Archaeological mythology and the Welsh Triads

• One of the Three Fantastical Places of 
• Powerful Stone.........

In Wales, things come in threes.  To quote from the Prydain Wiki:

The Welsh Triads (Welsh Trioedd Ynys Prydein, literally "Triads of the Island of Britain") are a group of related texts in medieval manuscripts which preserve fragments of Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in groups of three. The triad is a rhetorical form whereby objects are grouped together in threes, with a heading indicating the point of likeness.

https://prydain.fandom.com/wiki/Welsh_Triads

According to Wikipedia:

Some triads simply give a list of three characters with something in common (such as "the three frivolous bards of the island of Britain" while others include substantial narrative explanation. The triad form probably originated amongst the Welsh bards or poets as a mnemonic aid in composing their poems and stories, and later became a rhetorical device of Welsh literature. The Medieval Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen has many triads embedded in its narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Triads

I remember reading the classic work of Rachel Bromwich many years ago, and being greatly intrigued by it. What's not to like about the three princes of the Court of Arthur, or the three bulls of battle of the Island of Prydain, or the three arrogant ones, or the three atrocious assassinations, or the three great illusions?  

See also:

https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/triads2.html

Bearing in mind that tales and myths are not necessarily old, and they they continue to be created, we come to the three Great Fabricators, Michael of the East, Robert of the Middle and Richard of the West.  And behold the tale of the Three Fantastical Places of Powerful Stone, known as Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn..........

Monolith extraction pits at Stonehenge?

The honeycomb chalk debris surface.  I have seen no convincing evidence that demonstrates that these pits and hollows (or at least some of them) are not genuine stone extraction pits.

There has been some discussion lately, on social media, on the possible occurrence of one or more deep pits at Stonehenge, in amongst the stone settings -- indicative of the extraction of use of large stones.  This is not a new idea -- indeed, I had a discussion with Nick Snashall about this some years ago.

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/08/extraction-pits-solution-hollows-post.html

In that discussion, I was not at all convinced by the argument that genuine extraction pits are genuinely different in kind (ie in morphological features) to other pits that are man-made either as sockets or to accommodate packing stones etc...........

See  also:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2013/08/where-did-stonehenge-sarsens-come-from.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/03/stonehenge-always-was-bit-of-mess.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/02/were-some-stonehenge-sarsens.html

The honeycomb characteristics of the chalky ground surface beneath the Stonehenge layer and other accumulations of detritus have always suggested to me that at least some of the surface indentations and elongated hollows might mark the places from which noth sarsens and bluestones have been extracted and rearranged.  There is the matter of the "stone 16 pit"......... or a pit that might have held stone 56......

In other words, there is a strong possibility that Stonehenge was simply built where it is because that is where the stones (or the bulk of them) were found...........

Some recent discussion has centred on a large "mystery pit" at the centre of Stonehenge, which has shown up in various excavations. Prof MPP thinks it is very intriguing, but Tim Daw thinks it is a genuine extraction pit, used for taking away the Lake House meteorite, which he speculates was found here. I'm not sure what the basis for that speculation might be.  But why could the pit not have been an extraction pit once occupied by one of the larger sarsens or even by one or more bluestones?

To quote Mike Pitts in "Digging Deeper":

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2018/04/pitts-and-very-ancient-sarsens.html

The idea is that there are two great pits at Stonehenge, larger than any other and both difficult to explain. One of these I partly excavated in 1979, where we found the impression of a standing stone on the bottom, and Atkinson excavated part of it in 1956 (thinking at the time it was the erection ramp for the Heelstone).

The other is near the centre of Stonehenge. It was written about by Mike Parker Pearson and colleagues in Antiquity 2007, as part of their study of the site’s phasing. It’s a problematic thing, as Parker Pearson argues, excavated partly by Gowland in 1901 and partly by Atkinson on two occasions, in 1956 and 1958. There are two radiocarbon dates from samples that appear to be from the pit, but context details are missing and we can’t be sure exactly where they came from, and whether or not they were in pits dug into the filled larger pit; I don’t think we can trust these to age the big pit, which like that by the Heelstone, remains undated.

Both of these could be explained as filled natural hollows that once contained larger local sarsens. To the north-east, we may be looking at the stone that was dug out and raised, the Heelstone. To the south-west, we can only guess. It’s such a large pit, it might have held the tallest stone, trilithon Stone 56 which now stands at the end of the pit. I suggested Stone 16 as a possible candidate, because of its odd shape.

The last glaciers of the Wicklow Mountains

This is an interesting article which looks at the evidence for the last small glaciers in the Wicklow Mountains,  in Younger Dryas / Zone III / Loch Lomond / NS  times, around 12,000 years ago.  There are interesting comparisons with other Irish mountain areas and with Scotland, where the extent of this new glacierisation was much more dramatic.

These small glaciers -- just seven of them -- can be classified as cirque glaciers, and the authors incorporate evidence of three types of associated moraines, each one dependent upon certain glaciological conditions.   Three of the studied glaciers do not look much like cirque glaciers at all, but more like elongated snowpatches or snowfields on NE-facing steep slopes where snowdrift accumulations occurred. Were these really small glaciers (with flowing ice capable of transporting detritus) or were they small firn fields fronted by pro-talus ramparts or ridges of frost-shattered debris that simply slid down the snow surface from exposed cliff edges? I would have liked something in the article about stone and boulder shapes in the three moraine types, which might have given us a clue........

But these are small matters, and the cosmogenic dating evidence presented by the authors (based on the sampling of morainic boulder surfaces) is rather convincing.

Lauren Knight, Clare M. Boston, Harold Lovell, Timothy T. Barrows, Eric A. Colhoun, David Fink, Nicholas C. Pepin.  05 March 2025 
Restricted cirque glaciers in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland, during the Nahanagan Stadial (Greenland Stadial-1/Younger Dryas). 

Journal of Quaternary Science  

https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3699

ABSTRACT

In Ireland, the Nahanagan Stadial (NS) was characterised by cirque glacier, plateau icefield and mountain ice cap expansion and is named after the cirque glacier type-site of Lough Nahanagan in the Wicklow Mountains. This period is broadly equivalent to the Younger Dryas Stadial and Greenland Stadial-1 (GS-1: ~12.9–11.7 ka). Here, we provide the first evaluation of the full extent of NS glaciation in the Wicklow Mountains by combining solar radiation modelling, mapping of glacial geomorphology, 10Be and 26Al cosmogenic surface exposure dating, 3D glacier reconstructions and analysis of snowblow and avalanching potential. We identify seven sites that hosted cirque glaciers at this time. Glacier extent was very restricted, with most glaciers only partially filling their cirques. Equilibrium line altitudes (ELAs) ranged from 470 ± 5 m a.s.l. (Lough Nahanagan) to 721 ± 5 m a.s.l. (Lough Cleevaun), with an average ELA of 599 m a.s.l. Higher snowblow and avalanching contributions at sites with lower ELAs demonstrate local topoclimatic influence on glacier growth and preservation alongside regional climate. The Wicklow Mountains provides a good example of marginal cirque glaciation during GS-1 and the importance of local topography and microclimate for sustaining glaciers in some mountain areas of Britain and Ireland.

One would expect similarities between the Wicklow situation and that of Wales -- and indeed there are a number of known "late cirque glaciers" in Snowdonia (Eryri) and in the Brecon Beacons.   The only small glacier of equivalent age in Pembrokeshire was that of Cwm Cerwyn, close to Foelcwmcerwyn:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2012/02/pembrokeshires-last-glacier.html

There are two other locations, both on the Preseli north face, where I think there might have been small Younger Dryas nivation hollows, firn fields or  mini-glaciers.  But the evidence is very subtle, as suggested in this post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-enigmatic-landform-on-north-slope-of.html

The hunt for the Morvil Scottish erratic.....

Today, on a fine sunny winters day, we went up into the mountains on a hunt for the "Scottish erratic"............

Quote:  Erratic clasts, including gneissic rocks from northern Britain, for example at Morvil Farm [SN 037 307], Puncheston, confirm an Irish Sea provenance.

Reference: Burt, C., Aspden, J., Davies, J., Hall, M., Schofield, D., Sheppard, T., Waters, R., Wilby, P., Williams, M. (2012). Geology of the Fishguard district: a brief explanation of the geological map Sheet 210 Fishguard. British Geological Survey.

https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/memoirs/docs/B06909.html

As far as I know, there are no gneissic rocks in Pembrokeshire, so to find an erratic of Lewisian gneiss from the island of Lewis would be quite something.  Mind you, there are also gneissic rocks on Skye, Iona and the NW Scottish mainland -- including some areas near the Irish Sea Glacier ice shed, from which there was a southward flow of ice.  There vare some related rocks in Ireland as well.  

The six-figure grid reference given by Burt et al is not adequate, and after hunting around Morvil Farm, along the road and in the adjacent paddocks today I found plenty of dolerite erratics, but nothing made of gneiss......  I might go and take another look when the weather is warmer.

To find a gneissic erratic here, at an altitude of 210m high up in the foothills of Mynydd Preseli, would be almost as exciting as finding the "shelly drift" high up (c 400 m asl) above the North Wales coast at Moel Tryfan.....

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-shelly-sands-and-gravels-at-moel.html

Citation mistake: St Lawrence Estuary boulder movements

Apologies to Guillaume Marie for the mistake in the citation of his article, in my recent QN note on the Limeslade Boulder.  In the text, the citation should be "Marie, 2022" and not "Guillaume, 2022".

This is incorrect in the reference list:

Guillaume, M. (2022) Boulder transport by ice in the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada): Influence of shore platform geomorphology and ice-foot development, Marine Geology 449, 106815.

and it should be: 

 Marie, G. (2022) Boulder transport by ice in the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada): Influence of shore platform geomorphology and ice-foot development, Marine Geology 449, 106815.

The mistake probably arose because of the confusion of having a christian name as a surname.  It has happened to me on a number of occasions too!

================================

Response: The provenance of the Limeslade igneous erratic: a matter of no importance?
Brian John
Quaternary Newsletter 164, pp 19 - 27 (February 2025).
https://www.qra.org.uk/quaternary-newsletter/quaternary-newsletter-current/


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389436022_Response_The_provenance_of_the_Limeslade_igneous_erratic_a_matter_of_no_importance

============

This is an interesting presentation nby Guillaume:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341653982_Boulder_transport_by_sea_ice_on_a_rock_coast_of_St_Lawrence_marine_estuary_Canada

Submerged forest exposures at Abereiddi

 

Many thanks to Ruth Crofts for these photos, taken at Abereiddi after one of the winter storms had exposed quite a large expanse of the submerged forest at Abereiddi.

These photos are important bcause they show a stratigraphy of three layers:

3.  Peat bed incorporating tree roots and branches and other detrital debris

2.  Purple clay layer which is clearly "churned"

1.  Buff clay layer which contains many erratic clasts of all shapes and sizes

It is possible that the purple layer is the weathered "cap" of the layer below, but the churning is quite spectacular.  In this situation we cannot be dealing with a violent liquified mud flow -- and the interpretation must be that this is a periglacial feature, created at a time of permafrost.  In the lowest layer I think we are looking at a deposit of the Irish Sea till, similar to that of the Abermawr exposure some miles to the east.  

So my interpretation here would be:  Late Devensian glaciation and deposition of Irish Sea till  >>> late glacial cold climate episode with permafrost and creation of involutions  >>>  Holocene temperate conditions with peat growth and climax woodland  >>> sea level rise and inundation of the woodland and peat bed, probably within the past 5,000 years.

The submerged forest stratigraphy -- multiple sea level oscillations

Relative sea-levels in the Bristol Channel area over the past 12,000 years -- after Bell, Lambeck, 

Shennan and others

This is an interesting thesis concentrating on sites on the Gower and along the Glamorgan coast.  It argues that in the period of Mesolithic and Neolithic settlement there were multiple oscillations of relative sea level -- transgressions and regressions -- leading to coastal changes from saltwater marsh to freshwater lagoons and peat beds with some forest cover.  Although the thesis does not go into mechanisms, this all demonstrates a delicate balance between isostatic recovery rates and the post-glacial (Holocene) eustatic sea level rise. 

This is the context within bwhich we have to try and understand the nature and the sequence of deposits beneath the submerged forest.........

=============

Changing Tides:
The Archaeological Context of Sea Level Change inPrehistoric South Wales
Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Cardiff University
Department of Archaeology and Conservation School of History Archaeology and Religion
September 2018

Rhiannon Philp

https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/118952/14/2019philprphd%20118952%20DPR.pdf

Quote from Introduction:

According to nationally applied models, sea levels rose by around 55m between 10,000 and 6000 years ago (Lambeck 1995; Shennan and Horton 2002). After this period, the models suggest that sea levels stabilised around modern day levels (Bell 2007e,10). Archaeologically this gives the impression that sea level change affected Mesolithic communities more than those in the later prehistoric periods and that coastal ranges were similar to the modern day by the Neolithic period. However, when archaeological evidence is brought into the mix, it is clear that prehistoric experience of sea level change is not so clear cut. Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence from intertidal zones around Britain, including the Severn Estuary (Bell et al. 2000b; Bell 2007b; Bell 2013c), Langstone Harbour (Allen and Gardiner 2000a), Hullbridge (Wilkinson and Murphy 1995) and the Isles of Scilly (Charman et al. 2016c), has shown that despite the apparent reduction in sea level rise, the effects of fluctuating sea levels (both transgressions and regressions) were felt throughout the prehistoric periods, from the Mesolithic through to the Iron Age and beyond within humanly perceivable timeframes (Bell 2000c, 19). This is unlikely to have been in the form of catastrophic events. Rather, despite early Holocene movements appearing significant, archaeological evidence suggests prehistoric coastal populations would have experienced very gradual and fluctuating change with an average of 1cm rise per year (Shennan et al. 2009).

Quote from Conclusions:

The evidence has shown that sea level change affected Gower throughout the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, but not in a linear fashion. Long-lived inundations did not affect either of the sites during timeframes represented in the studied environmental sequences. However, at Port Eynon in particular, there is evidence for at least five instances of direct marine influence during the late Mesolithic period. This led to the deposition of minerogenic sediments and salt marsh indicators within the pollen record. Importantly these transgressive periods were followed by regressions in sea level, leading to the reinstatement of freshwater environments represented by substantial peat deposits. At Broughton Bay, evidence for contemporary transgressions has not been directly identified in the stratigraphic record, although raised levels of salt marsh indicators in the pollen record towards the base of the organic peat deposits suggests an earlier marine phase.

Gabbro erratic on the Abereiddi shore platform

 

This large erratic made of gabbro (?) has been exposed on the washed surface of the intertidal shore platform,  at the northern end of Abereiddi Bay.  Dimensions -- roughly 1m x 1m x 1m.   Normally it is encased in beach sand, but it is exposed now because the beach has been lowered by a metre or so during recent stormy weather.

New exposures of the Abereiddi submerged forest

 

Following the winter storms there are some new exposures of the submerged forest at Abereiddi -- near the stream at the lower edge of the pubble bank.  Just a few traces of the peat bed, with broken branches exposed at the surface.  Normally these features are buried beneath a metre or more of beach sand.  We can't see any stratigraphic relationships at the moment -- but there is a considerable "boulder bed" which looks as if it lies on top of the peat.  I suspect that there is a stratigraphic inversion there, and that these are "old boulders" that have been incorporated into the storm beach and have migrated with it as it has moved inland over the top of the peat bed during the Holocene.  

Or are the boulders in situ, related to a Devensian till deposit that underlies the peat bed?

More studies required........

My riposte to that very silly Limeslade rant

Just published:

Response:  The provenance of the Limeslade igneous erratic: a matter of no importance?
Brian John
Quaternary Newsletter 164, pp 19 - 27 (February 2025).

https://www.qra.org.uk/quaternary-newsletter/quaternary-newsletter-current/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389436022_Response_The_provenance_of_the_Limeslade_igneous_erratic_a_matter_of_no_importance

This is in response to the extraordinary rant published by Pearce et al (2024) in QN163:
Pearce, N., Bevins, R., Ixer, R. & Scourse, J. (2024). Comment on "An igneous erratic at Limeslade, Gower, and the Glaciation of the Bristol Channel" by Brian John. Quaternary Newsletter 163, pp 15 - 20.

In that article, they mounted what can only be referred to as an ad hominem attack, designed to demonstrate to the world my ignorance and incompetence, following my note describing some of the preliminary pXRF work done by Steve Parry and Prof Tim Darvill.  In attacking me, Nick Pearce and his cronies also questioned the integrity and competence of an experienced geologist and a senior academic -- and that is never a good thing to do in print, in a widely read journal.

