Did the Vestra Fiold "quarry" provide standing stones for the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness?

The Vestra Fiold "quarry pit" from which, so it is claimed, firm evidence of quarrying was extracted.  The evidence is much more equivocal than claimed.  (Photo: Colin Richards)

There's a new article about the Vestra Fiold "quarry" on Orkney, which is very concise and nicely produced but which tells us nothing new.  Here it is:

https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/vestrafiold-quarry/?fbclid=IwAR3myH3bWxPoKACndGLNDWWneO6K8lDI12XRBTWwKJdDPjkHPKamXvl_3lk

Vestrafiold – the megalithic quarry
SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 2023

But on examining it, I realised that it is based on a whole string of assumptions going back quite far into the archaeological record, all based on the assumption that there is a stone quarry there that has provided monoliths for the famous stone settings at the ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, some miles to the SE. Everybody cites the older "authorities" who described it as a place of monolith quarrying, but nobody seems to have asked any serious questions about that key assertion.  And of course Colin Richards has confirmed this -- in the eyes of many -- in a number of publications.  So powerful has this assertion been that RCAHMS has confirmed it as a scheduled monument, apparently without any serious examination of the evidence.  Colin's narrative about quarrying and stone movement is just as fanciful as that of MPP with regard to Rhosyfelin -- and of course, because he was part of the digging team,  he may well have been more than a little involved in the interpretation and description of the features at the latter site......

https://ancientmonuments.uk/127566-vestra-fiold-enclosure-quarry-and-cairn-430m-west-of-hillcrest-west-mainland-ward#.ZEgDCC3MJns

But things are not quite that simple.  Many years ago Aubrey Burl explored the idea that the stones at the two famous sites near the Ness of Brodgar were collected up in the immediate neighbourhood, and were either glacial erratics or stone slabs lifted from nearby stone extraction pits. It's known that the monoliths are of seven different rock types -- which immediately disposes of the myth that all of the monoliths came from a dedicated quarry at Vestra Fiold.

There are two other scheduled monuments in the vicinity of Vestra Fiold, a Neolithic long cairn and a Bronze Age (?) enclosure  -- and I have never seen a serious consideration that any quarrying at Vestra Fiold may simply have been devoted to the provision of local stone for local use.

And on the matter of geology and geomorphology, the glacial erratic  hypothesis has simply been ignored in most of the literature about the Orkney megalithic sites.  And yet it has been known for well over a century that the Stromness Sandstones outcrop both to the south and the north of the Ness, and that the monoliths used in the famous stone settings COULD have come from the SE, given that there was a SE - NW movement of ice across Orkney on at least one occasion during the Quaternary.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2011/11/vestrafiold-quarry-orkney.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/01/ring-of-brodgar-and-its-quarry.html

As I said in 2014: I have seen nothing in the geological work which might indicate that the orthostats in the Ring have come from the north of the island rather than from the south -- and there is one other small piece of evidence in that one stone found at the Ring appears to belong to the Eday Group, which outcrops in the south but not in the north. That might be an indicator of glacial transport from the south coast of the island towards the peninsula on which the Ring is positioned.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309242436_The_last_glaciation_in_Orkney_Scotland_glacial_stratigraphy_event_sequence_and_flow_paths

The last glaciation in Orkney, Scotland: glacial stratigraphy, event sequence and flow paths
October 2016
Scottish Journal of Geology 52(2)
DOI: 10.1144/sjg2016-002

Adrian M. Hall, James B. Riding and John Flett Brown

This 2016 paper by Adrian Hall and colleagues just considers the Devensian glaciation, but it confirms the log-held belief of ice transport of erratics from SE towards NW.  I'm going to remain profoundly sceptical about the Vestrafiold "monolith quarry" until somebody comes up with some convincing geological evidence in favour of it.........

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https://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/dhl/papers/cr/index.html

Rethinking the great stone circles of Northwest Britain
Colin Richards

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Bibliography

Other Information

RCAHMS records the monument as HY22SW 7, 8, 10.

References

Callander, J G 1935-6, 'Bronze Age urns of clay from Orkney & Shetland with a note on vitreous material called 'cramp'', Proc Soc Antiq Scot 70, 441'52.

Davidson, J L and Henshall, A S 1989, The chambered cairns of Orkney: an inventory of the structures and their contents, Edinburgh, 185-6, no 79.

Photos-Jones, E, Smith, B B, Hall, A J and Jones, R E 2007, 'On the intent to make cramp: an interpretation of vitreous seaweed cremation 'waste' from prehistoric burial sites in Orkney, Scotland', Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26, 1'23.

RCAHMS 1946, The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Twelfth report with an inventory of the ancient monuments of Orkney and Shetland, 3v, Edinburgh, 259, 269, nos 687, 727 and 728.

Richards, C 2002, 'Vestra Fiold, Orkney (Sandwick parish), Neolithic quarry; chambered cairn', Discovery Excav Scot 3, 88.

Richards, C, Brown, J, Jones, S, Hall, A, and Muir, T 2013, 'Monumental Risk: megalithic quarrying at Staneyhill and Vestra Fiold, Mainland, Orkney', in Richards, C (ed).  Building The Great Stone Circles of the North, Windgarther Press, Oxford, 119-148.

Richards, C, Downes, J, Ixer, R, Hambleton, E, Peterson, R and Pollard, J 2013, 'Surface over substance: the Vestra Fiold horned cairn, Mainland, Setter cairn, Eday, and a reappraisal of the late Neolithic funerary architecture', in Richards, C (ed) Building The Great Stone Circles of the North, Windgarther Press, Oxford, 149-185.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland