The Stonehenge narrative becomes even more bizarre...............

Here we go again! 

https://news.sky.com/story/stonehenges-purpose-may-have-been-to-unify-ancient-britain-after-scientists-make-discovery-about-stones-origins-13276723#:~:text=Professor%20Mike%20Parker%20Pearson%2C%20lead,a%20religious%20purpose%20%2D%20as%20a

I knew this was coming.  It's published in "Archaeology International" -- which is now housed in UCL, which just happens to be the institution in which our old friend MPP works.  What a coincidence!!

(Correction 23 Dec -- it is apparently NOT published.....)

A draft of the article has been circulating behind the scenes, and I picked up an unsolicited copy from a contact.  I have looked at it briefly, and I am appalled...........  how is it that stuff like this gets into print?  I will consider the article in more detail when I have seen it in its final published form, but below I make a few comments on the short section about bluestone origins.

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Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources

Mike Parker Pearson, Richard Bevins, Richard Bradley, Rob Ixer, Nick Pearce and Colin Richards

Abstract

Geological research reveals that Stonehenge’s stones come from sources beyond Salisbury Plain, as recently demonstrated by the Altar Stone’s origins in northern Scotland over 700km away. Even Stonehenge’s huge sarsen stones come from 24km to the north, whilst the bluestones can be sourced to the region of the Preseli Hills some 225km away in west Wales. The six-tonne Altar Stone is of Old Red Sandstone from the Orcadian Basin, an area that extends from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland to Inverness and eastwards to Banff, Turriff and Rhynie. Its geochemical composition does not match that of rocks in the Northern Isles so it can be identified as coming from the Scottish mainland. Its position at Stonehenge as a recumbent stone within the southwest arc of the monument, at the foot of the two tallest uprights of the Great Trilithon, recalls the plans of recumbent stone circles of northeast Scotland. Unusually strong similarities in house floor layouts between Late Neolithic houses in Orkney and the Durrington Walls settlement near Stonehenge also provide evidence of close connections between Salisbury Plain and northern Scotland. Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a monument of island-wide unification, embodied in part through the distant and diverse origins of its stones.

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Extracts

The bluestones have been geologically identified as coming from the area of the Preseli Hills ever since Herbert Thomas (1923) identified the most numerous of the Stonehenge bluestones as spotted dolerites that could be matched with outcrops in those hills. Although occasional attempts have been made to explain the bluestones’ incorporation in Stonehenge as due to transport by glaciers in a previous Ice Age (Judd 1902; Kellaway 1971; John 2024), there is no evidence that glaciers extended more closely than within 100km of Salisbury Plain (Clark et al. 2022), discussed in some detail in Ixer et al. (in press). Claims that one or more bluestone fragments from Stonehenge and its environs show evidence of having been transported by glaciers similarly do not stand scrutiny (Bevins et al. 2023a; in press).

"........in a previous Ice Age"??  I assume that what they mean is "during a previous episode of Quaternary glaciation".

"....... there is no evidence that glaciers extended more closely than within 100km of Salisbury Plain..."  Since when did Clark et al make that claim?  There is perfectly good evidence, adequately discussed in the literature, of glacial deposits at Court Hill (c 70 km from Stonehenge), Kenn  (c 74 km), Bathampton Down (c 40 km), and Greylake (c 70 km), all of which indicate the presence of glacier ice pushing into Somerset from the Bristol Channel.   And what's this nonsense about Bevins et al and Ixer et al in press?  You cannot cite as evidence material which might or might not get through peer review and which might or might not ever be published.  If and when these papers see the light of day, we shall see whether they withstand scrutiny.

Four types of bluestone have been matched geologically with outcrops in Preseli. The source for most Stonehenge’s spotted dolerites (classed as Group 1) has been identified as Carn Goedog (Bevins et al. 2014). Two sources for unspotted dolerites (Stones 45 and 62; Group 2) are Cerrigmarchogion and Garn Ddu Fach, to the west and east of Carn Goedog (Bevins et al. 2014; 2021; Pearce et al. 2022). Remaining spotted dolerites (Group 3) are thought to derive from an area to the east of Carn Goedog but are not matched to a specific outcrop (Bevins et al. 2014). Of the three types of rhyolite at Stonehenge, Group C is matched to a specific location within the outcrop of Craig Rhos-y-felin, 3km to the north of the Preseli ridge (Ixer and Bevins 2011). Finally, Stonehenge’s two Lower Palaeozoic sandstone monoliths are similar lithologically and in terms of age to strata exposed to the north and east of the Preseli Hills (Ixer et al. 2017). 

Let's be straight about this. Not one of the Stonehenge bluestones has been provenanced accurately to a single precise location.  The geological matches are approximate at best, and there can be no certainty about the locations mentioned above because the geologists do not have anything like a comprehensive cover of sampling points across the various igneous outcrops.  They have "possible locations", but that is the best that can be said. And they really have no idea whatsoever where the Lower Palaeozoic sandstone monoliths might have come from, in spite of claims made by Ixer et al in 2017.

The reality is that the Stonehenge bluestones, and the fragments in the debitage, are geologically diverse.  They have come from multiple locations  -- a point frequently denied by Ixer and Bevins, who have sought consistently over the years to demonstrate that the bluestones have come from a very few carefully selected places where they claim to have found quarries.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-absurdity-of-quarrying-hypothesis.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/06/more-on-stonehenge-dolerites-multiple.html

Excavations at the bluestone sources of Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin have uncovered evidence of megalith quarrying dating to the centuries before and around 3000 BC, consistent with the date of Stonehenge’s first stage. At Craig Rhos-y-felin, that precise part of the outcrop with a match for Rhyolite Group C lies directly adjacent to a niche from which a 2.5m long monolith has been removed (Parker Pearson et al. 2015). Quarrying installations include a drystone-revetted, artificial platform at the foot of the outcrop as well as a hollow way or sunken trackway leading from the foot of the platform (Parker Pearson et al. 2019). Quarrying artefacts include three stone wedges still in situ within joints close to the gap left by a removed monolith (Parker Pearson et al. 2022a). Similar evidence of quarrying was found at Carn Goedog, in the form of stone wedges and other stone tools, an artificial platform, niches left by removed pillars, and wedge-holes cut into the joints between pillars (Parker Pearson et al. 2019).

This paragraph is disingenuous and irresponsible.  The so-called "evidence of quarrying" is hotly disputed in print, and it is truly extraordinary that Parker Pearson and his colleagues cannot bring themselves to admit this.  The Rhosyfelin "evidence" was dismissed in two journaal articles by Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd, John Downes and me in 2015, and in a preprint article about Carn Goedog published on Reserarchgate by me in 2019.  The "extraction point" for a 2.5 m long monolith at Rhosyfelin is pure fantasy, and no monoliths made of foliated rhyolite are known from Stonehenge.  The "quarrying installations" are figments of a fertile imagination, and the idea of wedges and "wedge holes" has been dismissed as laughable by Tim Darvill and specialists in rock mechanics.

As for the rest of the article, it reaches new heights of absurdity -- of which more anon.

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The items they refuse to cite:


Brian John, Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes. 2015. OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUPPOSED “NEOLITHIC BLUESTONE QUARRY” AT CRAIG RHOSYFELIN, PEMBROKESHIRE". Archaeology in Wales 54, pp 139-148. (Publication 14th December 2015)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286775899_
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286927485_Photo_Gallery

Brian John, Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes (2015a). "Quaternary Events at Craig Rhosyfelin, Pembrokeshire." Quaternary Newsletter, October 2015 (No 137), pp 16-32.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283643851_QUATERNARY_EVENTS_AT_CRAIG_RHOSYFELIN_PEMBROKESHIRE

and this paper published online:

Brian John (2019) Carn Goedog and the question of the "bluestone megalith quarry"
Researchgate: working paper
April 2019, 25 pp.

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12677.81121
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332739336_Carn_Goedog_and_the_question_of_the_bluestone_megalith_quarry
Carn Goedog paper.pdf

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Here is the latest UCL press release:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/dec/stonehenge-may-have-been-built-unify-people-ancient-britain

This is of course the basis of nearly all the press coverage.