Anyway, I may be old, but I still know what I am talking about, and I'm grateful to the editor of QN for giving me the opportunity to put the record straight. In the text, I point out how bizarre it is for a group of academics to attack a short preliminary note on the grounds that it was not more comprehensive -- especially since they could themselves have done more detailed work on the boulder if they had chosen to do so. 

They also accused me of having a preferred narrative driven by preconceptions, of ignoring clear and contradictory information, and of being ignorant of geological and geochemical processes. I pointed out the deep irony of reading these accusations coming from a team which has, over the last decade, refused to cite any "inconvenient literature" or to accept that any of their ideas are questioned or disputed by anybody else........

Then there was the accusation that I questioned the validity and accuracy of their data.  If they had bothered to read my article more carefully, they would have seen that I questioned their analyses and interpretations, not their data.

There were assorted other criticisms and rather snide asides which I will not bother with here -- they were too petty to justify the wastage of any more of our time.

My final paragraph:

Finally there is the parting shot (p 19) on the matter of John (2024): "This article merely represents a disingenuous cover to justify a rehearsal of the now well-worn and increasingly tedious debate concerning transport of the Stonehenge bluestones." Nothing can be further from the truth. The article as published was expanded and fashioned in response to the constructive comments of the journal editor and referees. The "tedious debate" to which Pearce et al (2024) refer has been fuelled and perpetrated by a stream of journal and popular science magazine articles which they themselves have written, many of them recycling the same basic data, designed to promote the hypothesis that the Preseli bluestones at Stonehenge were targetted, quarried and transported by our Neolithic ancestors. It is unfortunate that they are apparently unprepared to accept that others might question both their evidence and their interpretations.

Anyway, it is good to know that many readers of QN have told me how amazed they were by the vitriolic nature of the attack by Pearce et al, and I think we can take it as read that Pearce, Ixer, Bevins and Scourse have now done far more harm to their own reputations than they have ever done to mine.  

Myths, fantasies and now phantom articles

This is typical of the media feeding frenzy -- carefully orchestrated -- in the week before Christmas 2024.  The gullibility of the media was displayed in all its glory.  At that time there was no published article to underpin the claims made in the media, apart from an "advance copy" of the "final version" of an unpublished article.  To make matters worse,  that article cited at least one phantom supporting reference that cannot be found anywhere.

This is intriguing, and somehow rather sad.  A while ago I flagged up the imminent appearance of an article by Bevins and nine colleagues that was clearly designed to discredit me and my work on the Newall Boulder:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/12/here-come-heavies.html

This is the citation:
Bevins, R.E., Pearce, N.J.G., Ixer, R.A., Scourse, J., Daw, T., Parker Pearson, M., Pitts, M., Field, D., Pirrie, D. and Power, M.R. In press. Further discourse on the enigmatic ‘Newall boulder’ excavated at Stonehenge in 1926: correcting the record. Journal of Quaternary Science.

The reference was cited in the “final version" of the long distance stone transport article (by MPP et al) posted to the media in December……… here is a screenshot:

But in the reference list of the actual published version (January 2025) there is no sign of it, nor is it referred to in the text. Don't believe me? You can check this out via the link below:

https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ai/article/id/3293/

In general, one should not refer to an article as being “in press” unless it has been accepted and is due for imminent publication. 

 So what is going on here?

 Richard Bevins is the lead author, so the article must be his initiative.  But was this just a phantom article, never written, but thrown speculatively into the press pack, to make it look stronger and more authoritative than it actually was?? 

Or was it written, submitted to the Journal of Quaternary Science and rejected by the Editor?  I strongly suspect that this was the case.

I have tried to track this "further discourse" down. The Feb 2025 issue of the journal has just been issued, and there is no trace of anything by Bevins et al.  I am checking via the JQS editorial department to see whether any article with this title was ever submitted for consideration;  but I suspect that I won't get very far since there is a convention of confidentiality in such matters.

The word "outrageous" comes to mind......

West Kennet granidiorite article published

Corestone cobble and associated grus -- a photo from the article

This article by Ixer et al has now been published -- we have referred to it before.   But then I was not able to provide a link.  Here it is again:

Rob Ixer, Richard Bevins, Nick Pearce, Duncan Pirrie, Josh Pollard, Alex Finlay, Matthew Power and Ian Patience. 2025 "Exotic granodiorite lithics from Structure 5 at West Kennet, Avebury World Heritage Site, Wiltshire, UK."  Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 118 (2025), pp. 1–18

https://www.academia.edu/125773662/West_Kennet_Granodiorites

Quote: West Kennet provides yet another possible example of Late Neolithic long distance prehistoric transport, a distance of between 450km if taken from outcrop and 150km if collected from secondary glacial drift sources, although North Sea coastal glacial tills as a source for the stones appears unlikely and from East Anglia very unlikely.......

Thius is a detailed geological study, and I agree with the authors that the assemblage of rotten bits and pieces found around West Kennet is something of an enigma.  But I do not for a moment accept the assumption that glacial transport of the debris was effectively impossible.

Quotes:  

Initially, the heavily weathered and degraded appearance of the corestones and associated sandy grus led to the assumption that they were more likely collected as glacial erratics rather than from an in situ location (Ixer et al. 2022), but further investigation suggests this may not be so.

.........the very strong similarities between the samples is easier to explain if they were collected and manuported from a single highly weathered outcrop within the complex rather than collected from glacial tills, where a greater lithic variability might be expected.  Collecting from glacial till (Ixer et al. 2022) now seems an unsafe assumption and hence an in situ collection within the Cheviot Hills is now favoured.

