating to inadequate Early Neolithic vessels), it must also be doubted that our seafarers had the organizational capacity, navigational skills, or territorial / map knowledge assumed by certain imaginative archaeologists.
In retrospect, much of this also applies to land navigation and to the idea of hauling 80 bluestones on the A40 route now postulated by the archaeologists.
I somewhere came across convincing evidence that Oriental travellers made it all the way to Australia in the distant prehistoric past. I think the evidence was in rock carvings/ paintings. Wonder if the gent who was the catalyst for this Post knows about this?
ReplyDeleteThanks Brian. Useful paper for those exploring these avenues!
ReplyDeleteJust came across some rock carvings in Sweden of very long Viking ships, dated to around 1800 to 500 BCE.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Carvings_in_Tanum
From the above comment: Alasdair Couper. "So while the technical side is one problem (relating to inadequate Early Neolithic vessels), it must also be doubted that our seafarers had the organizational capacity, navigational skills, or territorial / map knowledge assumed by certain imaginative archaeologists."
IMHO while most rock bashers were pretty dumb, like most smartphone users of today, there would have been some very clever Neolithics, the Hadron Collider scientists of today.
: -)
Fair point, Steve. Alasdair was a specialist in seafaring in the Pacific, and he also believed that there was a cult or class of navigators -- back into prehistory -- who knew certain ocean routes and who possessed "esoteric knowledge" that was jealously guarded. This was partly based on sun, moon and star positions and ocean currents, weather patterns at certain times of year etc. So they could probably navigate to certain islands or island groups across open water for trading purposes. That's very different from Neolithic tribes having a mental map of Great Britain that was accurate enough to cart bluestones from Preseli to Stonehenge -- across very difficult and complex terrain -- without straying off on all sorts of chaotic diversions, even if they knew that Stonehenge, somewhere to the east, was their "target destination".
ReplyDeleteThe other " elephant in the room" as regards Preseli - Bristol Channel prehistoric maritime trips is the fact that the Bristol Channel has one of the world's trickiest tidal ranges, as the Portishead lifeboat crew recently proclaimed on a BBC lifeboat action programme.....
ReplyDeleteYes -- it's not just the range that is a problem -- but as they found when there were building the two bridges, the strength of the tidal streams close to the shore (which is where voyagers would preferentially travel) is phenomenal -- very dangerous indeed. With only very short episodes of slack water. No place for flimsy vessels of any type.
ReplyDelete