MPP, Bluestone Brewery, 2024

 

MPP was at the Bluestone Brewery, giving his annual lecture to the assembled faithful.  Nobody seems to remember much of what he said, which means that he probably didn't say anything particularly memorable.  That's a compliment, not a criticism -- for the last ten years these talks have been used for flagging up one pretty outrageous "discovery" or "finding" after another, based upon the flimsiest of evidence -- only for all of them to be ditched or modified in short order when people like myself have questioned the wild and spectacular components of the narrative.

Have MPP and the team now settled down to doing some quiet and systematic studies of ring features in the Crosswell area, with an emphasis on teaching students the basic principles of field archaeology?  Since the first studies at Pensarn a few years ago, the work seems to have entered a new phase, in which Stonehenge features not at all.  Thank God for that.........

Anyway, the whispers from the convivial evening suggest that Waun Mawn is no longer part of the investigation re Stonehenge.  MPP has finally accepted that it was -- at best -- a monument that was never finished, and abandoned after a short space of time.  He still insists on the "discovery"of  holes intended for stones that never were put into position before the site was given up on.  I don't accept that, but he has to hang onto something, I suppose.  

The focus is now elsewhere in Preseli, notably at Crosswell, where several ring features or embanked enclosures can be seen on satellite images.  There are also subtle mounds worth investigating.  The suggestion seems to be that these features are mostly from the Bronze Age and later -- but that there may be Neolithic traces beneath.  That would not be surprising, given that there are abundant Neolithic traces in the wider landscape, as recorded over many years of research by other archaeologists.  

On the geological front, there is a suggestion that the geologists (Ixer and Bevins) are looking at natural outcrops and boulder blockfields around the ridge where a match for the volcanic characteristics of some bluestones and fragments has been found.  That would not be surprising either -- although the idea of spot provenancing and the discovery of more "quarrying sites" looks increasingly absurd.