I don't think the case is made, and Ixer et al (2022) is not a strong enough citation. Even if granites and related rocks do not travel well in gacier ice (especially of they are already heavily weathered) glacial transport of granidiorite erratics from Cheviot to the chalk lands of Wiltshire was certainly not impossible -- and the idea that the erratics were transported and dumped during one of the early glaciations is by no means disposed of.........

As usual, this article is underpinned by the ruling hypothesis that all of the "foreign" stones on the chalklands were obtained from identifiable quarry sites and then "manuported" into their present positions.
.

More on the Loveston Erratic (the Loving Stone) and others

 

The big Loveston Erratic at grid ref SR 94838 96853

I discovered more info on Adrian James's interesting blog, and especially ion this post:

https://pdboyinsuffolk.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-loveston-erratic-revisited.html

This erratic in the yard of Loveston Farm (near Merrion Army Camp) has had a rough time of it, and it looks as if, at various times, people have tried to sample it, move it, and maybe even destroy it. The farmer, Mr Morris, knows a lot about it.   But there it is, still, with some of its surface features intact abd worthy of examination........

According to Adrian, to whom many thanks:  

The Loving Stone has several stories attached to it, the main gist of them all being that it was customary for local lads and lasses to "pledge their troth" to one another at the stone, just like at the church alter........Hmmmnnnn.... Also, there is the suggestion that if it is ever moved, the farm will fall on hard times. It is not a "local" stone, but seems to be an igneous erratic from further north in the county.

Adrian thinks there is documentary evidence that the stone was originally located in St Twynnels Churchyard.

https://pdboyinsuffolk.blogspot.com/2013/03/did-loveston-erratic-block-roadway.html

There is another erratic near the Loveston Ruin:

Further afield........

On St Govan's Head (SR9739 9297) is another erratic, which was probably disturbed when the tank gunnery range was laid out on the headland. It seems to lie in/by an old pop-up target pit.:

 

The next example is resting against the south gable of Church House near St Twynnells church, near the postulated site of William Poyer's Longstone (SR94989757):

Between Mewsford and Bullslaughter Bay (SR94099405). This stone seems similar to some of those at Flimston Chapel, and indeed, the stone of St Govan's Head, mentioned above.  Here is a pic:

Note:  There are two places called Loveston in South Pembrokeshire.  The one featured in this post is not far from the South Pembrokeshire coast.  The other one is near Cresswell Quay in the central part of the county.

The BBC has lost its moral compass

Tonight and tomorrow the BBC will be broadcasting -- for the eleventh and twelfth times -- that appalling pseudo-science documentary featuring a gullible and "astonished" Alice Roberts and the ubiquitous MPP, entitled "Stonehenge: the Lost Circle Revealed." Since it was first broadcast in February 2021 it has also been continuously available on BBC iPlayer.  

This is, of course, nothing more than a hoax, dressing up an elaborate fantasy as "cutting edge science".  The narrative has been subjected to pretty brutal treatment by many viewers and commentators, including Mike Pitts and the late Tim Darvill, and we know that MPP does not himself believe the story any longer -- but the programme is still out there, heavily promoted by a Corporation that apparently prides itself for its respect for the truth.  BBC Verify is flagged up as something that deals with all cases of misinformation and disinformation, and ensures that high standards are maintained at all times.  And the BBC tell us constantly about its respect for the truth.  Just read the literature about its complaints procedure.............  hollow words, which we can not for a minute take seriously.

The BBC deals with its own complaints.  When I complained about this programme the response I got was arrogant and dismissive -- claiming that the BBC was not in possession of any information which might lead it to conclude that the programme should not be shown again.  That line of defence would not get you very far in a court of law!  The BBC would probably say that although certain information had been brought to its attention by me and other complainants, they were currently "not in possession of it", and were therefore in the clear to carry on broadcasting something accused of being wholly unreliable.

I complained in 2022 to OFCOM about the BBC response,  and got an acknowledgement of my complaint (in December 2022) and have heard nothing from them since then.

Goodbye, truth.  To hell with science and education -- all that matters nowadays is entertainment..........

Glacierization intensity and duration

 Does the word "glacierization" have any meaning or relevance?  Isn't it the same as "glaciation"?  This is the thinking of the glaciology establishment:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/glacierization/354F9D3447C4AE8159D984B235114DE6

Fair enough.  I agree that the word "glacierization" can be used to cover a full glacial cycle, from the initial onset of permafrost conditions, to the transformation to a snow-covered landscape and thence to landscape cover by active (moving and eroding) ice and thence through to ice wastage and the return of interglacial conditions. Glacierization might last for 80,000 years, but within that period there may be just 10,000 years of glaciation.

We need to think about this more than we have done traditionally, especially since we are now encountering the results of cosmogenic dating on rock surfaces in ice-covered and ice-free areas as researchers try to reconstruct episodes of past climate change.

Way back in the days when I was a D Phil research student, I created this model while I was trying to understand the sequence of Quaternary sediments exposed in the Pembrokeshire coastal exposures.

In a somewhat crude fashion, the columns represent the "glacierization time" at each of the four chosen locations.  This may have been 25,000 years in Southern Scotland but only 10,000 years near the southern glacial limit.  Within those time periods, full glacial conditions will have occupied a smaller and smaller percentage of glacierization time with distance from the ice sheet centre.  In reality, of course, you get climatic oscillations, topographic effects, sea level interactions and glaciological feedback mechanisms, so it all gets very complicated -- but the general principle still stands.

