The curse of the Knowledgeable Native

Many years ago an old friend of mine, who is into mathematics, astronomical alignments and that sort of thing, went into print with an erudite piece about some rather nice Bronze Age standing stones on the upland of Mynydd Dinas.  They were apparently aligned with something or other, and the article was well received, causing many other erudite people to visit the site and record their own observations and calculations.

I went ambling past one day, and got talking to two local farmers who were leaning on a hedge and putting the world to rights.  We chatted about the standing stones (one used as a rather spectacular gatepost and the others in a roadside hedge) and they told me that all three had been embedded in the turf in one of the fields, causing such a nuisance that they were removed with the aid of a mechanical digger in 1977 and placed in their present positions.  They showed me the depressions or extraction pits from which the stones had come, and pointed out to me the chain marks and other surface damage on the stones caused by the process of extracting them and moving them.  They had nothing at all to do with the Bronze Age or with ley lines or astronomical alignments.............

The moral of this little tale?  Don't be too hasty in theorising or fantasising about archaeological features, since there may be some local person not far away who knows far more about your special site than you do..........

Actually the "knowledgeable native" is probably the curse of archaeologists -- especially those with a tendency to create elaborate narratives on the basis of very little evidence. 

This brings to mind some of my posts about the wisdom of Carl Sagan and his insistence that those of us who are reasonably qualified should "knowledgeably question" the claims that are made by researchers about their findings, and the reliability of the evidence brought forward in support of those claims.   If knowledgeable natives like me do not scrutinize and question the findings and speculations of Parker Pearson, Bevins, Ixer and their colleagues in Mynydd Preseli, who will?  Most people nowadays (including academics who should be ashamed of themselves) do not read journal articles critically and prefer to read abstracts and press releases instead -- which can, of course, lead to absolute nonsense being widely accepted as the truth.  We have seen it over and again in the bluestone research programme -- extravagant claims made about geological affinities, quarrying, bluestone transport, lost stone circles and so forth are all too often accepted and acclaimed by the academic community and by the media who simultaneously ignore the reservations of people like myself. 

Those who are responsible for the development of the fantastical bluestone narrative put the word out that I am an ignorant and irritating old fool, and then have to admit that (as I have said all along) there never was any bluestone quarrying on an industrial scale at Rhosyfelin and Carn Goedog, that bluestone fragments at Stonehenge have come from multiple sources, that spotted dolerite and foliated rhyolite monoliths have never been used preferentially in stone settings, that there never was a lost stone circle at Waun Mawn, that the stones used on the moor were locally collected, and that the "astonishing site" had nothing whatsoever to do with Stonehenge.

Funny old world.......