Peace and joy be yours for ever.....

Isn't it rather lovely, on this happy Easter Monday, that there now appears to be a great level of agreement between the geomorphologists and the archaeologists on Stonehenge and the bluestones?

After a decade of rather acrimonious disagreements, it now seems that we are in perfect harmony on a range of matters relating the Stonehenge, the bluestones, and the fate of the delightful fanciful narratives that used to fly about in the media.  For example:

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1.  After the recent admission that Stonehenge had no particular purpose, we appear to be agreed that it was probably just a folly, built by some fellow intent upon making a grandiose statement and then adapted for a variety of uses through the centuries that followed.  The world's first multi-purpose venue?

2.  There are hints that my belief in Stonehenge as a structure that was never actually finished (maybe because they ran out of stones) is now accepted rather more widely than before.

3.  There is a mutual acceptance that the Stonehenge bluestones have not just come from a couple of monolith quarries but from "multiple geological sources".

4.  It's agreed that Craig Rhosyfelin never was the "Pompeii of Neolithic quarries" and that the site -- or some other place nearby -- might have provided (at most) one lump of rock that ended up at Stonehenge.

5.  As far as Carn Goedog is concerned, we no longer hear about "bluestone quarrying on an industrial scale"  -- and that is a great blessing.

6.  Waun Mawn, it is now agreed, was never the site of a "giant lost circle of standing stones".

7.  It is also agreed that any small stone setting at Waun Mawn was of strictly local interest, and had nothing to do with Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog, or Stonehenge.

8.  The idea that Bluestone 62 at Stonehenge had a precise footprint at Waun Mawn (hole 091) and was moved to Stonehenge from there has also been abandoned.

9.  The idea that Stonehenge Bluestone 62 came from one of the supposed bluestone quarries has also been abandoned.

10.  We are now all happily agreed that any standing stones that were present at Waun Mawn were collected up in the immediate vicinity.

11.  The claim that isotope evidence from the analyses of teeth and bones at Stonehenge showed a direct link between Stonehenge and West Wales has now quietly been dropped, and there is agreement that some of the people and cattle who arrived at Stonehenge had previously been somewhere else, maybe in western of northern parts of the British Isles.

12.  The pervasive idea of the Stonehenge establishment relating to the site as the great focal point or centre of the British Neolithic world (which was heavily criticised by Barclay and Brophy) now seems to have been dumped by the archaeologists in the MPP team, in favour of a belief that the site was no more important than scores of other sites in Middle England,  and that it was on the boundary between one tribal territory and another. 

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There are a number of other quite subtle points which suggest shifting positions, but the dogged belief in the existence of megalith quarries and human bluestone transport persists to this day.  Never mind -- those beliefs will also be dumped before long, and then we can all live happily ever after.