When the computer modelling folks arrived on the scene and started with really sophisticated modelling, we saw the arrival of rather splendid animated seqiuences in which we could watch small glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets expanding and contracting.  The BRITICE models are the latest of these, but the way was paved by Geoffrey Boulton, Alun Hubbard, Henry Patton and many others.  This was one of the images from this period of research that grabbed my attention:

It may look like a model of ice thickness over the southern part of the area affected by the Irish Sea Ice Stream -- but no, it shows the computed duration of glaciation.  This is zero at the outer ice edge, maybe just a few decades at Land's End, c 800m years near Lundy, c 1000 years at the north coast of Pembrokeshire, and c 1300 years in the southern Irish Sea proper.  The light coloured blotches on the map show areas of thin ice where glaciation time was reduced;  at times these upstanding areas will have been nunataks.

This is all of course rather wildly inaccurate -- but you have to admire the objectives and the skills of the members of the modelling team.

The ANCIENT BRITISH ISLES ICE SHEET TIME-LAPSE ANIMATION produced by the BRITICE-Chrono team is based on much more sophisticated modelling and a much greater "ground truthing" data base.  You can find it here:

https://iafi.org/ancient-british-isles-ice-sheet-time-lapse-animation/

It spans the period 31,000 yrs BP to 15,000 yrs BP, and shows parts of western Scotland being glaciated for almost the whole of that period, while West Wales experienced active ice cover for just 2,000 years and the Isles of Scilly for just a few centuries.

See also:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/01/glacierized-landscapes-and-advance-of.html

This work is of great importance to the reliability of cosmogenic dating results -- measuring the "exposure time" of rock surfaces on (for example) tors or glacial erratics.  Cosmogenic dating methods are often used to measure the length of time that has elapsed since the "last disappearance of glacier ice"  -- but "nuclide inheritance" can seriously distort the results obtained, and in multiple cosmogenic dates obtained for a certain area it is sometimes difficult to isolate the "outliers".

It is also too easy to assume that in the presence of glacier ice, abrasion and surface lowering always occurs.  This is not so.  If an ice cover is thin, and glacier bed temperatures are very low, protection of bedrock or erratic surfaces may occur instead of erosion or abrasion.  Trimlines on upland slopes may not mark glacier edge positions, but the transition between warm-based (eroding) ice and cold-based (protecting) ice.  Long-term cover by snowfields can also distort results, as can periods of vegetation overgrowth.  

Lots to think about........
   

BritIce Modelling Project E109b2bc Maximum

This modelling is over 6 years old now, and the dating has changed since then this animation was created.  But the overall pattern of waxing and waning ice cover is now pretty well established.

This is the "maximum" model with some elements that are not backed up by "ground truthing".  But note that it supports what many others have said over the years -- that glacial incursions well into Cornwall, Devon and Somerset were not just possible but quite likely to have actually happened.

The Altar Stone -- if it looks like a glacial erratic, that's probably what it is........

Source:  Historic England Archive

Tim Daw's annotated diagram of the surface scratches, published on Twitter (now called X)

Ths scratches on the flank of the Altar Stone (courtesy Historic England)

The Altar Stone at Stonehenge is a recumbent block of pale green micaceous sandstone. The largest of the bluestones in Stonehenge, it measures 4.9 meters long by 1 meter wide by 0.5 meters thick.  But it is not a clean or shaped rectangular block...... both ends are bevelled or broken.

According to Simon Banton, the Altar Stone lies "beneath the collapsed upright of the Great Trilithon (Stone 55b) and its lintel (Stone 156), sunk into the grass. The stone itself was broken by the fall of the Great Trilithon's upright and is in two pieces."

There is an interesting post on Tim Daw's blog -- thanks to him and Simon Banton -- regarding an assortment of new images of the Altar Stone -- unearthed in the Historic England archive. They all date from the 1958 Atkinson excavation, including a number of photos of blocks that were recorded as "unidentified stones".........

Here is the link:

https://www.sarsen.org/2025/02/the-archive-excavation-of-altar-stone.html

Tim refers to the "fine working of the stone" and scratches which have "obvious similarity to other neolithic stone markings."  The so-called "engraved lines" shown on the side of the Altar Stone in photo P50107 are very sharp, and I think they were most likely made with metal tools.  They look to be remarkably fresh -- and it will be interesting to read more about the stratigraphic context in due course.

Could the marks be glacial striations?  It's possible, but they appear to be too straight and regular.  I would dearly like to look at the whole of the smoothed SW flank of the slab which appears to be very different from the other surfaces.  There appear to be other scratches as well -- less distinct but in my view even more interesting.......

Overall, my impression from looking at the photos is that the Altar Stone is a broken elongated slab which is heavily weathered and abraded.  The edges are for the most part rounded off, and I think I see at least two scoop-shaped glacial facets.  There are abundant fracture scars, some quite fresh and others rather old and degraded.  

The big break at the SE end of the slab looks to be quite fresh, and was probably the result of the accident which brought Sarsen Stone 55B crashing down on top of it.  In one photo we can see some loose fragments associated with the breakage.  It's possible that other debris might have been removed during excavations.

Another thing which is quite intriguing in Tim's post is the nature of the sediment on which the altar Stone rests. It looks from the photos as if it is very coarse, unbedded or unstratified, with abundant angular and subangular fragments which might or might not be chalk or bluestone.  Not enough attention has been given to sediments like this -- and in the literature it is often dismissed as "chalk rubble" or simply "fill".  That's not good enough, and some of it looks suspiciously like till!

All in all, these latest images convince me that this is not a quarried slab but a glacial erratic with a complex history............

====================

From Landscape and Monumentality:

Debate continues as to whether the Altar Stone ever stood vertical or was always lying prostrate across the Stonehenge axis. It does not lie symmetrical to the axis, or at right angles to it. During his work at Stonehenge Richard Atkinson investigated around the Altar Stone and found one end badly shaped from souvenir hunters chipping pieces off, but the other end was a bevelled shape, similar to the bottom end of some of the sarsens that had been placed in the ground. It seems likely that at sometime the Altar Stone was standing erect. Whatever its original position the Altar Stone has clearly been disturbed by the collapse of the Great Trilithon, Stones 55 and 56, and 156. Today the Altar Stone lies in two halves, partly under Stone 55 and partly under the lintel 156, undoubtedly as a result of the impact of the collapse, partly buried; as such today you will not see it unless you obtain access to the inner circle.

Cwm Mawr "axe factory" and the sources of picrite

 

The "axe factory" site -- a small rocky knoll in a verdant landscape

On hunting down some sources on picrite (the famous boulder featured on this blog), I have been intrigued by the literature relating to the Cwm Mawr "axe factory" near Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire.  In articles all over the place it is spoken of with great certainty, in spite of the official record which records that there is nothing much there to write home about:

The Coflein record:

Hill of distinctive picrite rock, identified in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in 1951 as the probable source of stone for the Group XII Bronze Age battle axes and axe hammers, by Shotton, Chitty and Seaby. Their work identified several former quarry sites and outcrops of the rock on the hill. Excavations by the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust, in conjunction with the National Museum Wales, were funded by Cadw in 2007 & 2008. Initial results were inconclusive, finding only evidence for historic use of the quarry.

T. Driver, RCAHMW, 9th October 2008.

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/408335/

There are entries on the Magalithic Portal and the Modern Antiquarian which demonstrate the wide acceptance of the idea that this was the place at which Bronze Age quarrymen dug out lumps of picrite which were then fashioned into hand axes or battle-axes that were traded across a vast swathe of the countryside.  This is typical: "This quarry is proving to be the source of many stone implements, including axe hammers of Bronze Age date........."

and this:

Archaeologists working for the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) say that Group XII Bronze Age battleaxes and axe hammers fashioned from picrite, a distinctive form of basalt, were probably made at a quarry site at Cwm Mawr just to the north-west of the village of Hyssington in eastern Montgomeryshire. The axes are found as far apart as Cornwall and the north of England, but are most common in Wales, the Marches and the West Midlands.

Hmmm.  I think we are in the presence of some unsafe assumptions here, not to mention confirmation bias.....

The problem is that there is no Bronze Age quarry at Cwm Mawr, and there is not much critical analysis either. There are many outcrops of picrite in the British Isles, and I have not seen any published evidence that indicates that all of the axes made of this material have all come from a single source. In spite of this Group XII axes are often referred to as "Group XII (Cwm Mawr)" axes on the basis of rather cursory geological examination.

See this excellent RIGS note relating to picrite erratics in Anglesey:

https://www.geomon.co.uk/llanerchymedd-rigs-site/

A friend has also drawn my attention to this article, published last year:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/from-the-heat-of-the-fire-a-biography-of-an-early-bronze-age-battleaxe-from-church-lawton-cheshire/40718969F43658F3670DE0E6C10861ED

The artefact described was found at Church Lawton, about 80 km NE of Cwm Mawr.  In the article the axe head is NOT definitively provenanced to Cwm Mawr, in spite of the reproduction of two very colourful thin sections.  It is simply assumed to have come from "the Cwm Mawr Farm quarry".  Then the authors say this:  

Although Group XII extraction sites dating to the Early Bronze Age have not been positively identified, it is thought that blocks of picrite (cobbles) in stream beds near to the hill were most probably used for the production of axe-hammers and battle-axes. Such cobbles would have been closest in size and shape to the intended products, thereby helping to reduce effort during manufacture. They would also have had the advantage of being ‘flaw tested’ through the action of rocks hitting one another caused by the movement of water.

The movement of water?  What about the movement of ice? The authors have apparently not noticed that there are picrite erratics scattered across the landscape (as in Anglesey), or that there was such a thing as the Ice Age.  But wait -- they do acknowledge the presence of nine "glacial boulders" surrounding the investigated barrow mound.  So they recognize non-picrite glacial erratic boulders, but not picrite ones.  Clearly it is very unlikely that ice can have carried Cwm Mawr picrite boulders far to the north-east, because all the evidence shows a broad north to south ice flow direction.  But the map of picrite artefact distribution in southern Britain has one fundamental flaw -- and that is the assumption that all the picrite artefact finds are made of picrite from Cwm Mawr. 

I am prepared to accept that picrite axes (and axes of many other rock types) were fashioned in many different places, and were widely traded, but it is quite extraordinary that archaeologists (and geologists) can spend so much time talking about imaginary quarries and "raw material selection" without once referring to glacial erratics.  Once again, too much storytelling, too much blind adherence to the establishment line, and not enough critical thinking.

Glacial Growth and Retreat on the Isles of Scilly -- a somewhat simplified tale........

Glacial Growth and Retreat on the Isles of Scilly

I have been looking again at this rather interesting animation showing how the last glacial invasion of the nothern Isles of Scilly supposedly happened. The intentions of the CADARN learning portal were obviously very worthy, but I'm surprised it was not checked for reliability before being put on on YouTube.

I'm intrigued by the idea that it can keep on snowing for centuries or millennia without any of the snow accumulating on the frozen ground surface.  It's all very dramatic, the way that the distant approaching glacier front gets closer and closer, and inexorably overwhelms the land, bulldozing a mighty frontal moraine along as it approaches.  Wild fantasy, for the most part.    In glacial troughs this may indeed be what happens, although this is not the way in which most terminal moraines are formed.  

The Bulldozer Fantasy

Here, on the front edge of the Irish Sea Ice Stream, with no constraining topography, the actual course of events will have been wildly different.  The onset of glaciation would have been marked not by a bulldozing ice front pushing across the landscape but by a gradual transformation of seasonal snow-cover to a perennial snow-cover, with snowpatches and snowfields gradually coalescing and thickening.  

So almost always in situ snow is converted to firn and then to glacier ice, thickening rather than advancing until at last the ice starts to move, pressurised by the thickening and growing glacier from the north.  Then material starts to move, with the formation of till, the transport of erratics and the creation of moraine banks at the ice edge.

This is the story that is told by the sequence of deposits on the northern edge of the Scilly Archipelago  -- and this is what happened at least twice during the passage of the Quaternary Ice Age.

Here is a reminder of a relevant post:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2023/01/glacierized-landscapes-and-advance-of.html

Oxford Gletscher Wiki entry

 

"Deranged" surface morainic patterns demonstrating the scale and effect of the last 

Oxford Glacier surge, originating in the eastern branch of the glacier

Submerged forest, Amroth

 

 

After the winter gales, the submerged forest in Amroth is exposed just now.  Thanks to Sian May for publishing this great photo on the Pembs Geology Facebook page........

The Noel Hill residual raised beach

 

This photo was taken on 29th January 1966, not far from the summit of Noel Hill on the Barton Peninsula, King George Island, South Shetlands.  This is not the highest beach found on that day, at 275m asl, but it illustrates the complexity of working in this sort of environment.  

I'm standing on the edge of a raised beach deposit, made up for the most part of small rounded beach cobbles.  This is where one has to record the altitude, since it is a clear junction between a blocky till bank to the left and an undulating beach surface to the right.  So is this a washing limit?  Well, yes and no. If we look at the till bank we can see that it has been cleaned up by the waves, and that the finer matrix material has been washed out and carried away, for at least a couple of metres above the ground surface where I am standing.  So the real washing limit -- and hence the maximum elevation of relative sea level (rsl) -- is higher, but we don't know exactly where it was. 

So my feet mark the position of a stillstand, where the relative positions of land and sea were stable for a number of decades or centuries.  This is both an erosional and a depositional feature --  there has been washing of the till face or edge, abd some undercutting of the till deposit, and there must be more boulders associated with the till buried beneath and within the raised beach terrace.

The reason for the stillstand is difficult to discern. There may have been an equivalence in rates of isostatic uplift and eustatic sea level rise, or an equivalence of rates of isostatic depression and sea-level fall! Tectonic factors may also have played a part, as David Sugden and I speculated in our big article in 1971:
John, B.S. and Sugden, D.E. 1971. Raised marine features and phases of glaciation in the South Shetland Islands. British Antarctic Survey Bulletin, 24: 45-111.

David and I were certain that these high "residual beaches" on the Barton Peninsula and elsewhere were covered by a short-lived glacier advance.  Some beaches will have been destroyed, while others survived.  So the ice advance was not a very powerful one.  But it was strong enough to erode and incorporate many raised beach deposits into a patchy till cover.

Cosmogenic dating of large cobbles incorporated in one of the lower Noel Hill residual beaches by Emma Watcham gave dates of around 7,000 yrs BP.  She could not match these dates against other evidence relating to the glacial chronology for King George Island, and so concluded that the residual raised beaches are not beaches at all, but remnants of destroyed kame terraces.  I disagree.  For the kame terrace interpretation, we need much more evidence.  From the hundreds of sites we examined in the South Shetland Islands, we found no evidence for substantial meltwater deposition anywhere. The "residual beaches" are slight mounds ofr ridges associated with a washing limit -- locfated on the flanks of what might origibnally have been a numatak (Noel Hill).  The "kalottberg" scenatio somes to mind!

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-myth-of-ice-rafted-coastal-erratics.html

 The beaches range in altitude between 275m and c 150m asl -- some are to the east of the hill summit, and others to the south-west.  There are no signs of terraces that might have been formed between a hillside and a downwasting ice margin, non signs of ice contact slopes, and no signs of catastrophic ice wastage with huge volumes of meltwater refashioning the depositional landscape.  All the signs -- as far as we could see -- pointed to a very modest amount of meltwater activity and to very subtle changes in the relationships of ice and land surfaces at a time of very high -- but falling --relative sea-level.

See also:

WATCHAM, EMMA,PEARL (2010) Late Quaternary relative sea level change in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, Durham theses, Durham University. 

Available at Durham E-Theses Online: 

http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/485/

A little piece of history

Moving house is a traumatic experience, but in the process of chucking out old files and piles of paperwork, one discovers the occasional treasure.  

I found this -- the raw material for a morse code message which Dave Sugden and I sent to our geology research director Dr Raymond Adie in January 1996.  At the time we were working in the South Shetlands, in Antarctica, and had just discovered the highest raised beach ever found in Antarcrtica -- at 900 ft or 275m above sea level.  This was near Noel Hill on the Barton Peninsula, King George Island.  

This was how the discovery was announced to the world.  Equally exciting was the discovery of a fossil forest of petrified trees, confirming previous research showing that the rocks of west Antarctica held evidence of at least one episode of warm or subtropical climatic conditions during geological history.

I suppose that discoveries such as these lay behind the decision of the Antarctic Place Names Committee to add "Sugden Ridge" and "John Glacier" to the Antarctic map.  We still have no idea who made the recommendations or citations.

===================

PS. Antarctic names are allocated in recognition of "significant and exceptional contributions to scientific understanding and/or life in the Antarctic".

Residual raised beach at c 150m asl on Barton Peninsula, King George Island.  The highest beach discovered was at 275m asl.

Another high level beach remnant on a washed surface